Three articles written by Janaki Patrik have been published in NARTANAM Journal.

(2) AMERICAN TRIUMVIRATE: Presenting Indian Arts in the United States:
Beate Sirota Gordon @ Asia Society – Alan Pally @ The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts – Robert & Helene Browning @ World Music Institute
NARTANAM, A Quarterly Journal of Indian Dance, Volume XIV, No. 1, January – March, 2014, Hyderabad, India. Revised and expanded, 18 February 2022.

The passing of Beate Sirota Gordon on 30 December 2012 shocked me with the finality of the loss – a legend, whose work had touched me deeply, but about whom I knew so little. Mrs. Gordon’s death prompted me to think about Asia Society and two other major New York City cultural institutions, whose resources and programming continue to instruct and inspire me – the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and World Music Institute. The artistic and programming directors of these three institutions played leading roles in American cultural life during the latter decades of the 20th Century and opening decade of the 21st Century. The work of Beate Sirota Gordon at Asia Society, Alan Pally at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, and Robert and Helene Browning at World Music Institute fueled a crucial shift in cultural programming, reorienting it from a predominantly Euro-centric focus to a global perspective.

Fourteen years into the 21st Century, it is evident that these presenters were ahead of their times in showcasing the rich cultural diversity of the world community, setting the course for programming in three major and highly-visible American institutions. Of particular interest is the contrast of policies and funding as implemented in three different institutional paradigms – a large, privately-founded and privately-funded arts and education organization, a programming department within New York City’s public library system, and an individually-founded organization focused exclusively on presenting world music and dance.

Asia Society, The New York Public Library of the Performing Arts and World Music Institute appear frequently in the itineraries of India’s eminent artists. This article gives NARTANAM readers a perspective on these major institutions, and on the programming directors who have shaped their curatorial decisions. Moreover, events during the forty years encompassing the artistic directorships of Beate Gordon, Alan Pally and the Brownings provide examples of the seismic shifts in promotion, funding and information technology during the latter 20th and early 21st Centuries. Details from the lives and work of these individuals also show the important role of American philanthropy, entrepreneurial ingenuity and individual initiative in presenting the performing arts.

This article does not focus exclusively on Indian dance and its inextricable companion, music. The work of all three organizations profiled represents the ethnic make-up of the diverse population of New York City and of the United States. However, programming of Indian arts has played a central role in the work of all three directorships, and examples of their work in this area are given wherever possible.

PART I

Beate Sirota Gordon – Asia Society
A Tribute

Asia Society was organized by American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III in 1956.   Following his college graduation in 1929, he made a world tour, ending in Japan.  This visit, plus his service there at the end of World War II, fostered his lifelong interest in Japan and all of Asia.  The idealism and sense of public service guiding Rockefeller’s life is reflected in Asia Society’s current Mission Statement:  “Asia Society is the leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a global context.”

Beate Sirota Gordon did not set out to make a career in arts management, which culminated in her position as Director of the Performances, Films and Lectures at Asia Society.   Many of the pivotal events early in her career occurred when Ms. Gordon seized opportunities as they serendipitously presented themselves, while keeping in mind a practical need to support herself financially.  But once set on the path of presenting Asian performing arts through programming at Japan Society and Asia Society , Ms. Sirota-Gordon concentrated her linguistic talents, management skills and refined aesthetic judgment to fulfilling her vision to the utmost.

Early Years – Childhood in Japan, Education at Mills College, Supporting Herself During World War II

Daughter of renowned Russian-Austrian pianist Leo Sirota, Beate was 5 ½ years old (1929) when she and her mother Augustine Horenstein Sirota moved from Vienna to Japan to join her father, who had been appointed professor of music at the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo. ^[1]

 

 

 

 

Though her sense of artistic excellence was nurtured in a household filled with music, Beate did not choose to become a professional performing artist.  She decided instead to concentrate on languages in her college undergraduate studies.  When she moved to Oakland, California in 1939 to attend Mills College, she was already fluent in German, Japanese, English, Russian and French.

 

Japan’s attack on America’s naval base at Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) abruptly changed Beate Sirota’s life.  Living in the United States, which immediately declared war on Japan, she was cut off from financial support and communication with her parents, who remained in Japan.   As her savings dwindled, Ms. Sirota realized that she needed to find paid work.   Consequently she arranged for an extension of her summer job translating Japanese broadcasts for the Office of War Information in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.  With permission from the Mills College administration, Beate Sirota fulfilled her graduation requirements by writing term papers and sitting for exams rather than attending classes and residing on campus.

 

 

During her last two years as an off-campus student at Mills College, Beate Sirota lived a highly disciplined and compartmentalized life, devoting her mornings to independent college studies and the rest of the day until 11pm to translating broadcasts arriving in California from Japan. She qualified for this job not by taking an examination, but by a dramatic incident – her discovery of the approach of a Japanese submarine into San Francisco harbor. Her careful translation work and sensitive ear to colloquial Japanese picked up information which had been overlooked by the American listening post in Portland, Oregon. Ms. Sirota was also responsible for writing the script and choosing music for daily broadcasts to Japan, delivering America’s answer to Japanese propaganda broadcasts aimed at American troops by “Tokyo Rose”. ^[2] In her book “The Only Woman in the Room”, Beate Sirota Gordon writes that “as a direct consequence of the war, I found myself largely self-reliant by the age of nineteen.” ^[3]

 

Examining the lives of people like Beate Sirota Gordon, who have so profoundly contributed to our perceptions and knowledge of a multi-cultural world, we may ask what factors shaped their inclusive world view.  Beate Sirota was hardly twenty years old when she had already applied for United States citizenship.  Though she still felt a great admiration for Japanese culture and a loyalty to her Japanese friends, she held the Japanese government responsible for its attack on America.   Putting a personal face on a nation considered en masse to be “the enemy” may have helped Beate Sirota to sort through such seemingly contradictory loyalties, and to find ways to contribute toward a peaceful world community in her subsequent career.

 

To Japan in Search of Her Parents, Working for the United States Foreign Economic Administration

 

With no news about her parents during the war years, Beate desperately wanted to return to Japan to find them.   After Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945 she started looking for work which would take her to Japan.  Because of her Japanese language skills and work for the Office of War Information, Ms. Sirota was hired by the Foreign Economic Administration to participate in organizing the Japanese Occupation under General Douglas MacArthur.  She arrived in Tokyo on Christmas Eve 1945, the only civilian American woman in Japan.  Though she had received her United States citizenship in January 1945, Beate Sirota Gordon wrote in her autobiography, “after a five-year absence, I came home” ^[4] – home to her parents and to the country where she had lived during the ten formative years of her childhood.

 

Searching for her parents, Beate Sirota went to the street where she had lived in Tokyo as a child.  “There were a few buildings left standing, but I could see no private homes. Everything I remembered had vanished…our house was not where my feet told me it should be.  What I was looking at were merely traces of it, the square foundation stones.” ^[5]  Driving through similar streets, she finally recognized the home of a German singer, her parents’ friend, who suggested that her parents might have been put under house arrest in Karuizawa, a mountain village outside Tokyo, where the Sirotas, like many foreigners, had a summer home. 

 

In her first leave from official work, Ms. Sirota went to Karuizawa and found her parents – living but in acute need of food and medical attention.  The summer cottages had no heating or insulation, and the winter cold and inadequate food supply had taken their toll.  Beate Sirota’s mother was lying in bed – cold, bloated from malnutrition and too weak to stand.  Moving her parents back to Tokyo, Ms. Gordon set about foraging for food and medical care for them.

 

When she had returned to Japan in 1945, Beate Sirota found a very different country from the one she left as an almost-sixteen year old in 1939.  Moreover, Ms. Sirota herself had changed, becoming a mature woman with clearly defined ideas about women and society.  Her mother’s example of active participation during her childhood in male-dominated Japanese society, was reinforced by the ideals of the all-women’s Mills College, whose President from 1916 to 1943 was the progressive educator, social and peace activist Aurelia Reinhardt.  Empowered by this philosophy and by her success at supporting herself in wartime America – mainly in professions considered appropriate for men only – Ms. Sirota had developed distinct ideas about women’s capabilities and rights.

 

Writing Women into the Post-War Japanese Constitution

 

Initially hired as an interpreter for General MacArthur’s staff, during America’s post WW II occupation of Japan, Beate Sirota soon became a member of the committee assigned the task of drafting a new, post-war Japanese Constitution. In early 1946, the Japanese government had submitted two drafts for a new constitution to the General Headquarters of the Allied forces, but they were both rejected as being too conservative. General MacArthur, Chief of the Allied Forces, ordered his staff to draft their own version in one week.

 

Beate Sirota’s serendipitous assignment as the only woman in the subcommittee on civil rights ensured that Japan’s postwar constitution protected equality between men and women, at work and in the home. The section on women’s rights fell to Beate with the almost flippant words of her supervisor: “You’re a woman; why don’t you write the women’s rights section?” 

 

In childhood while playing in the homes of her Japanese friends, Beate had closely observed the subservient position of women. Her knowledge of the Japanese language, as well as her progressive ideas about women’s capabilities and her intimate knowledge of Japanese cultural mores, informed her draft. The wording of Beate’s draft prompted Lt. Col. Charles L. Kades, head of the constitutional steering committee, to say to Ms. Gordon, “My God, you have given Japanese women more rights than in the American Constitution.” In her memoire The Only Woman in the Room, Ms. Gordon recalls answering him, “Colonel Kades, that’s not very difficult to do, because women are not in the American Constitution.” ^[6]

 

The importance of Beate Sirota’s contribution to the Japanese Constitution is attested by the following quotes from that Constitution:

 

“All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.” Article 14, The Japanese Constitution

 

“Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.” Article 24, The Japanese Constitution

 

Inclusion of principles of equal rights was a directive from General Douglas MacArthur, and the constitution would likely not have been approved without the inclusion of articles on civil rights. However, Article 24, which included a statement about “the essential equality of the sexes”, was a marked departure even from the American constitution. Nevertheless, Ms. Gordan insisted that a democratic constitution in the twentieth century must include a statement on women’s rights, and she wore down the original disinterest of the middle aged American lawyers who dominated the constitution drafting team. These men were not opposed in principle to women’s rights. However, they did not believe that questions of marriage, divorce, property, inheritance, and family  — framed in violation of basic principles and traditions of Japanese culture, and absent from the American constitution —  belonged in a Japanese constitution.

 

When Article 24 was initially presented to the Japanese, they strenuously objected, “This doesn’t fit our culture, doesn’t fit our history; it doesn’t fit our way of life”. But during the previous fourteen hours of debates, Beate had won the gratitude of the Japanese leaders for backing them in various disagreements with the Americans. Consequently, when Lt. Col. Charles L. Kades said, “Miss Sirota has her heart set on the women’s rights [sections]. Why don’t we pass them?”, the Japanese delegation capitulated. In the absence of Beata’s pressure, women’s rights, including the ‘equality of the sexes’, would not have appeared in the MacArthur constitution.

 

 

Decades of Silence

 

The Japanese government promulgated the constitution on November 3, 1946. It  took effect on May 3, 1947, granting universal suffrage, stripping Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power, stipulating a bill of rights, abolishing peerage, and outlawing Japan’s right to make war. To gain acceptance from the Japanese public, American involvement was kept secret until 1971.

 

“Because her work was secret, Ms. Gordon said nothing about her role in postwar Japan. She later remained silent because she did not want her youth—and the fact that she was an American—to become ammunition for the Japanese conservatives who have long clamored for constitutional revision. It was not until the mid-1980s, when the clauses came under attack by Japanese conservatives, that Beate began to speak out about it publicly and ardently. ^[7]

 

Her memoir, published in Japanese in 1995 as Christmas 1945: The Biography of the Woman Who Wrote the Equal Rights Clause of the Japanese Constitution, and in English two years later as The Only Woman in the Room, made her a celebrity in Japan.  She lectured widely, appeared on television and was the subject of the stage play, A String of Pearls, by James Miki, and a documentary film The Gift from Beate”, screenplay and direction by Tomoko Fujiwara, released in April 2005.

 

First Steps as a Presenter and Promoter of Asian Performing  Arts – Japan Society

 

Soon after returning from Japan, Beate Sirota married American–born Lt. Joseph Gordon, another Japanese-language expert with whom she had worked in Tokyo on the draft of the Japanese constitution.  The birth of two children did not deter Beate Sirota Gordon from working professionally.  From an unassuming job in 1952 as translator for visiting Japanese feminist Fusae Ichikawa, …..

 

 

…..Ms. Gordon went on to part-time work at Japan Society in 1954 as Director of Student Programs, providing career and job counseling to Japanese students in New York.  Performing arts were never far from Beate Gordon’s mind.  Finding a talented violin student washing dishes to earn money, Ms. Gordon devised a means to augment her advisees’ financial resources.   “With the help of a small endowment and a title – Director of the Performing Arts Program – I put together teams of young performers who went around to various schools presenting dance and music programs….” ^[8]

 

Beate Gordon’s early steps in arts presentation served a dual purpose, providing performance opportunities and income to Japanese student and professional artists, while simultaneously increasing awareness in America of Japanese culture.  Immediately following World War II many Americans regarded Japan  “as a defeated country and its people as cultural inferiors, if not enemies”. ^[9]  Addressing the need to educate Americans about the country of her childhood, Ms. Gordon directed her ingenuity and perseverance to promoting Japanese arts, leading to her appointment in 1958 as Director of Performing Arts at Japan Society.

 

Director of the Performing Arts Program at Asia Society

 

When she became Director of the Performing Arts Program at Asia Society in 1970, Beate Gordon expanded this pattern, now arranging performances in New York City schools by eminent artists from all Asian traditions represented in the New York City population, including performances and lecture-demonstrations by Indian dancer Indrani Rehman.  Moreover, with the arena of her activities vastly expanded in her roles at Asia Society, Ms. Gordon spent the next over-23 years until her retirement in 1993 traveling to the most central as well as the most remote areas of Asia, finding great artists and performance traditions and showcasing them in the United States.

 

Spanning six decades from 1954 until her death in 2012, Beate Gordon’s career in presenting Asian performing arts featured some of India’s greatest artists.  Asia Society’s tours to universities and cultural organizations in major American cities frequently began in New York City’s Carnegie Hall.   Its 2800-seat capacity presents a daunting challenge to every impresario, but Beate Gordon always managed to draw a respectable audience, and sometimes an overflow crowd. 

 

When Asia Society decided to build its own home on Park Avenue and 70th Street in Manhattan, Mrs. Gordon contributed significantly to the design of its 258-seat Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium.  One of New York City’s most elegant theaters, its intimate and warm atmosphere is eminently suited for presenting Asian performing arts, whose delicate musical timbres, subtle facial expressions and intricate gesture language would easily be lost in larger theaters.  The extensive roster of famous South Asian artists and troupes presented by Mrs. Gordon at both super-sized Carnegie Hall and intimate Asia Society includes Indian troupes and artists Pandit Birju Maharaj, the late Shrimati Sanjukta Panigrahi, Peruliai Chhau, the late Indrani Rehman and Sri Lankan dancers and musicians.  Beate Gordon’s appreciation of Indian performing arts is evident in her choice of Kathakali artists from Kerala Kalamandalam to present the inaugural performance on Asia Society’s new stage on Friday, 24 April 1981.   Like so many performances arranged by Ms. Gordon before and after, this one was reviewed by the New York Times’ renowned dance critic Anna Kisselgoff,   A dance scholar of Russian heritage, Ms. Kisselgoff’s reviews of non-Western dance were eloquently descriptive and sympathetic to aesthetics not necessarily familiar to the newspaper’s readership.

 

 

 

Ms. Gordon exhibited extraordinary promotional acumen – not only insuring that knowledgeable writers and media would attend Asia Society performances, but also bringing seemingly unrelated people together in mutually beneficial partnerships.  Acutely aware of the budgetary constraints mandated by Asia Society’s multi-faceted mission, Beate Gordon always managed to find the resources necessary for presenting world-class artists from Asia and connecting them with their compatriots, who could give familiar comfort to the visiting artists.  She attributed her social and management skills to observing her mother entertain artists and art connoisseurs with good food and sparkling conversation in her family’s Viennese and Tokyo homes.  Treating art as a human need, much like food and social interchange, and not like a business, she found ways to achieve her goals without excessive expenditures.

 

An extended quote from her memoir summarizes Beate Gordon’s working philosophy: “In the fifties and sixties…. Asian culture in general was ‘exotic’.  Only a handful of scholars understood its richness and variety…From 1970 on…I put all my efforts into trying to communicate the essence of Asian culture to Americans through first-rate, purely traditional art forms.  To this end I spent from four to six weeks every year in Asia, researching the old arts and negotiating with the performers, before bringing them to the States.” ^[10]  The result of Mrs. Gordon’s tireless efforts was, in the words of her son Geoffrey Gordon at Asia Society’s 28 April 2013 memorial tribute, “to make the indigenous international”.

 

At least as early as 1974 Ms. Gordon took visiting Asian troupes to the sound stage at Brooklyn College TV Center, and with the Center’s director Harvey Ganot, she produced video documentaries.  Reproduced as videotapes of sufficient quality for network broadcast, educational purposes and private purchase, the videos recorded Asia Society’s early US tours of some of the greatest artists and troupes from Asia, including Pt. Birju Maharaj, Smt. Sitara Devi and Perulia Chhau.  Watching Ms. Gordon working in the studio, delivering live, on-camera narration and simultaneously directing split-second dissolves from one camera to another, one witnessed skills honed while Beate was still in her late teens and working for the United State’s Office of War Information. ^[11]

 

Giving a perspective to Beate Gordon’s pioneering documentation work for Asia Society in the 1970’s, one may note that these videos preceded later work in this genre: Dance in America debuted on PBS in 1976; Eye on Dance was launched in 1981; and Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival was first presented in 1998.  The quality and enduring value of Beate Gordon’s early Asian dance performance documentaries is evident from their inclusion in the Dance Collection of the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts.

 

Though Beate Gordon retired from the directorship of performing arts at Asia Society in 1993, she continued cultural activities as consultant and writer until her death in 2012.  She was a woman of modest stature, but one never looked past or down at her.  She had a commanding presence and a decisive managerial style.   At Beate Gordon’s retirement party, the Japanese Butoh artist Kazuo Ohno danced to the accompaniment of Frank Sinatra’s famous song “My Way”.  The lyrics, as knowing laughter from her friends and colleagues attested, might have been spoken by Beate Gordon herself.  “I’ve lived a life that’s full.  I’ve traveled each and ev’ry highway: But more, much more than this, I did it my way.” ^[12]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] From The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 2, 21 January 2013. Obituary written by Roger Pulvers with a note by Milton Esman.  “I left Vienna when I was 5 ½ years old, and the culture shock I received upon arrival at the Kobe [Tokyo] docks was such that it erased all memory of Vienna. I had never seen an Asian before, and the sight of all those Japanese men and women, black-haired and black-eyed, with a different color of skin than mine, caused me to ask my mother whether they were all brothers and sisters.  My mother, shocked by this question, became motivated to integrate me into Japanese society.”  It didn’t take her long to assimilate.  “I played with our neighbors’ children, visited their homes, learned Japanese games, watched them do homework and practice the koto and the piano, as well as their lessons in flower arrangement and Japanese dance.”

 

[2] The Only Woman in the Room, A Memoir by Beate Sirota Gordon. Kodansha International, Tokyo-New York-London, 1st edition 1997 p. 88

 

 “After graduation [from Mills College] I transferred to the Office of War Information … My job was to produce broadcasts targeted at the Japanese and designed to simultaneously inform and demoralize – San Francisco’s answer to the broadcasts of Tokyo Rose, the voice of Japanese propaganda for front-line U.S. Troops.  The short broadcasts I produced consisted of three minutes of music accompanied by a seven-minute message.  I selected the music and wrote the scripts …. I wrote hundreds of shows.”

 

[3] Op. cit. p. 85   

 

[4] Op.cit. p. 94

 

[5] Op.cit. p. 14

 

[6] Jewish Women’s Archive. “Birth of Beate Sirota Gordon, who wrote equality into the postwar Japanese constitution.” (Viewed on January 12, 2022) https://jwa.org/thisweek/oct/25/1923/birth-of-beate-sirota-gordon-who-wrote-equality-into-post-war-japanese.

 

[7] Op. cit.

 

[8] The Only Woman in the Room, A Memoir by Beate Sirota Gordon. Kodansha International, Tokyo-New York-London, First edition 1997. p. 147

 

[9] Op. cit. p. 159, paragraph 1

 

[10] Op. cit. p. 159, paragraph 2

 

[11] Op. cit. p. 88 “After graduation [from Mills College] I transferred to the Office of War Information … My job was to produce broadcasts targeted at the Japanese and designed to simultaneously inform and demoralize – San Francisco’s answer to the broadcasts of Tokyo Rose, the voice of Japanese propaganda for front-line U.S. Troops.  The short broadcasts I produced consisted of three minutes of music accompanied by a seven-minute message.  I selected the music and wrote the scripts …. I wrote hundreds of shows.”

 

[12] “My Way” is a song popularized by Frank Sinatra. Its lyrics were written by Paul Anka and set to music based on the French song Comme d’habitude composed in 1967 by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, with lyrics by Claude François and Gilles Thibault. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Way

 

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PART II

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PART III

Robert & Helene Browning – World Music Institute

A Case Study

Asked why he and his wife Helene had founded World Music Institute (WMI), Robert Browning answered, “It was happenstance.” This off-hand answer, given six months after his May 2011 retirement, downplays the Brownings’ long journey from a small art gallery and occasional concert space to internationally acclaimed WMI. With Robert Browning’s skill at finding great artists, plus funding and venues to showcase them, and Helene Browning’s expertise as publicist and promotion director, WMI presented an average of 60 to 80 concerts annually, with a total of more than 1,500 artists from approximately 100 countries and regional entities before Mr. Browning’s retirement.

In three interviews – on 3 November 2011, 1 December 2011 and 1 December 2013 – and numerous phone calls and email exchanges , the Brownings discussed relations with American funders and international collaborators, the process of making curatorial and venue choices, the challenge of working with its Board of Directors, and other inter-related topics. These discussions highlighted the precarious existence of WMI as it fulfilled its mission during changing cultural and political eras, while Mr. Browning pieced together grants and other funding sources to pay for WMI’s increasingly-ambitious productions.

WMI’s ongoing funding and venue challenges invite comparison with the relatively secure position of Asia Society and the Performing Arts Library. The physical homes of these two venerable institutions, their missions to preserve permanent collections and the funding and fund-raising options possible with these resources, stand in stark contrast to the existence of an institution which operates out of a small office and rents performance venues. The monumental artistic scope and astronomical cost of producing some of WMI’s concerts and festivals are astounding, when one considers the small staff and limited assets which supported this work. When broken down into the nitty-gritty budgetary details, the comparison of income and expenses for some of WMI’s projects demonstrates the ingenuity and do-or-die philosophy of WMI’s co-founders, Robert and Helene Browning.

Difficulties faced by the Brownings, as they transformed the start-up Alternative Center for International Arts into the Alternative Museum and finally World Music Institute, reveal the capricious nature of arts funding in the United States. In WMI’s case when grants were cut and new grants were hard to come by, a Board of Directors skilled in raising new funds – and willing to do so – was necessary but lacking. Bringing the story right up to 2014, the Brownings discussed the democratization of the arts, lack of basic arts education in American schools, changing audience expectations, the allure of social media, monumental challenges posed by the 9/11 crisis and 2008 global economic crisis, and the uncertain future of World Music Institute.

Early Years

From a young age, Robert Browning was a world traveler beyond the standard European circuit. During the early 1940’s his parents lived in Singapore, where his father worked as a banker. When the Japanese declared war, his father joined the volunteer British Army to help defend what was then the British colony of Singapore. Taken prisoner by the invading Japanese Army, his father spent more than three years doing hard labor on the Burma-Siam Railway. Pregnant, his mother fled to England with one-year old Robert in tow, where she, her son and new-born daughter lived out the remaining years of World War II until her husband’s return. A new posting transferred Robert Browning’s father to Shanghai, where the family lived from 1946 to 1949. Leaving shortly before Mao’s armies invaded Shanghai, the family fled to Hong Kong for a few months before returning to England. Starting from age eight, Mr. Browning attended boarding school in England, though visits to his parents’ homes in Brunei and Singapore during school breaks resulted in more Far Eastern travel for Robert.

Mr. Browning studied engineering and later visual arts in London. After graduating from art school he exhibited as a painter and kinetic artist and created performance pieces with avant-garde musicians and dancers. In 1972, Robert Browning and Helene Simchowitz met on a beach in Crete, he vacationing from London, she spending six months traveling around Europe before returning to her native New York City. Robert came to NYC in 1974 to be with Helene and met up with his Puerto Rican friend Geno Rodriguez. They had met as art students in London, and Geno was now curating small exhibits by Latin American and other immigrant artists. Robert helped Geno until their exhibition space in the Puerto Rican Forum closed in the wake of New York City’s near-bankruptcy in 1975.

Alternative Center for International Arts

After securing a $12,000 grant from the Expansion Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts, Browning and Rodriguez rented an over-3,000 square foot space on East 4th Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side for $1,000 per month. Totally rebuilding the space, they opened the gallery in December 1975, naming it the Alternative Center for International Arts, since they were concerned primarily with “presenting artists who were not represented by the SoHo establishment. In between exhibits of fine art, we exhibited folk art.” An exhibition of Huichol yarn pictures from Mexico led to a performance of music from the Andes by a group named Tahuantinsuyo. The Brownings and Rodriguez borrowed chairs from nearby Washington Square Church, and with this simple beginning the Browning’s career as producers was launched. “I said to the Andean musicians, ‘I worked with musicians in England when I was doing performance art, but I’ve never produced a concert.’ “

Robert Browning continued, “While I had a long interest in Indian and Middle Eastern music, I had never worked with it. It sort of came out of the blue, and it was successful. We saw that it was an ideal space. It was a time when many jazz musicians were opening their lofts downtown to produce their own concerts, because the clubs were too expensive, and they weren’t presenting the music. So we started as an alternative. My interest developed out of just doing it. I knew a little bit about Indian music, because I had gone to concerts by Ravi Shankar and Bismillah Khan in the ’60’s in London. Mostly it was a learning process. Early on I got to know a lot of ethnomusicologists. Many of them played music as well.”

Early performers at the Alternative Center included those by Purna Das Baul, sitar player Dewan Motihar (active in the Indo-jazz fusion music scene in the 1960’s and ‘70’s) and sarod player Vasant Rai, whose Alam School of Music was located close to the Alternative Center. Robert Browning’s long and productive association with tabla maestro Zakir Hussain began in 1979, when the Alternative Center presented South Indian violin player L. Subramaniam, who was accompanied by Zakir. Publicity for programs consisted of a bi-monthly calendar of events sent to a small, but growing, mailing list, as well as flyers taped to lampposts.

As informal as such methods may seem, that was the way the word got out in the 1970’s, and the Alternative Center got known for its exciting programming. Social norms were in flux and creative exchanges broke cultural boundaries. It only seemed natural that an American cultural icon, the “Beat” poet Allen Ginsberg, would open Purna Das Baul’s April 1979 concert at the Alternative Center with a mantra.

Exhibition openings and concerts at the Alternative Center from Friday to Sunday were attended by 100 to 200 people, but during the week only a few people drifted through the doors each day. The exhibits were generating interest and reviews, but the Center’s location in NoHo (North of Houston) – outside the conventional SoHo and 57th Street gallery locations – was inhibiting its growth.

Alternative Museum – 1980

Responding to the shift of non-mainstream arts activities in New York City from NoHo (North of Houston) to TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal [Street), the Alternative Center for International Arts moved south to White Street in 1980. Renaming their organization the Alternative Museum – “because it seemed museums were getting more funding”, Robert Browning and Geno Rodriguez again converted raw space into a gallery for art exhibitions and concerts. Immediately expanding concert programming, Robert Browning also continued developing networks of artists and forming lasting relationships with music critics. Robert Palmer of the New York Times, as well as Tom Johnson at the Village Voice, had already been attracted by programs at the Alternative Center. Mr. Johnson, himself an avant garde composer, “started writing a column virtually every other week on different ethnic artists, because he was so fascinated by some of the concerts we did. And that was incredibly helpful in getting word around. Later Jon Pareles of the NY Times became a major supporter of the programming.”

Describing his overarching vision, Mr. Browning said, “My vision was a feeling that we weren’t just a place to present for example Indian music, maintaining the isolation of each ethnic community, but a place to bring people together. Of course with every concert we went wholeheartedly to get that particular group to come to support its own, but at the same time we would try to make it as open as possible to bring in people from everywhere. I think at some of the early concerts of Indian music, there was often a 70-80% Indian audience. As things went on, the audience became more diverse.”

“One of the challenges was finding the best performers. I knew about Indian music from attending concerts in England, but I didn’t know a lot. So it has been a learning process as we’ve gone along – talking with ethnomusicologists and anthropologists and musicians themselves. Especially after I befriended Zakir, that’s when things started moving. Zakir was making his name at that time in the international concert scene. He introduced me to a lot of people – Shivkumar Sharma, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pandit Jasraj, and in a short time we [Alternative Museum and WMI] built a very strong reputation in the Indian community of concert lovers.”

In an early example of financial risk-taking in the interests of world arts, the Brownings arranged a six-hour concert of North & South Indian Music at the1,500-seat Town Hall in 1981. Musicians presented in this Summer Solstice Festival included violinist L. Shankar, vocalist Parveen Sultana and bansuri flute player Hariprasad Chaurasia, the latter two both accompanied by Zakir Hussain. Ticket prices ranged from $8 to $12.

At its White Street location the Alternative Museum presented traditional music and dance concerts alongside more experimental works. Some featured Americans trained in classical Indian music playing with visiting Indian artists. Itself in a transitional and experimental stage, the Alternative Museum presented a few fascinating combinations of musicians, some of whom like Steve Gorn (bansuri) went on to long careers in Indian classical, jazz and fusion music.

 

 

Concert attendance and reviews were growing rapidly. “By the time we left White Street, we were doing up to 85 concerts and poetry readings a year.” Mr. Browning would often go to the Alternative Museum at 9am on Saturday and Sunday mornings to paint over scuff marks and hand prints made on the walls by the overflowing concert crowds the night before. The popularity of the concerts and the resulting possibility of damage to the art works – sometimes worth upwards of $2 million –made the separation of gallery and concert space imperative.

World Music Institute – 1985

Beginning a new organization in 1985, Robert and Helene Browning applied to the United State Government’s Internal Revenue Service and received non-profit, 501 (c) 3 status in 1985. They moved WMI into a tiny office, commencing its final metamorphosis and becoming an organization without a permanent physical home. In his 27 September 1985 New York Times preview of WMI’s FESTIVAL OF INDIA / Masters of Indian Music, John Rockwell noted one of Robert Browning’s goals for the new organization. “Mr. Browning said he would like to acquire his own building, with a large and small theater.”

That wish was never fulfilled. In the subsequent 26 years until Robert Browning’s 2011 retirement from his Artistic and Executive Directorships, the Brownings did not acquire a permanent location for WMI’s office and concerts, instead moving from one major venue to another as WMI presented some of the world’s greatest traditional artists. Though this arrangement gave WMI flexibility in contracting venues according to the size and type of space each performing group needed, also considering the anticipated audience interest and ticket sales, this lack of physical permanence has had an impact on the history of WMI.

The financial challenge was ever-present. How could ticket sales and grants raise enough money to run an arts organization, whose sole assets were a stock of CD’s, some computers, desks and file cabinets? “The biggest problem for us was getting the funding to be able to present what we wanted to present. I managed to start off World Music Institute with two fairly large grants from the National Endowment for the Arts Folk & Traditional Arts program ($20,000) and the New York State Council on the Arts Folk Arts program ($22,000). This would have been unheard of, if it weren’t for the fact that I managed to persuade them that this was an extension of what we had already been doing for many years at the Alternative Museum. Otherwise any new organization just starting off rarely got a grant of more than $3,000.”

Speaking about the integral relationship between funding demands and programming choices, Mr. Browning said, “When you’re running a music business like this – and it IS a business – you have to balance things out between programs you know are going to sell enough tickets so that you don’t have to use much of your grant money, and programs you know are not going to sell anything and you’re going to have to use a good portion of your grant. So it’s a balancing act.”

Robert Browning’s curiosity about diverse music and dance forms led to his developing an expansive network of artists, scholars and music and dance lovers, who could inform his decisions. When he came to know about a new music or dance group or genre, “I was very careful. I would listen and ask other people’s opinion, especially with something I knew nothing about. Rarely would I take my own immediate assessment.” Nevertheless, Mr. Browning seems to have had a well-considered curatorial vision early on, viewing the arts as a continuum rather than as a collection of separate boxes labeled “folk – classical – ethnic”. Crediting America’s great 20th Century folk music collector, archivist, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and scholar, Mr. Browning said, “We were following the path pioneered by Alan Lomax – the idea that folk art is a rich part of the cultures of the world.”

One of Robert Browning’s favorite stories shows this philosophy to be a driving force in conceiving programs and figuring out the funding to get them on some of the world’s most famous stages. “In 1985, Dan Neuman, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Washington, put together a grant from the Ford Foundation to bring Rajasthani musicians. He contacted me. I thought it was a great opportunity to show how folk music became classical music. The Rajasthani Manganiyars use a simplified sort of raga system. They used to play at the Mughul courts.”

With the Ford Foundation’s grant money covering the cost of bringing the Rajasthani folk musicians to the United States, Mr. Browning could allocate some of WMI’s resources to exemplifying this concept on a world-renowned stage. The 9 November 1985 Carnegie Hall concert, produced by World Music Institute and New Audiences, presented musicians from Rajasthan’s Langa and Manganiyar groups, as well as the late sitar maestro Nikhil Banerjee accompanied by tabla player Zakir Hussain. Mr. Browning continues, “A rather pompous Indian gentleman came to our tiny office to buy tickets and he said, ‘Tell me. Why are you putting these snake charmers on with one of our great classical musicians?’ So I had to explain to him that the whole purpose of the concert was to illustrate that the classical raga form derived from folk music in the same way that western classical music had its roots in the music of troubadours. He wasn’t very satisfied, but he did buy ten tickets.”

Helene Browning remembers Nikhil Banerjee’s humble demeanor when he said that it had always been his dream to play at Carnegie Hall. The audience did not come in the numbers hoped for at this rare New York concert by such a great master of Indian music. Those who could not overcome their elitist attitudes toward classicism lived to regret not attending that concert. NY Times critic John Rockwell described “the extraordinary fluidity and assurance of [Pt. Banerjee’s] rhythmic ideas and phrasing”. Nikhil Banerjee died less than three months later – on 4 February 1986.

WMI’s Calendars of Concerts and Festivals

Robert Browning put together each year’s lineup of concerts with a combination of savvy business acumen and clear artistic concepts. “Usually by July before each season (September through May), I had organized about 50-odd concerts. And then we would spend July through December adding a few more for late spring. So by the end of [the season] we’d usually have about 65-odd concerts.” “I knew perfectly well that I didn’t want to put a little bit of everything into one season. I wanted to present things in a little more depth.”

In contrast to Beate Gordon’s six-week exploratory trips throughout Asia, Mr. Browning had to recruit artists by seizing opportunities. As WMI’s work gained recognition, more artists and organizers turned to WMI to book NYC engagements. Yearly booking conferences organized in NYC by the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) also created opportunities for networking. “When we had our staff at APAP, we were doing two things at once – managing a tour by finding other presenters we could send our artists to, and at the same time finding artists we could present in New York. There would be a lot of tour managers and artists’ agents there.” The connections made at these meetings by Isabel Soffer, Director of Programming at WMI for many years, were important in planning the next year’s calendar.

Indian music and dance benefitted from Mr. Browning’s well-conceived programming and WMI’s growing reputation. “I was never in the position to be able to afford to go places. But in 1985 the Indian Government invited me to India as their guest. The Consul of Cultural Affairs [at the NYC Indian Consulate] had attended a concert we gave of the Dagar Brothers. He was so amazed that we had 150 people there – two-thirds Americans. He asked if I’d like to go to India and meet a lot of artists and scholars…Alan Nazareth, then head of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, arranged for a round-trip air ticket in business class and said I could stay four weeks. But I said I could only spend two weeks, since Helene had only recently given birth to our second child.”

Though 1985 was a busy year for Mr. Browning – a trip to India, the transition from the Alternative Museum to WMI and his growing family – Robert Browning nevertheless took advantage of the opportunity offered by Vijay Kichlu, Founding Director of Sangeet Research Academy. Mr. Kichlu wanted to present the 1985 FESTIVAL OF INDIA – Masters of Indian Music. WMI subsequently produced three concerts at the 940-seat Triplex Theater in Lower Manhattan on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 27 to 29 September 1985. Artists included, on Friday, the vocal duo Vijay and Ravi Kichlu, santoor player Shivkumar Sharma and bansuri player Hariprasad Chaurasia, all accompanied by Zakir Hussain on tabla; on Saturday, South Indian musicians Maharajapuram Santhanam and Lalgudi Jayaraman; and on Sunday, Girija Devi, Ajoy Chakraborty, Buddhadev Dasgupta and Ramesh Misra. The consortium of co-sponsors included the Sangeet Research Academy, ICCR and Alan Nazareth, the Ford Foundation, and Dr. Dixit with the Asian Studies Program and Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. Two of the three concerts in the cavernous 940-seat auditorium were almost sold out, despite dire predictions for Hurricane Gloria, which barely hit NYC after all.

Superficially WMI’s 1985 program presenting both Nikhil Banerjee and the Langas and Manganiyars on the same stage would seem to suggest that WMI programming was open to all sorts of experiments. This is far from the truth. Robert Browning commented, “The reason for presenting the traditions as far as possible in their original state is that if nobody else is doing it, it just won’t be performed – all you’ll have are recordings. While I am indeed skeptical about much so-called ‘fusion’ music, I have considerable respect for classical artists such as Yehudi Menuhin, Yo-Yo Ma and the Kronos Quartet for attempting to bring non-Western music into the established concert repertoire. Likewise my respect for pop artists like Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel and jazz artists such as John McLaughlin. I do have a problem with the use of the term ‘world music’ for any group that adds a sitar or oud to spice up its repertoire.”

“I have no problem with people getting together. We did a great tour [named GHAZAL] bringing together Shujaat Khan [sitar] and Kayhan Kalhor [kamancheh – Persian spiked fiddle]. In my mind that was a fusion that worked perfectly, because those are two traditions that are related from the 15th century onward. But some of these [fusions] are like putting two strangers together and saying ‘Well, yours are improvised traditions – just do it.’ It’s ridiculous, because no improvisation works that way. Jazz improvisations don’t just come out of the blue. The riffs are developed over years – just like the ragas. Those little riffs that Ravi Shankar put together and other people were copying – these are not things that just happen. The ragas – the bandishes – the chord changes in Persian music– the huge collections of little riffs in jazz….”

Part of WMI’s success can be attributed to Robert Browning’s knowledge of touchstone events in India’s music and dance history, and to his and Helene’s attention to gracious personal care of travel-worn artists. Mr. Browning related the following story about a performance, “when we brought Ustad Bismillah Khan to perform with Ustad Vilayat Khan at Town Hall on 20 April 1996. Vilayat Khan was living in Princeton at that time, and I rented a van to take Bismillah Khan and his troupe of seven musicians to Vilayat Khan’s home for lunch. As soon as the two great artists saw each other – after nearly 30 years – they got out their instruments and started playing.” Their subsequent Town Hall concert reprised the legendary duo, which had been recorded in the 1960s on the EMI record label.

The $70,000 expense of presenting the two venerable Khan Sahibs in a single concert at Town Hall was an early instance of the rapid escalation of production expenses starting in the 1990s. The Music Festival of India at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, 13 September 1997, celebrated 50 years of Indian independence. This single concert, plus a three-city tour with Vilayat Khan and Zakir Hussain, exemplified Robert Browning’s ability to create and manage a complex web of funding sources and performers. “The festival was largely funded by a group of Indian businessmen led by Mahesh Naithani. The cost was huge, because it included a dinner and reception for VIPs, including corporate donor representatives, some of whom gave $100,000 (NY Life Insurance Company, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company), others who gave $25,000 to $50,000 (IBM, Chase Bank and others). The total cost was in the region of $440,000. This included $62,000 for the rights to videotape and then sell the video worldwide.”

A NY Times review by music critic Jon Pareles the following Monday, 15 September 1997 lists names of some of India’s greatest artists in the stellar lineup. The programming showed masterful economy in presenting a variety of styles, techniques and traditions. Pandit Jasraj led off with a Rig Vedic invocation; Shivkumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia traded improvisations; both sarod player Amjad Ali Khan and sitar player Vilayat Khan brought their sons, demonstrating how the art is passed from one generation to the next; and a jugalbandhi between South and North Indian classical vocalists Balamurali Krishna and Ajoy Chakroborty, light classical thumri singing by Shobha Gurtu and thumri singing plus Kathak dance by Birju Maharaj illustrated the interconnections and contrasts in Indian vocal styles and dance. Zakir Hussain accompanied Kathak maestro Birju Maharaj and some of the Hindustani musicians. Robert Browning paced in the back of Carnegie Hall during most of the three hour, forty minute no-intermission program, hoping that each of the superstar artists would keep to the assigned time slots and that no egos would flare backstage.

The list of concert halls in which WMI produced its concerts included some of the best venues in New York City, a few of them world-renowned – Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City Center, Town Hall, Symphony Space, Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College and Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University. Each year WMI typically produced 15 to 25 concerts at Symphony Space alone, choosing other venues for the balance of its programming by weighing anticipated attendance and ticket sales against rental and union costs. And the expenses kept rising each year at each venue. Two performances of Zakir Hussain’s Masters of Percussion at the Rose Theater in 2010 cost approximately $109,000.

WMI calendars announcing each year’s concerts featured artists from around the world playing a wide spectrum of folk, classical, jazz, blues and avant garde music, often highlighting the accompanying dance traditions. South Asian dancers and musicians always had a significant presence in each year’s programming. A partial list of Indian musicians and dancers presented by WMI since its founding in 1985 reads like the “Who’s Who” of Indian performing arts: Allarakha, Asad Ali Khan, Nikhil Banerjee, Purna Das Baul, Ajoy Chakraborti, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Wasifuddin Dagar, Buddhadev Dasgupta, Girija Devi, Sitara Devi, Priyadarshini Govind, Sunayana Hazarilal, Zakir Hussain, Pandit Jasraj, V.G. Jog, Ali Akbar Khan, Amjad Ali Khan, Bismillah Khan, Imrat Khan, Shujaat Husain Khan, Vilayat Khan, Balamurali Krishna, T.N. Krishnan, Lalgudi Jayaraman, Birju Maharaj, Rajan and Sajan Misra, Ramesh Misra, Ram Narayan, the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, Shaheed Parvez, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, T.V. Sankaranarayanan, Maharapurum Santhanam, Mallika Sarabhai, Malavika Sarukkai, T.N. Seshagopalan, Shankar, Lakshmi Shankar, Ravi Shankar, Shivkumar Sharma, and L. Subramaniam, plus dance theater styles including Theyyam, Chhau and Kathakali.

 

 

 

 

 

Because NARTANAM is a quarterly journal of Indian dance, WMI’s programming methodology has primarily been illustrated by citing examples relating to Indian music and dance. And it is a fact that WMI has focused considerable resources on presenting performing arts from the Indian subcontinent throughout its entire history. However, WMI’s history would not be complete without noting the breathtaking range of performing arts presented from the United States and other areas around the world. Its New York Flamenco Festival was produced annually for over a decade. Figures from the 2006 Flamenco Festival indicate the complex coordination of venues, funding and performers in some of WMI’s activities: Six concerts at New York City Center (2,750 seats), one concert at Town Hall (approximately 1,500 seats), and one concert at New York University’s Skirball Center (860 seats); Expenses: $771,663, Ticket sales: $626,296, Funding from the Andalusian Government: $130,000.

A partial list of WMI’s festivals and series includes: Masters of Persian Music, Voices of the Americas (US, South America, Caribbean), Masters of Indian Music, The New Americans (immigrant artists from Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Iran, Laos, Morocco and Vietnam), New York Winter Blues Festival, Grassroots Gospel Festival, World of Percussion (1989-94), Improvisations (musicians on the cutting edge of new music and jazz), Festival of Indonesia, The Musical World of Islam, National Heritage Masters, and the New York Flamenco Festival.

Touring

WMI arranged a considerable number of tours, whose detailed logistics were often worked out by Isabel Soffer, Director of Programming, assisted by various WMI staff members and by some of the artists themselves. For example, long before the 9/11 attacks made it clear that Americans need to learn more about the non-Judeo-Christian world, WMI started showcasing some of the Islamic world’s greatest artists. The Musical World of Islam was composed of two series of concerts of music from the core Muslim world – Arab, Turkish, Persian, Central Asian, North African and South Asian music. These concerts took place in various NYC venues, including Symphony Space, Washington Square Church, Merkin Hall, Town Hall and Lincoln Center in the 1993/94 and 1995/96 seasons. Several spin-off tours were arranged for individual artists, most notably a 10-city tour of the charismatic Qawwali singer from Pakistan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Costing WMI roughly $300,000, Nusrat’s tour played to sold-out houses and fed the growing interest in Sufi music and in Persian/Central Asian music in general.

Following these successful tours of Masters of Persian Music, WMI arranged an 11-city North American tour beginning on 12 October 2007, Spiritual Sounds of Central Asia: Nomads, Mystics, and Troubadours. This tour was made possible by the joint efforts of the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia and World Music Institute. The Aga Khan Development Network termed this tour “a groundbreaking collaboration between two major institutions.” In the prevailing political climate of fear and violence marked by President George W. Bush’s “War on Terrorism”, this statement was full of justified hope. But it is important to note that this partnership came about because of WMI’s 15-year history of presenting music and dance from the Islamic world, despite the intervening turmoil of 9/11. At a period in United States history when Islam was often viewed as “the enemy”, this partnership clearly demonstrated Mr. Browning’s skill at building liaisons based on mutually-beneficial artistic and financial partnerships, while delicately side-stepping political differences.

In regard to touring Indian music and dance, Robert Browning stated, “I never did tours of Indian music, because people were already doing it. Everybody booked Zakir wherever he was. I did one or two tours where I booked Zakir and Shivkumar Sharma. – I’d book NYC, Chicago, Boston.” WMI did not book any Indian dance tours, again so as not to interfere with the efforts of the artists themselves. By the 1980’s the large Indian population was spread out in many major metropolitan areas of the US. Dancers typically created their own tours from India, making a circuit by visiting all their students who had relocated to various cities in the United States. When dancers had proven themselves in India, their United States contacts could contact major United States presenters such as WMI in New York City and UCLA Center for the Arts (University of California / Los Angeles) on the West Coast. Enough individual bookings could then be lined up to justify applying to the ICCR for air tickets.

Though WMI in general did not tour Indian dancers or musicians, its largest tour was integrally connected with India. French Gypsy Tony Gatlif’s famous 1993 film Latcho Drom traces the movement of the Roma people (so-called “Gypsies”) from the Thar Desert in North-West India to Spain, using music and dance to illustrate the journey and the heritage the Roma people left behind. Inspired by this movie, Mr. Browning organized a tour named Gypsy Caravan: Music and Dance of the Roma People. “I chose six groups and presented them one after the other… It was one of our biggest tours and the only one that we truly ‘produced’. We went to twelve cities in 1999… It was so popular, that we thought we’d put it on again in 2001. The tour was all set up and then 9/11 hit. I don’t know how, but we managed to get all the artists together. We went first to California, and we sold out. In NYC we presented the program at New York City Center, and it was just four weeks after 9/11. There was a cloud over NY – it was dismal. We didn’t have a full house, but we had between 1,350 and 1,800 people each night. We got such fantastic rapport from the audience, and there were people from every ethnic group. So we felt we had to keep going.”

After 9/11 – An Altered Cultural and Funding Reality

In his final decade as Executive and Artistic Director of WMI, Robert Browning faced many challenges. He said, “Right after 9/11 we could have folded. After that there was minimal funding available. It was really tough. And then two big grants came in from two foundations. One was from the future NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg. [He gave $75,000 yearly to WMI from 2001 through 2010]. He was giving the money ‘anonymously’ through the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He has been NYC’s biggest supporter of the arts. He gave a total of $10 million a year to small and mid-sized arts organizations in addition to his ongoing support for New York City’s major cultural institutions. We also got a grant from the American Music Foundation, which was administering emergency relief funds from the Mellon Foundation. We had to apply of course, but within a year we were back on our feet again.”

But recovering financially from the 9/11 catastrophe was only one of the complex problems WMI faced in the new millennium. When asked whether his goals for WMI and vision of its work had changed post-9/11, Robert Browning replied, “They didn’t change. I think circumstances and audiences have changed. It’s very difficult to draw in a young audience. When I think of who our audience was when we started – it was people like us – we were in our ‘20’s and ‘30’s. Now young people are going to clubs.”

“It’s increasingly difficult to do large concerts – and not just for us. You have Lincoln Center doing events downtown at Poisson Rouge to get into the ‘club scene’.” High union rates for production staff at large venues have forced ticket prices sky-high, shifting entertainment choices made by the younger generation to dance-and-drink options. Helene Browning read from some financial records. “In 1976 when the Alternative Center started presenting, tickets were $3.00, $2.50 if you bought in advance. In 1981, tickets to attend concerts by top names in Indian classical music were $12.00.” In contrast tickets for Dancing the Gods (Indian classical dance) performances cost $35/40; for Zakir Hussain’s upcoming 29 March 2014 Masters of Percussion concert, ticket prices range from $45 to $125.

 

Astronomical rents in Manhattan have forced young adults to find housing in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and the center of their social lives has shifted to these outer boroughs. Responding to some of these changes, WMI began presenting smaller concerts at Roulette, a new 350-seat venue in downtown Brooklyn. Its space allows a configuration with both temporary seating and dance space.

The Internet and social media have caused a seismic shift, both in presenters’ methods for promoting concerts, and in a potential concert-goer’s basis for choosing which event to attend in leisure time. Formerly, WMI could depend on free promotion reaching the broad readership of the NY Times, Village Voice and other newspapers. Long preview articles were written by experienced music and dance critics, who either knew the art forms or researched what they did not know. Those previews drew in the audience. Helene Browning, Co-Founder and Director of Publicity until June 2013, commented, “Now fewer people read the newspapers, and much of this is done online, where articles and photos are not as effective as they are in print. For example, several years back there was a huge color photo of the Paco Pena Flamenco Dance Company in the print edition of the Friday NY Times that brought a lot of attention to the concert. But no photo appeared online, so mention of the event was buried amongst the listings. I’m not sure what effect YouTube has had, because it’s very easy to go to your computer or phone and sit and think, “Do I want to see this artist?” In the old days you just went and checked it out, but now you watch a short YouTube promo and, if you are not bowled over, you might decide not to go.”

This practice affects the listener’s ability to judge a performer’s quality. Robert Browning observed, “I think the real problem is that people are beginning not to be able to distinguish who is a great player, and that requires listening. We don’t have music education any more, and people don’t have the time to listen. People just listen to MP3’s played on whatever tinny little speakers they have in their laptops or iPods, and you don’t get the real sound. People at concerts are ‘texting’, and even if they’re not texting during concerts, they rush out at intermission to see what they missed in the last 30 minutes. If people are not reading and not listening, it’s going to be tough for those really great artists to stand out from the mediocre and the very minor and the amateur. Artists want the music too loud, so they can be heard above whatever else is happening in the clubs.”

Speaking about the democratization of the arts, Mr. Browning asked, “What does it mean about the state of art if most people just want to be able to participate as if it’s a social event? These are deep philosophical questions that have to do with the whole idea of democracy and how it’s translated. Everybody thinks they should be on the stage, that we can all be musicians and dancers. That attitude is very destructive to many of the great traditions. The way art was taught was by practicing artists – now it’s taught by scholars. That is a big change. The role of teaching the arts was historically done by artists. Renaissance painters had students, some of whom became major artists in their own right, and that’s very similar to Indian classical music. But that’s changing rapidly. Even when I was in India in 1985, I saw the products of some of the academies. This was the new way of teaching – a bunch of students – all with their sitars – and the teacher would be teaching them together. Not that I’m saying that’s wrong, but it’s producing a very different aesthetic.”

Following the 2008/09 global economic crisis, WMI struggled to continue its programming, much less address these new challenges. WMI’s Membership plan reflected the economic downturn. Created in 1985 when WMI was founded, the Membership plan had given supporters of WMI’s mission a way to give tax-exempt donations to the organization. Membership grew steadily – 400 in 1995, 750 in 1999, up to its maximum at 1,100 in 2006. Declining during the severe economic downturn, membership totaled about 500 in 2010. “At its height membership was bringing in around $65,000 to $77,000 per year. In 2009 membership income was down to $47,000.”

Describing the economic situation as much worse in 2009/10 than it was after 9/11, Mr. Browning said, “Foundations were basically not giving out any new grants. There was a time – from the middle of the Clinton era onwards – when there was a lot of new money coming out from foundations, because there was money being made on the stock market. But right after 2008, funding dried up completely. The foundations had their money in stocks, and they lost a huge amount – some of them as much as 50% of their assets. And then the personnel and priorities of the foundations have changed. It’s coming back to doing things on a smaller scale. But maybe that’s not necessarily bad, because a lot of this [music and dance] is not well suited to doing things on a really large scale.”

Fulfilling WMI’s Mission in Changing Times

WMI’s mission has not changed substantively throughout its entire history. The mission statement appearing on WMI’s website in December 2013 is, according to Robert Browning’s 28 December 2013 email, “roughly the mission statement I wrote around 1992, when we had a grant to produce a brochure describing who we were.”

Music and dance are both a means to communicate social values and a
measure of a society’s aspirations. Through its concerts WMI seeks to
educate, entertain, and provide spiritual nourishment. WMI’s programs are
intended to reinforce the cultural values of the community and to
communicate to all the unique power of each individual culture.

Fulfilling WMI’s mission, while adapting to changing times, has been a challenge. Mr. Browning observed, “After the 2008 financial crisis there was no doubt that there was a need to rebuild – to a certain degree to remodel. I think that would have been a great time to seek funding from elsewhere – through educational alliances and things like that.

“I had always wanted to build a strong educational component, but I’d felt we never had the right staff or sufficient funding to do it. You need someone who’ll take charge of doing educational events – somebody who has experience in the academic world, but is loose enough to build something that’s not purely academic. We had built a relationship with various communities, and in fact in the early 1990’s we did two series of programs specifically geared to families with children, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts [NEA] at Symphony Space. For a time we had Ray Allen from the academic world – he had a PhD in folklore, and he did a number of events that helped bring in communities. After he left we didn’t have anyone to take his place, and we didn’t have the financial resources to hire somebody to do that. But I had always thought that was the area we needed to go next.”

“I’m not so concerned about doing things in the community as in doing more educational programs that bring people to a better understanding of the different forms of music and dance.  Some people are excited by a lecture-demonstration – they can learn something before they see the performance.   I didn’t want to add educational programming and have to cut down on the concerts.  But it does need more funding.  And one needs to collaborate with other organizations.”

“That’s the way we worked with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. They saw us as the people who brought in the master musicians and dancers from wherever in the world. They worked with the community groups based here. Sometimes we put these things together and did festivals. They organized the panel discussions and the lecture-demonstrations, and we organized the concerts. It was a great partnership.”

WMI’s success in spreading world music and dance has led to the proliferation of other organizations. “When we started the Alternative Center in 1976 what was going on was fairly minimal. There were very few venues presenting non-Western or world music, so we were able to rapidly draw an audience. As time went on, new opportunities opened up – clubs such as S.O.B. ‘s [Sounds of Brazil], Tramps [Cajun & Zydeco music], Connelly’s [Irish music], and later Joe’s Pub, Drom and many others. I always felt that we should be partners, progenitors – people who could help to propagate further – which is what we did.”

Lack of agreement on vision and goals was an on-going problem between Robert Browning, Executive and Artistic Director, and WMI’s Board of Directors. “I was sometimes criticized by members of the Board for not pushing WMI as THE most important thing in any particular partnership. For instance, I praised the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. I said they’ve [CTMD] been doing these big festivals for local community groups for a long time. They’ve nurtured a lot of these community groups, and they’re really good at it. I had always thought of WMI as being a leader, but not the sole progenitor of world music. Especially from the late ‘90’s onwards, my point was always that we were more like a catalyst than the prime mover.”

A Difficult Transition

Two years before his 70th birthday, Robert Browning told his Board of Directors that he would be retiring in his 70th birthday year – in 2011. A respected consultant, Holly Sidford, well-known in the artistic community, was brought in to advise the Board on how WMI should go forward. She suggested that the current Executive Director should be informed of what was going on during the search process, but should not be part of the search committee. Ms. Sidford’s Leadership Transition Form laid out the steps the Board should take in defining the job, planning and implementing the search, preparing for the transition and creating a process for keeping the staff informed about the search and transition period, among other points. The form also recommended that “post-transition, the Board should establish a formal, time-limited and time-bound role for the retiring Executive Director, Robert Browning. Ms. Sidford also advised that during the transition period a committee should be established to manage celebratory events – to discuss and determine options for honoring Mr. Browning during the transition year, including parties, special travel opportunities, media profiles, award.”

Both the New York Times (10 April 2011) and Wall Street Journal (26 May 2011) published articles about Robert Browning and WMI’s history, celebrating Mr. Browning at the time of his retirement. The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Browning will be succeeded by two people. Karen Sander, the senior director of arts and culture at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, will take over programming, and Daniel Binderman, who has been acting as the group’s general manager, will handle financial and administrative duties.” Robert Browning is quoted as saying, “I will still be an artistic adviser to WMI, and I am putting together its next season of concerts, a task I always loved to do.” The Wall Street Journal article noted that Helene Browning would be continuing as Director of Publicity and Promotion.

Few of Ms. Sidford’s recommendations were implemented. Emblematic was that no celebration was planned for honoring Robert Browning. “When I left, nobody was talking about doing a party. So I talked with one of our friends, who came up with some money, and then I went to the Board and I asked them if they could match it. Helene and I organized the whole party.” Held on 11 October 2011 at Roulette, the party was attended by many friends, colleagues, musicians and dancers.

The turmoil in WMI following Mr. Browning’s retirement is evident by comparing the names of staff listed in its two websites, both copyright © 2012. The reduction in number of staff members and change of names indicates that some staff members quit, were fired or laid off. Dan Binderman worked for a limited time in WMI, having joined the staff during the transition period, about four or five months before Mr. Browning’s retirement in May 2011. Mr. Binderman’s name is listed on the earlier website, but it is not included in the staff list published in the updated website © 2012. Since Dan Binderman was no longer Co-Executive Director, Karen Sander became the sole Executive & Artistic Director.

Dissatisfaction among staff members who had been working at WMI prior to Mr. Browning’s retirement is evident in the experience of Leslie Ogan, Volunteers & Hospitality Manager. She had been volunteering at WMI for 20 years, arranging her work schedule at the Brooklyn Public Library to accommodate her unpaid volunteer work for WMI. At her retirement from her profession as a librarian, she donated $30,000 to WMI and began volunteering not only at concerts but also regularly in the office – up to a total of 40 hours a week. Profiled in the 4 May 2010 Wall Street Journal in an article entitled Librarian’s Retirement Gift, she is quoted as saying, “Librarians are poorly paid, so I’m well read, but not well traveled. Music is really a gateway to culture.”

Ms. Ogan stopped volunteering at WMI “around Labor Day 2012, after trying unsuccessfully for several months to get information from Karen Sander about new venues and whether volunteers were needed for them. I also couldn’t get information about the 2012/13 Calendar, which was necessary so that I could start scheduling volunteers.” Ms. Ogan was also disturbed that staff members, no matter what their designations or training or experience, were being asked to perform tasks as varied as fund raising, grant writing and cleaning the office. She wrote a formal letter of resignation to WMI’s Board of Directors, but she received a response from only one Board member, who resigned shortly thereafter.

Listed on WMI’s earlier website as Production Manager, Alexis Ortis, a graduate of the world-renowned Yale School of Drama, quit in May or June 2012. In under six months six additional staff members quit or were laid off out of a total of nine: in early 2013 the Box Office Manager, her two assistants and the Finance Manager quit. On 17 June 2013 WMI co-Founder Helene Browning was laid off, along with the new production manager. An article published in the 27 August 2013 New York Times under the title Arts Group Lays Off a Publicist and a Founder reported “The World Music Institute has laid off its longtime publicist and co-founder, Helene Browning, because of declining donations, Karen Sander, the group’s executive director, said on Tuesday. Ms. Browning’s husband, Robert, founded the institute with her in 1985 and built it into a widely copied and influential force in New York cultural circles.” The article quotes Karen Sander as saying, “It’s unfortunate we had to cut back on staffing; nobody wants to do that. But the best way to honor the legacy the Brownings created is to move the organization forward and sustain the organization.”

What Role Should a Board of Directors Play?

That WMI’s Board of Directors did not formally honor Robert Browning with a party, or with any of the other tributes suggested by consultant Holly Sidford, was only one indication of the adversarial situation which brewed before his retirement and openly manifested afterward. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, gives a basic list of the duties of Board members. The majority of the duties involve finance. “Typical duties of boards of directors include: governing the organization by establishing broad policies and objectives; selecting, appointing, supporting and reviewing the performance of the chief executive; ensuring the availability of adequate financial resources; approving annual budgets; accounting to the stakeholders for the organization’s performance; setting the salaries and compensation of company management.”

The Board’s inability to adequately fulfill its financial roles appears to have been an on-going issue. Mr. Browning states that two long-term Board members had given large sums of money over an extended period of time, but “the only person who was always trying to work hard at fund raising was Zeyba Rahman, the former Chairman of the Board. She tried to keep things going, but she never got much help from anybody else on the Board. If nobody is doing anything other than one person, little gets done. I did most of the fundraising myself along with my development directors. And we did what we could, but what we got from the Board was really minimal. Members of the Board would think they were doing a great thing by purchasing tickets for galas and benefits to bring in clients, not understanding that buying tickets should be an aside from whatever money they were really bringing in.”

Mr.Browning continued: “It is inevitable that when the Board includes one of the founders of the organization, who is also the Executive and Artistic Director, there will be clashes. For the most part I was able to maintain an even keel over the years because the organization was getting such good press for its programs. But the real problem lay in the fact that we did not have a strong enough Board to overcome the frequent financial crises. I would reiterate every other year that we needed an extra $100,000 – $200,000 to balance our budget, but no one came forward to really address the problem. For many years we tried to increase the number of board members, to bring in new people with strong ties to corporate or financial institutions, but without success. Was I guilty of trying to do too many programs? Probably, but for me it was important because really no one else was doing it.”

Disagreements between the Board and the Brownings erupted, eventually creating an untenable situation. “Basically the Board was upset with us, because we started making what I would consider valid complaints about the state of affairs after Karen and Dan came on,” Helene Browning said. After one particularly acrimonious exchange at a Board meeting in September 2011, Robert Browning took a leave of absence from the Board and was never asked to rejoin. He officially resigned from the Board on 10 January 2013.

Extending or Hijacking a Legacy

Robert Browning, speaking from the perspective as WMI’s co-founder, and its Executive and Artistic Director for over a quarter of a century, said, “I don’t think you can change the vision [of an organization] unless you want to change the whole emphasis. The Board of Directors has said, ‘we want to maintain the integrity of the organization’. Well, if you want to maintain the integrity of the organization, then you have to find other ways to maintain what it was doing previously. Karen [Sander] and Dan [Binderman] didn’t know the history of the organization. Ignoring the history, they thought you could rebuild WMI without understanding its history.”

To assess the viability of WMI as it currently stands, one can consider a few standard indices – audience appeal, program numbers, ticket sales.

AUDIENCES: All presenters would probably agree that to sustain their organization, they need to appeal to younger potential audience members as their traditional audience base ages. But how this should be done without alienating the solid core of its loyal long-term members is a tricky question. During the early days of WMI’s new directorship, various WMI members were visited by WMI staff, who laid out their plans to modernize and appeal to younger audiences. But even in so small a detail as the traditional welcome delivered by the Executive Director before each performance, the new leadership revealed a lack of sensitivity and knowledge of its core audience.

In his 10 April 2011 tribute to Mr. Browning, New York Times writer Ben Sisario wrote, “Since 1985 there have always been two things you could count on at a World Music Institute concert: stirring traditional sounds (and dance) from a faraway corner of the planet, and a dry yet thoughtful introduction by Robert Browning, the institute’s founder and executive director.” Robert Browning’s introductions contrast sharply with recent ones. WMI’s current Executive Director Karen Sander used the trendy buzz phrase “pop-up shop” in her Winter/Spring 2013 introductions to describe what is known in international cultural circles as America’s premier world music and dance presenting organization. Unintentionally belittling the institution she was hired to lead, Ms. Sander was perhaps not aware that she was addressing audience members who had been attending WMI concerts since its 1977 Alternative Center days.

 

PROGRAMS: Knowing what programs would appeal to WMI’s core audience, and how to choose a few outside their comfort zone – intriguing enough to entice a few regulars while appealing to new audience members – depended on Robert Browning’s dedication to traditional world arts, his roving curiosity and his clear curatorial vision. As Artistic Director, Mr. Browning was very careful to maintain artistic control, and his curatorial vision was evident in all of WMI’s presentations. “Producing someone else’s concerts was something we did very very rarely. People would come to me and they wanted to do a particular concert – and if we didn’t have the funding to do it, but they did, we would sometimes go along with a partnership. But it was very rare. 95% of all the programs we ever presented were chosen by myself or other staff members or both.”

In its 2011/12 season – the last year put together for the most part by Robert Browning – WMI presented a total of 32 concerts, continuing the decline in programming precipitated by the 2008 global financial crisis. Mr. Browning commented, “That season saw the beginning of a trend to ‘co-present’ concerts with other organizations in order to reduce the financial risk. The danger in this strategy is that WMI begins to lose artistic control and its distinct identity.” WMI’s brochure for its current 2013/14 season indicates that artistic control for at least half of its concerts has been shared. Of the 19 concerts listed, 10 are co-presented. In Mr. Browning’s estimation, “More than anything else WMI has become a clearinghouse for other people’s concerts.”

TICKET SALES: Playing the numbers game is a delicate proposition. Public funding from federal, state and local agencies is essential for the well-being of a non-profit presenting organization in the United States. To justify the use of public funds it has to show not only adequate programming, but matching funds from other sources, whether in grants from the private sector, or earned income from ticket sales. In past seasons, in addition to substantial income from individuals and foundations, WMI relied heavily on ticket sales. In its most successful seasons (1992 – 2007), earned income from ticket sales and tours was 55-60% of total revenue, a figure that is almost unheard of amongst concert presenters. This fact was extremely helpful in attracting grants from foundations. In contrast more than half of WMI’s current 2013/14 season’s programs are co-presented – with Town Hall, Madison Square Garden, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, Metropolitan Entertainment and the Apollo Theater. It is questionable as to how much ticket income will go directly to WMI.

One supporter of WMI, who has attended its concerts since the late 1970’s, framed the crux of the problem succinctly: “What can be done? Does success hinge only on the presence of a few talented, dedicated people, and when they retire, it’s all over? Is there any kind of model for success that can be transmitted? Or is there a real clash of vision, so that the new generation has a wholly different idea of what the organization should be and how it should operate?”

The Brownings — Moving On

Describing the Brownings in his 27 August 2013 New York Times article entitled “Arts Group Lays Off a Publicist and Co-Founder”, James C. McKinley, Jr. wrote about Robert and Helene Browning, “He was the dry but thoughtful executive director, she was the hard-driving publicist, and they ran the organization together for more than two decades, winning praise from fellow arts presenters, musicians and critics for advancing the cause of traditional world music nationwide.”

Well, they are both back at it again. Over ten years ago Carnegie Hall asked Mr. Browning to curate a series, which would be presented in Zankel Hall, a 599-seat auditorium located beneath the mammoth 2800-seat Carnegie Hall. Named World Views, the series had originally been presented by Carnegie Hall “in partnership with World Music Institute”, but is now presented “in partnership with Robert Browning Associates.” Since retirement, Mr. Browning has expanded his activities under the Robert Browning Associates banner, once again aided by Helene Browning as publicist and promoter. Current activities are spelled out in the website www.robertbrowningassociates.com , indicating that they are just about as busy as ever. Historians and admirers will probably have to wait a while for those nostalgic memoirs they had promised as part of their future plan. The website’s header announces Music from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.

Robert Browning Associates continues the programming initiated by the founders of the music programming at the Alternative Center for International Arts (Alternative Museum) from 1976 to 1985 and the World Music Institute from 1985 to 2011. Current activities include curating World Views, a concert series presented at Zankel Hall by Carnegie Hall in partnership with Robert Browning Associates; a US tour by Asif Ali Khan, a senior disciple of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his Qawwali ensemble; and a 4-part concert series of meditational music from the Mediterranean to Asia at Roulette in Downtown Brooklyn.

Quoted in New York Times writer Ben Sisario’s 10 April 2011 tribute to Robert Browning’s legacy, world-renowned tabla player Zakir Hussain summed up how important Robert and Helene Browning and WMI have been and still are. “So many ears have heard and so many eyes have seen such incredible beauty, such sounds, such vibrations. And it’s all because somewhere along the line Robert said: ‘Wow, this is something very beautiful. I should share it.’”

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Janaki Patrik, the author of this article, has been a disciple of Kathak maestro Birju Maharaj since 1967. She studied with him at Kathak Kendra, New Delhi during extended periods, when she also studied tabla from the pakhawaj drum master Purushottam Das and thumri singing from Vidushi Siddheswari Devi. She teaches Kathak technique in NYC and choreographs productions grounded in Kathak and its storytelling vocabulary. www.kathakensemble.com

Janaki Patrik has attended innumerable performances conceived and produced by all three presenters, whom she has profiled in this article. Her relationship with Beate Sirota Gordon commenced in 1973, when the innovative Kathak performer, guru and choreographer Vidushi Kumudini Lakhia requested that Janaki help book Asia Society’s 1974 American tour of Birju Maharaj and Company. Ms. Patrik accompanied their tour as stage and general manager. Her acquaintance with Alan Pally began in 1993, when he invited the Kathak Ensemble to take part in the inaugural Performing Arts of Asia Festival at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Ms. Patrik met Robert and Helene Browning in the late 1970’s, attending concerts at the Alternative Center for International Arts and presenting a performance there with her Kathak Ensemble. Two versions of her production KA-TAP were presented by WMI at Symphony Space – in 1995 and 1998.