Founded by Manjari Chaturvedi in the year 2018, The Ganga Jamuna Culture Foundation is a registered trust under the Societies registration act of 1860, under the Government of India and is also exempt from tax under 12A and 80G of the Income tax. 

The Foundation has been working on its mission of promoting art & culture and imparting Yoga training to students with an aim of holistic health and to promote the Indian tradition of Yoga.  

The Foundation runs classes for students to learn Indian classical Dance of Kathak in an effort to keep the traditional art alive and train the future generations. 

The Foundation is working towards preserving intangible heritage and to promote art & culture and documenting intangible heritage through the academic and performance initiatives undertaken by the Foundation to promote traditional art and culture and to promote its traditional practitioners.

In October 2019 we held a traditional art initiative which revives the rich heritage and mystical traditions of Punjab as never seen before. This multidisciplinary initiative had live dance, musical and storytelling elements. From transcendent dance to the poetry of Punjab, this evening at Chandigarh recreated the traditioal dance of the mystics and revived the age-old Punjabi female archetype of Jugni. The character of Jugni is rooted in defiance and rebellion, a deeply transgressive woman that brings a fiery woman character back into popular vocabulary. As a figure, she signifies free spirited feminine energy. O JUGNI PUNJAB DI -The character of Jugni is rooted in defiance and rebellion, a deeply transgressive woman that brings a fiery woman character back into the popular vocabulary. In a largely patriarchal society the figure of Jugni when invoked almost always, the Jugni signifies a free spirited feminine energy. Beyond The Confines Of Caste, Religion, Gender, The Poetry, The Music, The Dance, celebrates Life “Nothing blurs the divide better than our tradition of music, dance and poetry. Manjari stands determined to be the link and the light, swathe in colours of Sufi saint poets, she reintroduces audiences to many layers of our culture and traditions.”

Various initiatives were also done to celebrate the diversity of India and bring together people with the concept on the vision of secularism, using music to bring people together. Such initiatives give a platform to our own traditional musicians to perform their art and spread the message of love and peace and communal harmony. The songs of Bhakti, the music of the Sufis, the magic of folk, the new age music all blends together into one weave. The weave is India.

In keeping with the efforts of continuing the work on marginalised women performers and giving them their place in the society the Foundation has collaborated with Manjari Chaturvedi to take further her initiative to tell the stories of women performers through “The Courtesan Project”. This is a first of its kind documentation, preservation and conservation initiative to archive the lives of women performers who are often socially ostracized from a normal functioning society. The initiative not only recreates and disseminates the awareness but also enhances the understanding about courtesan culture –the singers; dancers and; their rich forms of music, poetry and dance. The inner embedded intention is the belief that it is time to relook at the forgotten erstwhile courtesans and their tradition in a modern context and accord them with the right label of an “artist”. 

In keeping with the continued efforts even during lockdown the Foundation imparted Kathak classes and supported the staging of the production as an online event of Dara Shikoh a theatrical dance production based on the lives of Dara Shikoh, the man who never became the King and Rana Dil the dancer who lived her life for Dara Shikoh. This historical representation through dance and theatre was much appreciated by audiences and it was also webcast live through the digital medium.

The pandemic has been a very difficult time for art and culture and the Foundation was doing sustained efforts to keep the activities alive during that time.

FUTURE ACTIVITIES:

In the past years, we have continuously observed a sustained growth in the work of the Foundation. 

In the future activities, our vision is in the thought and the functioning of the organization and also maintaining an equal emphasis on each of the following aspects

• of promotion of yoga and classical dance and music

• of efforts towards research and archiving activities

• We also see the need to provide support to marginal artists and will now work towards this as part of the future activities.

• We also need to make more efforts to make an outreach for training and creating job opportunities for artists from small towns.

• of shaping an innovative thought process by organizing the seminars and symposiums. 

This future years will also see our efforts to reach out to school going children and conduct lecture and demonstrations at schools in Delhi and around. We intend to continue the process of initiating these young minds into the world of classical music and dance.

We will continue to share performance and interactive art through public initiatives. The response to the initiatives by research scholars/students/filmmakers and by audiences through emails and messages of appreciation for our programmes is extremely heart warming and propels us to continue working on this music form as part of our foundation activities. The Foundation in the coming years would develop and explore the medium of film making for our projects.

In continuation with our process of documentation in the coming years we shall also focus on printed publication as books. We are witnessing a significant growth in our audiences which is a promising sign for the artforms and we hope that this increase also leads to an increase in our endeavors to raise sponsorships. We are happy to state that we continue with our efforts to provide pension support and medical support to the artists and every year the “artist association” with us is increasing, which means more work for us but also at the same time means an increase in the inherent trust of the artists towards us.

Ganga Jamuna Culture Foundation organizes Annual Seminars and academic discussions on the performance art both music and dance. “Understanding Qawwali” is a series of seminars that is a unique initiative to explore the music form of Qawwali and is in continuum. The first ever seminars on Women Performers, the Tawaifs and Baijis was curated by the Founder Manjari Chaturvedi and the work continues in the same series.

Research and documentation forms the core of The Foundation’s activities. We seek to continuously study the various art forms related to Spiritual music traditions, the old forgotten traditions in performance art or even those witnessing gradual decline for lack of awareness and mass attention. Our projects are available on Google Arts & Culture as part of a unique collaboration.

The Foundation has worked with the Government and in association with various corporate organizations, for various cultural events and through such concerts the Foundation has tried to relive the past eras, thereby representing our rich cultural heritage. Regular concerts are held at various prestigious organisations in different cities as part of the artist outreach program.

This is an initiative of the Foundation for research students from around the world, keen on traditional Indian arts and the Spiritual thought. In this program by a combination of theoretical sessions and personal interactions with the exponents of Spiritual thought and performance art associated with various traditions and their experiences, the students can imbibe and learn the various aspects associated with mysticism, music and dance.

Janab Wajahat Hussain Badayuni was a Qawwal from Badayun, Uttar Pradesh. 

These singers are known to be the keepers of this traditions.

Qawwali Singer, Janab Haider Buksh Warsi was born in 1944 

Janab Aziz Chisti, , is a Qawwal in the Dargah of Hazrat Sheikh Salim...

THE QAWWALI PROJECT (Year 2011): An initiative to archive and preserve the form of Qawwalli and work towards the spiritual music associated with Sufism. The project is on the social impact as well as the syncretic traditions of the art form of Qawwali an integral part of Sufi music in the Indian Subcontinent, which is part of the living history of the diverse cultures in India. The collective and individual issues that are being dealt with in this are: Qawwali, not just as a traditional art form but as a cultural symbol to rightfully represent the essence of ‘unity in diversity’ of India.

Ganga Jamuna Culture Foundation is dedicated to work towards removing social stigmas associated with courtesan. The concert series relives the magic of The Courtesan. Manjari Chaturvedi has taken her obsession with classical dance and turned it into more than expression: in her hands, it is cultural renaissance and syncretism; narrative form and dialogue. Nothing is more evocative of this than “The Courtesan Project”, a unique research and documentation exercise via which Manjari seeks to chronicle the historically remarkable role of the ‘tawaif’ ( women performers) in artistic life: as muse to poets and painters, writers and kings, musicians and leaders.