3 min readApr 7, 2026 11:53 AM IST
The Indian Music Experience Museum’s WHAM (Women’s History, Art and Music) Festival closed on a high on March 25, with performances by Hindustani classical legend Shubha Mudgal and electronic music icon Ma Faiza.
The three-week festival, now in its third edition, marked a new permanent addition to the museum’s galleries in the form of an exhibit dedicated to Annapurna Devi, one of the most influential figures in Hindustani classical music.
Other events and displays included a Feminist Library Popup, film screenings, and workshops on subjects like the Chittara mural art of Karnataka. The last two days covered a wide cross-section of India’s musical traditions, such as songs of the rice cultivators of Nagaland and a combination of hip-hop and Kumaoni folk songs.
On Saturday, Mudgal performed several musical pieces under the theme ‘Women, Sexuality and Song’, with many of the pieces originating from the late Mughal era in dialects such as Braj Bhasha.
“Something very interesting I found was that the work of women poets was not published as much…a lot of the wealthy elite were publishing books centred on their own collections of poetry. Women poets rarely found opportunities to be published except those women who were themselves privileged,” Mudgal said, speaking after the performance.
“There is a lovely account of a woman poet called Sheikh Rangrejan. Rangrej is the profession of someone who dyes garments…she was a person who dyed clothes for a living and wrote beautiful poetry,” she added.
Speaking to The Indian Express, museum director Preema John said, “This is a programme that Shubha ji has performed before, but never in Bengaluru…it fits in very well with our theme with WHAM. We also had a group of Kumaoni women singing folk songs with rapper Kranti Naari as well as percussionist Charu Hariharan.”
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The festival’s final performance on Sunday featured noted DJ and LGBTQ+ icon Ma Faiza, one of the pioneers of Goa’s electronic music scene. “There are also many themes and emotions that come up in a festival like WHAM when you talk about issues like discrimination and marginalisation, but there is a very real sense of hope. What we discussed with her is that the set could be something that addresses these emotions, but also a triumphal conclusion,” John said.
