Majoie Hajary
Marie Majoie Hajary was a Surinamese-born Dutch-French composer and pianist of contemporary classical music and jazz. She was also a translator and wrote several books for pianists.
Life
Majoie Hajary was born in South America in 1921 in Paramaribo, Suriname, as the eldest of three daughters in a wealthy family. Her father Harry Najaralie Hajary was a prominent official of the then-Dutch colony and was Hindustani. Her mother Wilhelmina Tjong-Ayong, from the Tjong Ayong family, was of Creole and Chinese descent. Her uncle was Frits Tjong-Ayong, who served the director of Sint Vincentius Hospital from 1 August 1938 to 1981. Majoie received musical training from the nuns of a monastery in Gravenstraat, followed by an eight-year secondary education at the Hendrikschool.In 1937, at the age of 16, Hajary went to study at the Amsterdam Conservatory where she studied piano with Nelly Wagenaar and composition with Hendrik Andriessen. In 1941, Margot Vos's booklet Sun Rays was published, for which Hajary composed the music and drew the illustrations. She graduated with honors as a performing pianist in June 1942. In 1943, she won the Conservatory's first prize for her composition Hindoustani Fantaisie, which was performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
In the mid-1940s, Hajary gave Dutch Kultuurkamer concerts throughout the Netherlands and went on tour through Germany and Austria. In 1947, she moved to Caracas, Venezuela and gave concerts in Central and South America. She also regularly visited her native country of Suriname. In 1949, she moved to Paris to study composition with Louis Aubert and Nadia Boulanger.
In 1951, at Notre-Dame-de-Grace de Passy in Paris, Hajary married Roland Garros, nephew of the famous French aviation pioneer Roland Garros. The couple had two children and moved often because Roland worked as the director of several foreign offices of Air France. They lived in Madagascar, Lambaréné, Tokyo, New Delhi and Istanbul. In many places, Hajary arranged to perform concerts and teach students.
Hajary developed as a composer of world music with Indian influences and was sometimes called the "Hindu pianist." She started transcribing ragas and then went on to write them herself. Examples are New Sound From India, Requiem pour Mahatma Gandhi and Chants du Gita Govinda. In the 1960s she composed Da Pinawiki, an oratorio about the Passion of Christ. The text was based on her grandmother's Surinamese Bible and the oratorio was opened in Easter week from 1974 performed in several large churches of Paramaribo.
In addition to her performances, Hajary was also a writer and translated the work of others. She provided Max Havelaar's first translation into French.
On 25 August 2017, Hajary died at home at the age of 96, and she was buried in the Old Cemetery of Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris.