Creative expression

Creative expression

Zeyba Rehman brings project management experience, gained as an executive on Wall Street, to bear on multi-media projects with cultural and educational organizations in the U.S. and abroad. These have included Asia Society and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is the chairwoman for the World Music Institute, the North American director for the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music and its Giving a Soul to Globalization Colloquium, and a producing partner for Jungli Billi Productions. Zeyba has been a producer and artistic director of live performances, television, film and forums for more than 16 years.

In film, Zeyba has completed production of Sawt-e-Sarmad: The Sound that Intoxicates Man (2004) and is in production with the documentaries NYC (2003-04) and Early Cabbage (2002-04). Dramatic feature film projects in development for Jungli Billi include Noor and a 14-part television series titled The Wandering Minstrel, a travel series exploring world music. Other credits include: music consultant to The Crucible of the Millennium (2000, PBS), consultant for Treasures of the World (1997-98, PBS); Producer for the award winning dramatic films Mr. Ahmed (Jungli Billi Productions, 1994), and The Madness of the Day (Terrance Grace Productions, 1989-90); Co-producer Full Circle (1987, Krishna Kandoth).

She pursues a creative process when embarking on a new project. She wants to know its objective, message and to whom it is targeted. Once that is clear, then it leads to a direction and composition of the piece. Music has an immediate appeal, which transcends boundaries and can draw people from all corners together in a common experience. In the process she also fosters her own creative expression by creating stories with different disciplines. Creating a program that engages people emotionally while getting them thinking is always the goal. These days Zeyba is primarily focused on music projects.

However, these projects often use mixed media in order to create a multidimensional environment. Engaging in these multiple formats liberate her creativity because she has always been interested in how things work and have an inherent need to keep expanding her experience and knowledge of different disciplines. This has led to her seeking work in different environment and disciplines including papermaking, metalsmithing, film production, dance as well as music.

There are challenges in working in such diverse formats and she is able to make a coherent statement with it all. That requires careful thought and creating a clear framework to express those ideas using the vocabulary of multiple disciplines. It also requires the ability to stand back and look at what works. Very often, less is more. The simpler the setup, the stronger is the impact. All of this has to be considered when she delves into several forms.

Zeyba also engages in collaborative creation by beginning to actively listen to others, their ideas, their knowledge, and learn how they express themselves. Then she shares her own ideas with them, gradually, they deepen these interactions until a shape, a form, and a story line is found. then filing of details start from there. Very often, the original thought changes completely and through this journey together, they all end up at a completely different place. This is what makes collaborations exciting yet challenging for her.

Even though Zeyba has worked in multiple global locations she is keen to nurture local and regional talent. She talks with individuals who have an existing knowledge of a region's culture and talent. She looks for, and listens to popular as well as lesser-known artists. She is willing to take risks and showcase artists that are experimenting within their traditions. For instance, there are younger artists who are leveraging new technologies to sample different elements from their environments. She also likes those practitioners who through their work are actively preserving their cultural heritage.

The World Music Institute and Jungli Billi Productions serve as an international change for artists and audiences. Both organizations believe in presenting world cultures to diverse audiences. The World Music Institute was one of the first organizations in New York to consistently present non-Western artists. In fact, over the past 20 years, the Institute has done more to familiarize New Yorkers with musical traditions – such as throat singing from Tuva, a relatively new country near Mongolia, to the nearly extinct cultures of American tribes; and Dhrupad, the great sacred music tradition from India.

Jungli Billi creates a natural cross-pollination with artists. At the moment she is working with a great Carnatic vocalist from Madras, a U.S. based vocalist who specializes in the Gregorian chants; and a Lebanese-American percussionist who has created his own instrument that sounds like a modern cousin to the ghatam.

As a producer she is able to foster multiethnic audiences for her work. She realizes that audiences have much the same needs. They want to be touched… be moved. This was most apparent a couple of years ago when she had planned an all trombone gospel group from Harlem into the free program of the Fes Festival in Morocco. The concert was held inside the main city squire, the Bab Boujeloud.

As the 16 or so trombones started up, the thousands of people in the audience didn't quite get the music. They had never heard anything like it before, and it felt alien to their ears. When the trombones played on with increasing passion, the teenagers started to dance. Soon the women and smaller children got the rhythm and finally the older men followed. Pretty soon, more than 30,000 people were completely swept up in the music and it felt as though the entire city square was in trance. A variation of this kind of feeling where creativity is expressed and then surrenders to the form quite organically binds everyone together time and time again.