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From Los Angeles Times:

Mythili Prakash. Photo: Stefano Paltera

Before demonstrating a dance recently at her family’s Westside rehearsal studio, Mythili Prakash dropped to the floor in what looked a bit like ballet’s first position grand plié and prostrated herself. Then she kissed the floor, in homage to both the studio and her mother, who was seated nearby.

“This is ‘Namaskar,’ ” she explained afterward, “when I offer my prayers to the Earth and surrender my ego.”

For Prakash and her mother, Viji, who has long doubled as her guru, the South Indian classical dance idiom bharata natyam is first and foremost a spiritual practice. And that’s what they hope to convey when they perform as part of this year’s World Festival of Sacred Music, which will continue until Sept. 28 at venues throughout the city.

More:

And below, another report in The National:

Click on the image to go to the World Festival of Sacred Music site. You can listen to some nice music clips.

Think of music and Los Angeles, and inevitably one thinks of the secular world of rock ‘n’ roll – the fabled Capitol Records building with its stylus-shaped spire, the great machinery of music producers and promoters and labels, and distinctive West Coast bands from The Doors to the Eagles to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

For the last two weeks in September, however, the City of Angels plays host to a very different sort of musical jamboree – a celebration of sacred music from around the globe, with the emphasis on something altogether deeper than what Joni Mitchell once memorably described as “the star-maker machinery of the popular song”.

The musicians participating in the World Festival of Sacred Music – the fourth such event over the past decade – almost all live and work in Los Angeles, but represent musical traditions literally spanning the globe: tanbour-playing from classical Persia, the throat-singing of the tiny Asian republic of Tuva, dancers and drummers from Burkina Faso and the flute-playing of indigenous tribes from across the Americas.

More: And at http://www.festivalofsacredmusic.org/

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