The Sangeet Millennium Initiative
What Is Sangeet Millennium?
Sangeet Millennium, which Dr. Amie Maciszewski founded in 2002 and leads, is an initiative that presents mainly traditional, but also new, music and dance of the Indian subcontinent through collaborative and interactive performance, workshops, classes, festivals, and sometimes films.
Our mission consists of utilizing the music and dance culture of the Indian subcontinent/South Asia as a base upon which to bring together people of diverse backgrounds, generations, and abilities in the joyful exploration of the rich diversity of music and dance in the world for the common good: to raise people’s awareness of and, ultimately, respect for different types of this ultimate human expression.
We aim to carry this out by:
1. Community involvement in the role of cultural mediator/facilitator between performers and other artists, students, arts lovers, educators, and the public, working with all to place culture at the core of a strategy that uses the arts to express diverse (often under-represented) cultures.
2. Working to stimulate social impact in the community while co-creating an interdependent, intersectional, and sustainable artistic ecosystem that supports non-commercial world music and dance.
The Sangeet Millennium Ensemble
Sangeet Millennium Ensemble, founded in 2006 and led by internationally acclaimed sitarist, teaching artist, and creative culture-worker Dr. Amie Maciszewski, is a collective/project ensemble that presents South Asian music for the world—performing repertoires that seamlessly combine traditional Hindustani, Indo-jazz fusion, and/or world music. Comprised of Amie + 1-4 artists, the Ensemble offers theme concerts, lecture-demonstrations, and interactive workshops/master classes on the topics below, tailored to diverse, intergenerational audiences.
Amie and the Sangeet Millennium Ensemble fuse North Indian music marked by the distinctively “exotic” sound of the long necked string instrument sitar, made famous by Ravi Shankar, with saxophone, Indian tabla drums, and often bass and Indian vocals. The group also blends together the two styles of Indian music and jazz, creating both a contemporary “new world music” sound and one that resonates with earlier fusion groups like Shakti and the work of jazz great Ornette Coleman.
Projects & Programs
Sangeet Millennium exists to bridge the gap between people, cultures, and the world. A part of our work is to facilitate larger initiatives, programs, and collaborations towards this end.
South Asian Music for the World
This project, occurring throughout 2018, was a vibrant celebration of the music and dance of the Indian subcontinent, enriched with educational outreach. This multidisciplinary endeavor featured a series of intimate performances and workshops which explored the synergy between traditional Indian dance, vocal exercises, and yoga. The series culminated in the “Declare World Peace” music festival, a dynamic fusion of world music, dance, and poetry, supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts and the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs.
Through these events, the project not only showcased high-quality artistic performances but also fostered community engagement and cultural education, making traditional South Asian arts accessible to a wider audience.
Pakistan
Dr. Amie was part of a Texas-based team awarded a grant by the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. Along with Dr. Michael Hirsch, Amie led workshops on research methodologies across Pakistan in 2018. Her efforts included a residency at Karachi’s National Academy for Performing Arts, where she performed and led ethnography workshops, and advocacy for the Khwaja Sira community in Lahore. Amie also engaged with Power99 FM in Islamabad, promoting educational broadcasts in regional languages. Her work culminated in a research project in Hunza on traditional music preservation and a workshop at Fatima Jinnah Women’s University, blending music education with cultural outreach.
