Podcast Preview: SongWriter Season 6 Continues with Joyce Carol Oates and Ali Sethi

At a live performance at Queens College in June, legendary author Joyce Carol Oates read a piece of flash fiction called “Hospice / Honeymoon.” The story is about the final days of her late husband, Charlie Gross, a noted neuroscientist and photographer. Recollecting the show a few weeks later, Joyce said that while the music and the conversations on stage were deeply moving, she was particularly struck by the audience’s engagement with the topic of caregiving.

“The emotional involvement of the audience was quite evident,” Joyce says. “One person who asked me to sign a book said that her mother had passed away the day before.”

During the show, caregiving researcher and psychologist Dr. Allison Applebaum shared her own experience as a caregiver for her late father, composer and arranger Stan Applebaum. Dr. Applebaum’s recent book on caregiving, Stand By Me, takes its title from a track her father worked on, and is intended as both a memoir and a guide for other caregivers.

“Caregiving unites us all. We all were, are, will be caregivers, likely repeatedly throughout our lives,” Dr. Applebaum says. “I think there was a very sacred space created, inspired by Joyce’s words, and brought together by all of us, and by the music.”

Global music star Ali Sethi  wrote a brand new song in response to Joyce’s story, and performed it live with guitarist Ria Modak. Although primarily known for his hit song “Pasoori” — which has nearly a billion views on YouTube — Ali is also a wildly talented novelist. Ali told the audience that he studied Joyce’s work in college, and connected her story to his journey as an artist and an immigrant.

“In a way that only prose can do, it took me on a journey through longing. I felt the force and impetus of the invisible, hopeful energy an impending loss can give you,” Ali says. “I was delivered, really — the words came, and I called up my frequent collaborator.”

That collaborator is Sunayana Kachroo, an Indian poet, songwriter, and filmmaker. Sunayana explains that the song they wrote is in Hindustani, a mix of Hindi and Urdu. And like much of Ali’s work, “Dekho Na,” mixes contemporary music with a classical South Asian improvisational music tradition called raga. Sunayana points out that Ali’s use of these cultural traditions connects his work to a deeper narrative.

“Ali can sing whatever he wants to, but by bringing this context of South Asia, he is narrating our stories while he’s narrating his,” Sunayana says, adding, “Without our stories we are irrelevant.”

“Dekho Na” can only be heard in this week’s episode of SongWriter.

Season six of SongWriter is made possible by a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation.