Festival in Pune and home

February 5-February 9

My last adventure for this trip was going to Pune to play at a festival organized there by tabla player Aneesh Pradhan, and his wife, the vocalist Shubha Mudgal. Now in its second year, their Baajaa Gaajaa Festival aims to bring together as many genres of music as possible that are being made in contemporary Indian society. So there is country and urban and pop/rock and experimental music as well as north and south Indian classical. And several ‘videshi’ or foreign musicians; Adrian McNeil on sarode from Australia, and Hiros Nakagawa from Japan on bansuri. Apparently the foreign artists were of some local interest – I had gotten a telephone call from a writer for the Pune edition of the Indian Express newspaper on my last day in Mumbai (how they got my Indian mobile number will always be a mystery), and when I arrived in Pune and got a copy of the paper I found myself the subject of a nearly half-page article, full of things that I had never said to the interviewer.

The festival was held at a large, not-quite-finished shopping mall that had a performance amphitheater, used for the evening concerts. A pair of outdoor stages had been set up in different areas of the mall for a daily series of short performances, of which I was one. I was happy to meet and play with Sandip Bhattacharya from the Netherlands. The evening programs were done in an original and very interesting way. The first night featured Hindustani vocalist Rashid Khan and Karnatic vocalist T.M. Krishnan; but it wasn’t the usual format, where one artists performs first half and the next second half, an you only listen to the part you like/know. And it wasn’t one of those usually wretched forced jugalbandi’s where the artists are supposed to perform together. Instead, the two artists and their accompanist ensembles were on the large stage together. First Rashid presented a piece, short by khyal standards, then TM Krishnan, sang, then back to Rashid, and so on for three rounds. The artists, both top of their class, got to hear what the other did and then react to that. In each round, the musicians used more or less the same set of notes or pitches, but in north or south Indian style. The second evening program featured three vernacular music groups, all on stage together and performing round robin again. They were a woman who sang Bengali songs, but with an electric band that used synthesizers; a traditional qawwali group, and a Rajasthani folk group. Two very different types of urban music and one country or folk music, all very sophisticated in very different ways.

Going to and from Pune and being there was a reminder that even modern India is still a pretty different and unique universe. In spite of the fact that there is now a modern toll expressway covering much on the only 80-90 miles between Mumbai and Pune, the trip still takes 3-4 hours. On the way up, at the insistence of one of the people in the group who had hired the car, we actually stopped at a McDonalds, for coffee and French fries. I had never previously been to a McDonalds in India. Amazingly the fries tasted exactly like they do in the US, as far as I remember (haven’t been to one in the US in maybe 15-20 years I think). Whatever addictive chemical they figured out they have managed to import that into India as well. The hotel I stayed in looked like a pretty modern place, and I think they had good intentions, but almost nothing worked. Tim Witter’s theory is that everything in India happens at about 70%, that they get things about 70% right, and then the other 30% comes in and keeps everything funky. I think in Pune the figure was more like 55%. This new mall being built, where the festival took place, everything was new, but always just a little out of true, haphazard, not quite fitted right.

From Monday morning, February 8th, it was full international travel mode. It can be really fun when you can do it well. I indulged myself by booking a room at a nice hotel, the Orchid, near the airport in Mumbai to wait out that day until my late evening departure. Tim Witter was also heading back to Kolkata late in the afternoon, so it worked out well to hang out for the day in comfort and then head out to our respective airports, actually same airport, same runway, but the domestic and international terminals are about 10 miles apart from each other. In the 4-5 years since I last took an international flight out of Mumbai the international terminal has been transformed from a hellhole into a much better facility than LAX, I regret to say. “Bertha,” my wonderful contact inside Thai Airways, had arranged for me to stay at a hotel in Bangkok during my 14 hour layover there, so the misery of taking a flight that left at 1:00am and landed at 5:00 am was mitigated by having a car waiting to take me to a four star hotel, 5 hours of sleep, a fabulous buffet lunch (I should have taken pictures), a massage and a car back to the airport. The 13-hour nonstop flight back to LA seemed quite painless at that point. Then it was time to unpack the sarode case and give it back to its true occupants (see the last picture). And that was it!

Mumbai – The Barsi for Alla Rakha Khansahib

January 30-February 5

My week in Mumbai was divided into two parts: two days in the “suburbs” near the airport, where I had a small program, followed by 4 days in the center of town. The two days in Vile Parle I think would be comparable to a similar situation in other giant cities, like spending two days in Queens, or Downey or some outer district of London. Small, run-down very overpriced hotel, mediocre food, very difficult local transportation. But the program for the Swarmauli Music Circle was very nice, a good accompanist (Surakshya Deshpande), a very warm crowd to play for, the organizer, Mr. Paranjape, was very nice. And two friends, Dee Wood and Ranjeet Pathak came to hear me – meeting Ranjeet (a vocalist and santoor player I have worked with in Los Angeles) was a complete surprise.

I had been told that the YWCA International Guest House was the place to stay in central Mumbai (if you could book a room), and indeed it was – big room, great shower, excellent location near but not in Colaba. I went to see another sarode/sitar jugalbandi at the big Tata Theatre at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, again with Tejendra on sarode but this time with Shujaat Khan on sitar, and the wonderful Yogesh Samsi on tabla. Quite a contrast – Shujaat chose to play very few notes, but he took control of the time frame of the music completely, so even though he played “less” than Tejendra he was in total control of the performance. Absolutely fascinating to observe, and to think about how this kind of control of time can work. Much material for discussion with Joep Bor over beers and fish curry.

For me, one of the events I looked forward to the most for the entire trip was the chance to finally go to the Barsi, the memorial event that commemorates the death of Ustad Alla Rakha. This was the 10^th anniversary of his death, amazingly enough, and very important, although the whole event was thrown into some doubt for a while because of the unexpected passing of Zakir’s mother in November. The event took place in a very large and quite modern hall far out from the central city, near Mahim, where Zakir was born, and with a starting time of 6:30 am for the opening session, I was up and waking a cab driver before 6. When you take these early morning drives, you often go down large streets where there are hundreds of taxis lined up at the curb. This is, of course, where the taxi drivers spend the night, sleeping in their cabs since most of them have no home in Mumbai.

The first session really did start a little before 7 am, with a kind of rhythmic guru vandana to Abba-ji in the form of a group tabla solo, with Zakir and 7 or 8 of Abba-ji’s most senior disciples in the middle of the stage, a row of advanced students on a riser above them, and a group of less advanced students on the floor of the stage, about 30 drummers in all I think. Zakir directed the larger groups to play some rehearsed parts and then led the senior disciples in a round robin solo on more advanced compositions of his father’s. Zakir had invited Alam to come to Mumbai to participate in the event, and then handed him a very tough assignment. He had Alam sitting alone on a platform riser to the stage left of the big group of drummers, and after the drumming was over introduced Alam and asked him to play solo, alap, all by himself on that riser – very trying conditions to say the least, with the sound system kind of howling away as well. Alam played an absolutely amazing alap and jor in Bilashkhani Todi, really perfect in its construction and execution, moving from note to note and section to section really flawlessly, keeping a great sound and emotion throughout. I watched Zakir and all these senior players listening to Alam, as they became progressively just enthralled by what they were hearing, eyes glazed over. I think they and the audience were stunned; I was pretty stunned. Alam’s performance has transformed itself in the course of this trip to India. I wonder if he’s even aware of it yet – I don’t think he is yet. This performance and the one at Dover Lane I see as a watershed, the first performances of the rest of his career.

The morning session adjourned at about 9:30, and then we were all given breakfast! The canteen at the venue opened up and gave everyone uttapam and hot tea or coffee. Thank you Zakir! The mid-day session the percussion extravaganza, featuring three tabla solos, with solos by a fabulous dholak player (many people thought he was the highlight of the day) and a mridangam player. The solos were by three renowned players, all nominally from the same gharana of tabla (Farukhabad) but with radically different approaches. First was Vijay Ghate, with some of the most powerful playing I have ever heard, threatening to blow out the sound system every time he hit his baya. And on top of that, he constructed his entire solo so that all of his pieces, even his theka, had their emphasis on the last quarter of beat sixteen, just before the sam. He was followed by Subhankar Banerjee, who was all about polish and speed, very graceful. Zakir often says that there are players who can play faster than him, and I think Subhankar must be one of the people he’s thinking about. The third solo was by Nayan Ghosh. His presentation was about history and tradition. He presented all kinds of renowned compositions from the history of tabla, going back a couple of centuries, of course coupled with brilliant execution. I wonder whether Zakir had this trajectory specifically in mind when he set this up, that the players would present/represent three different emphases of tabla performance: power, speed and tradition.