Neel Murgai

Neel Murgai is a sitarist, daf player, overtone singer, composer and teacher. He is a co-founder and artistic director of Brooklyn Raga Massive, a nonprofit musicians collective dedicated to Indian music. He is a graduate of Goddard College's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program. Neel has studied sitar for 26 years, currently with Pundit Krishna Bhatt. He learned overtone singing from Timothy Hill of the Harmonic Choir. He celebrated the release of his second Neel Murgai Ensemble album, “Reorientation Suite” with a performance at Rubin Museum on January 31, 2020. With Brooklyn Raga Massive, Neel composed, directed, produced and released the recording of their 25 musician cross-cultural orchestral work, “In D”. Their session at Dimenna Center for Classical Music was also videotaped with masking and proper social distancing protocols, and the performance was streamed as part of the Ragas Live Festival in November 2020. Neel performed in Kaufman Center’s Musical StoreFront Series on March 29, 2021. Neel’s return to live in person, indoor performance came with a Indian classical set on July 10 at Jalopy Theater’s Brooklyn International Music Festival. Throughout the pandemic, Neel has hosted and produced Brooklyn Raga Massive’s weekly live-streaming concert and workshop series. As an artist in pandemic times, Neel has honed his own personal livestreaming setup, adding simultaneous video looping, effects and mixing to his longtime audio looping practice. Neel has streamed this unique, meditative, audio visual experience with numerous organizations in the past year, including Brooklyn Raga Massive, Brooklyn Arts Council, LaMama, Brooklyn Music School, Arts Horizons and on his own social media channels.