Sunny Jain: Love Force at Wesleyan Center for the Arts

Created and conceived by Brooklyn-based composer Sunny Jain, Love Force draws on the musician’s autobiography to create an immersive performance inspired by the concept satyāgraha (which means “insistence or holding firmly to truth”). Coined by Mahatma Gandhi during his nonviolent protest against British colonialism in India, and also adapted by B.R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. as “soul force” and “love force,” satyāgraha is both a theory and a method of enveloping the oppressor with compassion. Through a deeply personal journey, Love Force draws parallels between the caste system in India and the history of American racism. In doing so, it makes vibrant the power of performance to bring unity to audiences—a power of “collective effervescence” that may be essential in confronting these ongoing systems of oppression.1

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