Yantra has worked for the BBC as a composer and music consultant on projects in London, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Burma. The Australia Council, The Ministry of the Arts and the Multicultural Arts Alliance have awarded grants to Yantra in support of her music, and she has been nominated for and received numerous industry awards, including the 2015 APRA award for composition.
She had a creative home life, where house concerts and soirées were a regular occurrence. Her mother, being involved with the early days of Australian radio and television as a presenter and broadcaster, was pivotal in creating this environment. “I remember well her involvement in the Argonauts Club, one of the ABC’s (Australian Broadcasting Commission’s ) most popular programs running six days a week from 1941–1961. It had over fifty thousand members who were encouraged to submit writing, music, poetry and art, and as my mother was one of the broadcasting team, this was the beginning of my cultural life.”
She attended a Rudolf Steiner school in Sydney, Glenaeon, where languages, gardening, woodwork, music, mythology and art were instilled in the students from an early age. Creativity was high on the agenda, Yantra says. “And academic performance was somewhat neglected, so my parents decided to send me to Abbotsleigh, a private girls school in Sydney to complete my matriculation.”
She believes she had the best of both worlds in her education – “a strong foundation in creativity and spirituality at the Steiner school, refined in my later school years by a more academic environment under the tutelage of the engaging and forward-thinking headmistress Betty Archdale.”
“After school I spent most of my time exploring music as a career, working in the industry composing music for film, theater and as part of many contemporary music ensembles including Do Re Mi, and my performances with Robyn Archer.”
After turning thirty, she decided she wanted to try academia. “I enrolled in the contemporary music course, majoring in composition, at Southern Cross University. For my undergraduate degree, I produced a major work entitled The Twelve Caverns of the Underworld. This multimedia music theatre production was based on Amduat, an Ancient Egyptian funerary text of the New Kingdom, considered a guide for the stages of the afterlife. My interest in music and ritual had begun.”
Yantra’s reflections on her involvement in the making of Devotion
The process of recording Devotion involved a four-year commitment. This included ethno-musicological research, recording sessions, harmonic arrangements, a high level of audio processing in the studio and the involvement of a small group of peers for feedback. My focus in Devotion was to merge creativity with spirituality.
My own spirituality has a somewhat eclectic foundation. However, in my arts practice I can identify a bridge between the Buddhist and Christian practices that inform some of my work.
Metaphorically, I see myself inside a gateway, standing as a bridge between places, a “border crosser,” as the ethno-musicologist Steven Nuss calls it. The notion of the space between also informs my thinking – the space between the breath, the space between Eastern and Western modes of spirituality, the space between the musical notes, the space between Hildegarde of Bingen and Tibetan monastic lineage… the space between Robina and me. This between place has strong resonances with the ancient Japanese Buddhist aesthetic of Ma.
Viewing my collaborative relationship with Robina from a Ma
Venerable Robina had never been in a recording studio before. This was an interesting turnaround, as her international role is one of a spiritual teacher, however, in the recording studio she referred to me as her music guru – an honor I aimed to live up to, in leadership and musical ability.
Our work together represents a number of different factors:
- tradition-bearer passing on knowledge;
- juxtaposition of professional and non-professional expertise in the studio;
- role of teacher and disciple;
- arrangement of complex harmonies;
- traditional Tibetan prayers;
- nexus of Tibetan Buddhist and Medieval Christian harmonic sensibilities;
- interlock of traditional musical sources and contemporary studio practices; and
- non-rule-book approach to developing ideas together in the studio.
From a music production point of view, reflecting on and during my work with Robina allowed me to make intuitive decisions regarding the shaping of the sound. I would think of the resonances that express the notion of transcendence and ritual. Do I use higher vocal sonorities to express an angelic quality? How do I express heavenly overtones (a Christian perspective) in a Tibetan Buddhist format? As I asked myself these questions I realised that when we experiment in our practice we come across surprises and make decisions about our process and materials.
It was a new area for me to be exploring as well as a new relationship with Robina. But we both wanted what was best for the project, and there were many times where we had to make difficult decisions, such as discarding material – I had to learn to let go on so many levels.
Listening to references from Hildegarde of Bingen was an important part of my reflective research process whilst working on Devotion. Even though most of Hildegard’s compositions were for unison melodic structure, the transcendent nature of the sound, with its cathedral-like reverberation was a sonic influence that Robina and I both aspired towards, artistically and spiritually.
I believe artists always tackle such questions as: what am I saying, how do I want to say it, and why do I want to say it? These questions are recurrent in my creative practice, and formulate a personal creative credo that is addressed in the context of each project I am involved with, whether it be a performance, film, theatre event or recording. They are central to my artistic expression and were the foundation of my work in Devotion.
As a result of my deep interest in Buddhist and Christian theologies, I have developed an inner spiritual enquiry that informs my arts practice, whilst crossing the borders between these two philosophies. At its essence the quest for peace and inspiration, for myself and others. At the heart of my work in Devotion is the notion of generating bodhicitta[1] – creating positive works, as sung in the bodhichitta prayer in track 1:
To accomplish my own and others aims
Dag-gi jang-chub sem-kye-do
I generate bodhichitta
Dag-zhän ge-nam jang-chub chhen-por-ngo
I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great enlightenment
[1]Bodhichitta is a spontaneous wish to attain enlightenment motivated by great compassion for all sentient beings, accompanied by a falling away of the attachment to the illusion of an inherently-existing self.