Sunday was my first program for this trip, at the Bhowanipur Sangit Sammilani, probably the oldest music circle/presenting orgamization in Kolkata, since 1900. The gentleman currently at the head of the organization has been running it for more than 50 years. I got to the hall earlier than I had expected. The previous night there had been so much traffic that it would have taken a taxi about 30 minutes to cover the 3-4 kilometers, but I forgot that it was Sunday and arrived in 5 minutes. The first item, a vocalist, should have been in progress for about 20 minutes. Instead I found that they hadn’t even started to set up the sound system yet. The program started 1 hour and 20 minutes late, which I thought was a bit much even by the flexible standards of time in Kolkata. But several other programs I went to see later were delayed by as much as two hours, so maybe I was lucky. Certainly I was lucky that the tabla player booked to play with me, Sangram Roy, was a really fine musician. Sitting to play a concert with an accompanist that you haven’t played with before can be a real roll of the dice, and frankly the odds are usually not favorable. Everyone can play with great skill and speed, the issue is whether they have good musical sense, whether they want to make music together or just get their 15 minutes of glory. I will be happy to play with Sangram again if I get the chance, and he asked me to contact him before I come to India next, so maybe that chance will come. So, for playing a first concert, with some factor of jet lag and an unfamiliar accompanist, I was satisfied with the outcome. I think, well, I know, that the main reason I come to play in India is to see whether I can keep my cool and play the music I want to play under the circumstances of wildly varying conditions for a knowledgeable audience.
For many of us in the shifting community of people who keep coming back to Kolkata for the music, to participate as listeners, students and performers, one of the few constants has been Jon Barlow’s house on Bondel Road. Since the late 1970s the house has often been available for short and long-term stays, and many of us have spent weeks and even months there. The constant within the constant of Bondel Road has been Bablu, Jon’s servant and cook, who has taken care of us on a wide variety of levels. No one is staying at Bondel this year, but I found myself nearby on Tuesday, when I went by the Weavers Studio at the request of their staff to check the venue. I walked by to see if Bablu might be there, and as you can see he was quite happy to see a familiar face. With no one there he didn’t have anything to do, so I thought of having Bablu make lunch for a few of the people in town who were familiar with the Bondel Road House. That way he would have some work and some extra money and we would get a great meal. “What will you have? Fish? Chicken? Vegetable?” How about all of them! And so 6 of us came a couple of days later for some great home-cooked food. The fortunate in attendance that day: Steve Gorn, Ehren Hanson, Camilla, Andrew McLean, Anindya Banerjee, myself.
