Alaya: Music & Mind Workshop

A free, hands on workshop exploring how raga music can calm, focus and lift the mind, led by award-winning sarod player, musician and composer Soumik Datta and Professor of Psychiatry, Dr Naaheed Mukadam from University College of London. No experience needed. Alaya is a new music and science programme exploring how raga music affects mood, attention and memory, and this is one of its very first public sessions. Led by Soumik Datta and Dr Naaheed Mukadam, the workshop guides you through simple, joyful exercises drawn from Indian musical traditions: breathing with a drone, singing ragas and melodies, and rhythm games using Indian vocal syllables. Along the way, Naaheed shares what science is beginning to tell us about how music shapes the brain. Alaya brings together centuries old musical knowledge and modern research, and these sessions help shape how the programme develops. Open to everyone, whatever your age or musical background. Just bring your voice.