By Aisha Chaudhry
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The annual Indian Summer Festival is hosting three events in Surrey where residents can engage with art, music and gather as a community.

For its 16th year, the festival will continue to bring together South Asian artists and performers, ranging in disciplines from music, theatre to comedy, and showcasing them at venues across the Lower Mainland. The festival was founded to address gaps in Vancouver’s cultural landscape, because South Asian people have often been missing from these spaces.

This year’s curatorial theme is “Ragas for a Ruptured World” — a call for artistic expression and creative defiance. Ragas, a collection of pitches and scales with melodic phrases, provide the base on which musicians improvise in Indian classical music.

Shruti Ramani describes raga as something that builds an ambience — “a soundscape that you can get lost in.”

Ramani, a Juno-nominated artist, is the lead vocalist and composer of Raagaverse, an Indo-Jazz fusion ensemble. The group is performing at the Surrey Arts Centre on July 17 with special guest Cassius Khan, renowned Indian Classical music artist, as part of Ragas Remagined.

Growing up in Mumbai, Ramani’s parents put her in Hindustani classical music training, but she soon found her passion for jazz, leading her to move to Canada to study the genre.

“I couldn’t keep the genres separate in my compositions and … I was so deeply entrenched in both these beautiful art forms, so there was no way to separate those two things in my head. That’s really what caused Raagaverse to happen,” she said of the ensemble’s beginnings in 2022.

While Raagaverse is ever-evolving, Ramani explained that “it’s an homage to both traditions. I would say retaining the identity of jazz and Hindustani without compromising them is what my goal has been with the band’s sound.” The upcoming performance will include new music Ramani wrote specifically for this show. It’ll be a rather eventful night, considering it falls on Ramani’s 30th birthday and is the first time her family will be able to visit her in Canada after nearly a decade and see her perform.

Am Johal, the festival’s executive artistic director, reached out to book Raagaverse, and Ramani noted the welcoming nature of the organizers and overall better pay for artists compared to other festivals she has performed at.

“The hospitality is very much that of the Indian culture … [The organizers] really take care of you, they regard you as somebody that’s important, and there’s a lot of sweet personal touches that they always add, and I really appreciate this festival a lot.”

From July 4 to Aug. 30, the Surrey Art Gallery will be showcasing If Gardens Could Dream, a solo exhibit by Keerat Kaur.

Kaur’s work spans several mediums, from painting and sculpture to embroidery and music. This show will involve projections of animations, ceramic sculptures on display, wearable art and a Punjabi song Kaur wrote being played in one of the spaces.

“Every few years or so I hope to pick up a new medium. I just find that a way of looking at the same thing with a fresher lens … it’s a way of evolving the storytelling around the work,” Kaur said.

Narrative is central to Kaur’s work, and often her pieces include calligraphy inspired by Sikh and Punjabi philosophies and literature.

Looking at nature as a means of storytelling is also at the heart of this show. For example, Kaur explained how the lotus is a recurring symbol in her work.

“The lotus has been a symbol for perseverance and something that grows through muddy waters, and then can bloom into this beautiful thing,” she said. “It’s a way of allowing nature’s metaphors to dream and evolve further and further, and to see how we can relate to the natural world through poetry.”

Kaur worked with Surrey Art Gallery curator Suvi Bains — who connected her to the festival — in 2022 when she was working on her first exhibit for the space. Since 2024, Kaur has been working on pieces for this exhibit, but the show will also include some of her earlier works and pieces borrowed from collectors that portray relevant themes. At a free event on July 11, Kaur will be performing Punjabi folk songs and having an artist talk with Bains.

Kaur will also be speaking alongside Manjot Kaur about their art and connection to the natural world in a Tiffin Talk on July 12.

She hopes visitors feel inspired to push their thinking beyond what they may be familiar with.

“What I’ve tried to do with a lot of the work in the show is this exercise of world-building, so it’s very all-encompassing, immersive, and it’s really meant to transport you. It’s not only the work that I’m hoping can dream and evolve, but I also want people who visit the exhibition to be able to dream while they’re viewing these works.”

The final event in Surrey is Apna Mela on July 18. At Strawberry Hill Park, residents can participate in activities such as jaggo races, turban-tying competitions, traditional butter churning. They can also watch performances or peruse booths from local artists and organizations.