Wet Sounds presents: Rani Jambak & Thanya Iyer

Sunday, September 14
Guelph Youth Music Centre
75 Cardigan Street, Guelph
2:00pm Conversation
3:00pm Performance

Presented in collaboration with the Guelph Jazz Festival, this matinee event will begin with a one-hour panel conversation and Q&A with North Sumatran sound artist and ecological activist Rani Jambak and Montréal experimental pop artist Thanya Iyer, hosted by Anna Bowen and Shalaka Jadhav. Leaning into questions around climate chaos, care, belonging, and ancestry, the talk will investigate the interplay between the more-than-human and human elements of Rani and Thanya’s music and the role of music-making in strengthening exiled ways of knowing and being at a moment of heightened global uncertainty and crises of interconnected political, environmental, existential, and social structures. Following a short refreshment break we’ll be treated to a 45-minute set by Rani Jambak and the Kincia Aia, an instrument inspired by traditional west sumatran water wheels.

Rani Jambak is a composer, producer, field recordist, instrument designer, and vocalist of Minangkabau descent. Born in Medan, she is deeply engaged in exploring electronic music and soundscapes sourced from various regions across Indonesia. Her extensive body of work frequently examines themes surrounding nature, socio-cultural dynamics, and the intricate relationship between humanity and ancestral heritage.

Pursuing a profound exploration of cultural identity as a Minangkabau individual, Rani’s artistic practice delves into the philosophical dimensions of Minangkabau traditions and investigates how ancestral wisdom can offer responses to modernity. Additionally, her work envisions the concept of future ancestors, grounded in spiritual values that are critically essential in contemporary life.

As part of her creative endeavors, Rani has designed instruments inspired by the traditional Minangkabau watermill, Kincia Aia. This innovation serves as a critique of the climate crisis and its impacts and as an effort to reinterpret ancestral knowledge in a novel dimension. Moreover, Rani, in collaboration with Hario, has developed performances rooted in the 19th-century manuscript, Tambo Alam Minangkabau, in partnership with Naskah Sumatra of SOAS University of London. In 2025, she introduced her installation piece, Pusako nan Sabana Tinggi (The Most Precious Legacy), a 20-minute sound composition featured at ASIA Topa.

In recognition of her groundbreaking contributions to sound, music, and technology, Rani received an Oram Award in 2022.

Thanya Iyer is an enigmatic songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, band leader, and music therapist who crafts sparkling, genre-bending, experimental pop music. She grew up submerged in the art of South Indian Carnatic vocals, violin and dance. Thanya writes serene and spiritual compositions that empower listeners to embrace mindfulness, aesthetic beauty and the interconnectedness of all things. After her 2020 Polaris long-listed, sophomore visual album Kind, her band released their follow up, TIDE/TIED, a story of collective care and communal healing. Through touring and performing, Thanya has brought her music to venues and festivals all across Turtle Island. She has also collaborated as a side-musician and recording artist with various artists in the thriving art and creative music scene in Tio’tia:ke/ Montréal.
Thanya’s passion for being in community and sharing her artistic practice led her to musical creation with youth since 2019. Since then, she has worked in many different communities as an artist-producer and music therapist creating healing-informed, person-centered, and community-oriented musical experiences. Thanya is appearing on the TD Mainstage @ Royal City Mission at 6:30pm on Saturday 13 September. thanyaiyer.com

Anna Bowen (she/her) is the curator of  the Wet Sounds series at Musagetes and various events at the ArtsEverywhere Festival. She is editor of the Complicating Care series on artseverywhere.ca and an editor and publisher at Publication Studio Guelph. Anna holds an MA from OISE at UofT in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and Women and Gender Studies. She lives on the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and is the author of chapbook Holding Places (Glovebox, 2024) and co-author of ReMediate (PS Guelph, 2016).

Trained as an urban planner, Shalaka Jadhav took the advice of a grade school aptitude test and currently practices as an independent researcher, writer, and curator. Their work explores spatial positionality, grief geographies, and public memory as evidenced in exhibitions curated in Halifax, Winnipeg, Kitchener, Guelph, and Toronto. A 2025 Musagetes Fellow and Visiting Curator at the University of Manitoba, they co-direct Textile in Waterloo Region and are a Writer-in-Residence for CAFKA.25: Field Guide to the Understory.