Om Sai Ram. It gives me great pleasure in introducing to you all ‘Sai Fusion’. Our musical group consists of a diverse range of instrumentalists and vocalists trained in various schools of music including Western classical, jazz, Indian Carnatic, Hindustani as well as choir singers and passionate bhajan singers. We vary in style, in age, in experience but are united by our love for Sai and our passion for music.
We’ll be performing 2 items. The first piece is an invocation to our Lord Ganesha, Through this piece we pray to our dear Sai Ganesha to remove obstacles in our path, particularly our ignorance, our negative qualities and our egos. We pray for knowledge, power and strength in this journey back to Him.
Following this we will perform Maha Ganapatim, a popular Carnatic piece in the ragam Nattai. This piece was composed by Muthuswamy Dikshitar, one of India’s greatest composers who viewed music as a path to self realisation. In this piece he praises Lord Ganapathy and makes references to many attributes and instances from his life that we can all learn from - such as how Ganesh broke his tusk to write the mahabharat - teaching us the quality of sacrifice and detachment. We hope this musical piece as it did for Dikshitar can also bring our group and all of you, a little bit closer to Swami. Enjoy!
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Our second piece for tonight is a medley of songs to reflect the conference theme on action, devotion and wisdom. Through the various songs we have brought together, we acknowledge that this three fold path is common to various faiths, as well as in the Māori worldview. Through the songs we pray to Christ, to Allah, to Krishna and to our dearest Sai to infuse every act with love and surrender, to fill our hearts with unwavering devotion and to remove ignorance and grant us wisdom.