Long read ahead, in 5 days a lot happens.
Jaisalmer was a real goat town, goats everywhere. And not to forget cows ofcourse.
Our idea during our short Jaisalmer stay was to travel with a group of musicians into the desert 40 km’s further, where they would be playing for tourists who were on camel safari. Since we were not going to do a camel safari this time it was better to get the real thing done by driving with musicians in a jeep, seeing them prepare their performance, playing and returning back with them. And we managed that by paying them for putting up with us. The ride was pretty bumpy and the scenery soon turned sandy and desolate with sparse houses next to the road, which made us stare out of the open backside of the jeep. We were 12 people crammed sardine style into one jeep topped with their instruments, because they normally travel with *just*10 people per jeep. Guess who those 2 extra persons were, hah. When we got to Khuri we saw the impressive sand dunes rising nearby, an amazing sight. Khuri is a little village from which camel safari’s leave or pass through for the obvious reason and we were a bit disappointed to learn that the musicians wouldn’t play on those dunes but in a open aired courtyard of a hotel instead. Bah. As they prepared, Maarten filmed the views and their -female- dress-up, I strolled around talking to some locals and kids and ended up at the only grocery shop in town with kids in tow to buy them some chocolate. Neither me or Maarten easily buy candy for groups of kids, as playing the white sugardaddy (or sugarmommy such as the many female tourists like to play) serves no sincere purpose or example at all to the locals nor the kids except that the foreigner feels redeemed for his/her compassion. The local adults even get annoyed with this dandy habit that some tourists carry out and we can understand that. I mean, it’s not like these kids need sweets, but anyway I fell prey to their sugary wishes and returning them with sweets. A bigger crowd of kids had gathered and still running in from everywhere, pushing the kids away that I had original intended to give the sweets. After giving a few choc drops in the chaos I gave up and donated the rest of the sweets to a local old man who could control the hand-out much better than I could.
Back at the courtyard, the tourist were pouring in and taking their seats. No western tourists though, but eastern tourists from India even, as they all came from Kolkata region (Calcutta). We saw the men dress up as female Kabeliya dancers in matching dresses. We knew that there would be Kabeliya dancers, so we naturally expected women…but as no women were in our jeep we already started wondering, even after the guys who were to dress up, gave us some hints. Needless to say, even as males taking up the female act they danced amazingly well and felline. At some point one of the dancers did a special spiral dance which made him turn around the whole courtyard on his knees while the dress covered and touched the ground. The music was ok, but they played just the touristy songs that we know all too well, like the folk snobs we seem to have become now –ho ho-. It did get very funny at the end when one of the dancers came to our spot and dragged me (oh no!) off my chair to dance with him in front of all the tourists, who ofcourse were laughing heartily. But it also broke the ice for the Kolkata people and they soon were all dancing around me. Yup, Indian people and dancing, always a good combination! One older guy was pretty drunk and loud and another old guy had bizarre moves as well as the kids who went mental in spastic kicking moves. Well, Maarten and his camera couldn’t be happier and through his camera he escaped to dance with Kolkata men like I had to endure, though fun it was. Ah well. Added to that, the best male dancer of our musicians asked me if I wanted to spend the night with him.
I don’t think men have ever offered themselves so much to us as here, but that would be a another bunch of stories that ended with jolly *nahi’s*. That being said, the times that fathers have tried to marry their prime teenage or adult daughters off to us have also been numerous.
We were supposed to leave Jaisalmer the next morning and when we got out with our bags we noticed it was grey skies all around and raining softly, here at the outskirts of the desert! While walking to the bus station just opposite the road of our hotel, we bumped into Neire -how could it be such coincidence-, who was chatting away to some Lohar folks at the side of the road. Neither of us knew that we would be in Jaisalmer at the same time, especially since Neire had already been here and it was rather funny after we had posted his pictures on the blog days before –which he also didn’t know-. He came back to buy some morchang mouth harps from a skilled Lohar metal worker and musician. We followed him to the Lohar quarter nearby, which is the area where also all the other folk musicians live from several castes.
We actually wanted to get to Barnawa, the remote village of the Langa musicians, so we quickly called them to check if they were expecting us. It was a stroke of good luck that they rather wanted us to come the next day as we were only too happy to stay with the Lohar musicians and Neire and hear some music. The father of the house introduced himself kindly as Mohan Lal Lohar. I’ve heard his name before, but I can’t put my finger on it from where….from the net, readings on rajasthani music or unlicensed compilation cd’s? who knows. He was very open about being recorded by us and gave a lot of his time without any hidden agenda behind it. We were sitting in the courtyard while his family sat with us, the goats walked on the roof and the rain was sparsely dripping on us. Mohan played several morchang pieces for us and then brought all his different sets of flutes out, from algoza’s (double flutes) to murli’s (snakecharmer flute). It sounded amazing and we sat quietly listening to him as he kept on playing and giving explanations to the songs and instruments. As he is a Lohar metal worker, he gilds morchangs himself and he showed us a whole variety of them. How could we not buy some? Beautiful handcrafted instruments with good sound and at a good price to support his family. As he understood our musical interest, he also made us listen to a cassette of his group in which he and his cousin play in. Such rough folk sound! Upon the first tones it sounded like a bizarre mash of Nass el Ghiwane or Tinariwen’s Northern African Gnawa sound mashed with recorded roughness equal to the feedback of Konono No.1 or any semi-distorted group. It had a Rajasthani coating ofcourse, but unlike the other Rajasthani folk musi. The nature of these songs -or rather chants- was more repetitive, with simple recurring melodies and ongoing chants to a near trancelike state. Wow, flustered. We will record a session with Mohan and his group in February to see if we can take it further for them, perhaps a proper release? Later in the afternoon we visited Thokmey again, a kind Tibetan person who we met a few days before in his shop in the Jaisalmer fort. We had bought a few Tibetan metal singing bowls and he gently explained us how to use them in sound and for relaxation. Metal rimmed stroking drones as lush soundscapes that do the body and mind good. Hmmm healthy soundscapes. We also talked about Thokmey about Tibet, as we might go to Tibet in March if time allows. After meditating together in his cosy small room in silent darkness we said goodbye, perhaps to see him again in the near future.
We took an early morning bus towards Jodhpur as to get to the town of Barnawa Jagir we had to get off at Shergarh, in the middle of nowhere 100 km's before Jodhpur. We attracted a lot of stares and gazing children in Shergar. A local told me that in the past year only 2 whites had come through Shergarh. On the phone Mehruddin Khan had promised to pick us up, though his tiny knowledge of English and our equally tiny Hindi made it a difficult talk. We just had to hope that he would come, or him perhaps hoping that we would be waiting in Shergarh so that he didn't need to take a jeep 30 km's for nothing. Mehruddin did arrive and we were taken to the village, this time really driving on sand roads only and past empty spaces with just bush and small trees decorating the dry hills. Small brick or mud huts with straw roofs clustered together into village circles where people lived in rural conditions without electricity. Most were tending their livestock of goats and cows and some had little acres to grow vegetables. We stopped in one of those small villages as Khan wanted to inspect the construction of a well. He later told us that he is financing the building of several wells in 8 or so villages in this region. This way and in the next dasys we quickly learned that he holds a certain authority as a sort of tribal chief or mayor in this remote region and therefore he makes the noble effort in bettering conditions for the locals. Either through his own musical earnings or from retaining contacts with local district authorities.
Upon arrival in his home village Barnawa Jagir, it seemed as if the whole village flooded to come and see us. At least all the young children, which must have been 100 or so, not even counting the ones that were working at that moment. Again the flustered looks and curiosity steered their behavior to swamp us with jeers, touches and questions. Overflow of attention went on and when we could rest a bit in Khan's house -the biggest and only concrete house of the village-, we got swamped by his family and close friends. We didn't mind and enjoyed it, but it takes up a lot of your energy. That we also learned in these 2 days. ;) So, this was the early evening of christmas night, 24th. The house was split up in different parts, where one part was for cooking, the rooms of his sons, the room of his wife, while his own room in which we stayed, stood loose from the rest. Hah, he even had satelite dish tv installed and over 50 channels. Imagine, it's kinda bizarre you find yourself in a very remote part of the state, dry and desert-like, where not many people even have electricity or decent houses as we know it back home, and there we were...watching some kitsch Bollywood action movie on tv with the whole family. At some point when zapping, we saw a glimpse of the match between Manchester Utd and Everton, far away in cold and wet winterish England, yet here in dry and warm spheres. Funny that.
We ate a glorious meal of vegetables, omelet and chappati bread and we went to bed early enough, exhausted from the travel and absorbed attention. The next day Mehruddin had the idea to take us to a remote Kabeliya village in the Barmer district near Balotra and to record female songs and dances of people that did not perform for tourists but for their patrons only. In this case, we think that Mehruddin was acting the role of patron, so that he could demand them to play for us. We did have to hire a jeep and pay the Kabeliya women, which was normal so we agreed on a fee, more than we had in mind for our low budget but a chance not to miss either. Another ride in desert and remote parts, 70 km's and there we were on top of a small sandhill where a small Kabeliya village with similar straw roofed huts existed, without electricity. This village whose name we didn't catch, was the home of the Nath people, a subcaste within the Kabeliya caste who are known for their combined female singing style. Also here the attention of the whole village was caught by our sight and all kids circled around us, though some were more scared as they probably had never seen a white person in the flesh. Even many of the women were looking amazed at our skin features, Maarten's height, blue eyes, lanky blond curls and eyebrow piercing, trying to touch or study them. We had to wait several hours as the women didn't hasten to prepare and our jeep had to pick up another singer in a bigger village. Their best female singer was struck by malaria, but she still would perform for us. Whether that was because of the lure of promised money or Mehruddin's demand, we didn't find out. In the meantime we played shabby cricket with the kids, throwing balls and while Maarten was taking a nap on the rubber band beds, I got several babies pushed into my arms to hold. Some babies got frightened by my unusual looks, while the mothers laughed at my effort to shush. When all was ready, 3 women of various ages (from young adults to the middle aged woman with malaria) started singing lines that sometimes supported each other in range or entwined into polyphonic singing. Amazing voices and they sung songs that we did not hear before, mostly those songs that they sing in the village and for special occasions. In some songs, 1 or 2 of the women or another girl started dancing in a very small circle, turning around and swaying without losing her direction nor pace.
At the end of the afternoon we were finished. Many people in the village asked us for money, but how can you help so many families at once without discriminating other families? We hope that at least our fee will benefit many of them as it normally goes in such villages, we were told. The for them high fee had a good justification in means of their skills and circumstances and our ability to give.
When we returned, we got a mighty good dinner of wholegrain badi breads and pieces of mutton (goat) put in front of us. Yeah we are vegetarians, so what to do?
Maarten more than me, as I still eat fish and sometimes meat on special occasions. To refuse would be impolite and as it was christmas day, well, it surely was somewhat special to eat the mutton, so we did and it tasted great -blush blush-. Not that we cared about the sake of a christmas dinner. The Khan's did neither, as they are Islamic according to the Muhammadan tradition that many Rajasthani nomad castes follow.
In the evening as well as the next morning we recorded sessions with Mehruddin and his brother Nijam. Mehruddin's session consisted of the Surandi and Sarangi, along Dholak, a hollow jug or pot and Khartals for percussion. We were very tired, still from the visit at the Nath village so after Mehruddin's session we fell asleep quickly. Nijam's session the next morning was done by the Algoza double flute and also with Dholak. Both sessions were very good as it straight away proved the high professional level of the brothers in Rajasthani and Langa music. Playing several international tours or have albums released on world music labels isn't a simple thing to do. We had to leave after Nijam's session, as we had to get to more north on our way to Punjab. But before all that, we had to agree on a price to pay to Mehruddin as patriarch of the Khan family. We had already told him about our low budget, despite us being from Europe or thinking that we surely had a financial back-up in the form of payed work if we recorded his sessions and staying at his house. Fair enough. In the end the demanded fee was *a lot* higher than he first made us believe so we felt genuinely disappointed after these 2 magnificent days.
It was a pity that he didn't make it clear to us from the start what his expectations were and what costs would be added. Maybe it was also our fault for not taking initiative earlier either. In the end we paid a hefty sum, something we would have never paid if we had known before. But just as with the Nath we now feel good about it, as we know that Mehruddin will distribute most of this money for the families and towns and not just to his own chest. Also the experience counts a lot for us and we are happy to have been, seen and done all this in Barnawa Jagir.
Mehruddin took us by jeep to Jodhpur and all last/tiny financial squabbles were solved with some advice of Kuldeep of Rupayan Sansthan institute. We don't blame Mehruddin, since that is the way it went and we parted without further anger.
Jodhpur is such a bizarre city with quirky locals, we don't know why but except of the good people of Rupayan who have helped us a great deal, we otherwise encountered a lot of social stumble blocks with locals, who either could or would not help us for the most simple things or make it difficult without reason. Kinda funny really. Not to mention the amount of people who walked around with a jink from their legs, we lost count.
We got to Bikaner in the middle of the night on a very slowwww train from Jodhpur.
In Bikaner there isn't much to do, so the only thing of importance to us what to visit Deshnok, where the Karna Mati temple was. The temple famous for being filled with rats, oh yes! Holy rats, as legend says that the goddess Karni Mata brought all the dead storytellers back to life in the shape of rats. You have to enter without shoes. Me on bare feet, Maarten still with socks. We had expected rooms filled to the roof with rats as your mind would quickly revel about, but the amount of rats was a little disillusionment as the rats weren't that numerous. And despite their are being fed fresh milk, grains and sweets every day, you would think they would look healthy. Wrong, as a lot of them had scabs from fighting, scruffy bodies and sometimes missing an eye or two or having swollen body parts. Yum. We fed some rats from our hands with sweets we bought, but it wasn't any more special than what Maarten had done night before at Jodhpur station. Which was jumping down on the rails in between the fat station sewer rats and feeding them cookies. It was fun though to see the rats running around fairly relaxed in broad daylight and by running over people's feet and thus scaring the obvious folks who feared them (mostly women, western tourists and others). Next to us someone -a female tourist- had stepped on a young rat by accident, so it bled to death by the head, yuck. Temple law says that anyone who harms/kills a rat in the temple has to pay a fine of the rat's weight in gold. No temple persons were around at that moment, luckily for the crusher.
So, that was the rat temple, short lived fun. Maarten filmed some scenes and we left. We finally got some things repaired in Bikaner as we both had technical problems with our battery packs and other stuff which limited us for the last week or so.
All done, so we could take the sleep night train to Jalandhar, Punjab, where we are now since this afternoon! On a sleeper night train of 12 hours long, enough time to snooze. Such change of scenery and people already! Lots of lush green fields filled with corn, grains and vegetables (almost looking like western Belgium or northern France) which is in stark contrast to the dry yellow lands of Rajasthan of the past 2 months. Also the people here speak with different accents and wear the sikh turbans.
This morning when we passed Firozpur, we were just a few kilometers away from the Pakistan border cut off by the river Sutlej. We are supposed to go to Pakistan Punjab next week, but as you might have heard about the sudden chaos in Pakistan with the assassination of supposed female president Benazir Bhutto, we don't know now if we can get in or even get a visa. Or if it's safe for us to go....hmmm. We have only heard good stories about Pakistan from other travelers so far, so it's hard to say really.
More about that tomorrow. Now we're off to the Shree Baba Harballabh Sangeet Sammelan festival of Punjabi and classical music for the next 3 days, on a press accreditation!
Oh yeah, for pictures, look to the right hand side in the link bar as Maarten has made a nifty photoviewer some weeks ago where we are uploading all photo's according to the places we've been. We'll limit the amount of photo's in the posts from now on as it takes a lot of time for us loading them up and for you loading the blog.
...our next project in Punjab about to kick off!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Pushkar round-up, straight from the desert
Now in Jaisalmer, surrounded by the desert. The bus ride was pretty nice and we even saw some sand dunes. The desert here however doesn't have much sand dunes as you normally would expect. The landscape is quite flat, with sandy and rocky ground where low vegetation grows in the shape of various bushes and small trees. Desert shrub. We arrived in the evening but can see the fort that is lit up in yellow light. It looks nice enough, more pictureque and cute as it lacks the impressive size and exterior of all the other forts in Bundi, Chittor and Jodhpur. We probably won't stay long here and it all depends whether we can find musicians tomorrow. The visit to Barnawa in a few days is way more promising and it feels like we're duly filling our time here. We might get surprised....
Since we have done most of our recordings in/around Pushkar and during the mela throughout November, why not a quick round-up of things visual and some audio clips?
Side road tattooing at the mela, squatted on the ground, with a pen attached to a little battery accu that gave sparks. Just alcohol was put on the arm and no change of needle. Why sterilize huh? All the customers were kids, the youngest ones being two 12 year-old girls. Whom by the way already had faded tattoos from last year and back to get them done over. Hardcore.
The broader folk dance programme of the mela had some amazing dances from the states of Orissa, Haryana, Maharastra, Madya Pradesh and Gujarat. The dance of the sea people from Gujarat stood out by a mile through the tribal drum sounds and the heavy African feel that it breathed in every way. It was said that the dance was 750 years old and from a Gujarati tribe that migrated from inland to the sea -which perhaps excludes that this tribe could have come from Africa, if one has doubts- We still wonder though.... Check out this clip!
Some audio clips from the mela, taken at the dance programme and the Rajasthani folk prgramme.
Gujarati dance with sticks, where males and females were dancing around each other, hitting their sticks together in different patterns.
Gujarati stick dance (excerpt)
Haryana dance, which is a sort of Punjabi dance. Haryana shares the same culture as Punjab except that they speak Hindi as the only difference.
Haryana dance (excerpt)
Maharastra dance, the state of the cities Mumbai and Pune, which was very vivid with a lot of costumed dancers dressed up as warriors, lions and tigers. The polyphonic beats are pretty special as it sounds like an effect from a sampler, but it was all played on acoustic instruments.
Maharastra costume dance (excerpt)
The Desert Symphony. An orchestra that was made out of many different Rajasthani musicians from the west of the state of the Jaisalmer and Barmer districts. It began with an amazing thrift of morchang (jew's harp) that sounded like acoustic acid!
Desert Symphony, morchang intro (excerpt)
During the mela we met Neire, a mad and sincerely nice fellow Belgian from the west of Flandria (Diksmui' jong!), travelling alone. He had just come from several months hopping around in Pakistan (some good stories about the northwest region) and at the mela and Jaisalmer he made excellent photo's that he liked to share with us..and likewise with you all below! Other eyes scour for different beauty.
Ok, we'll have some radio silence for a week now, -and not really thinking about christmas, that is-
ek~ Gypsykids
do~ Making spicey chutney
tin~ Going for the camera
chaar~ Musulman takin it chanti
paanch~ Never to small for a Biri
cheh~ Inbetween the raves
saat~ Hup met 't hooi
aat~ Ooooh
nau, Morchangplayer from Jaiselmer busstation.
das, Traditionnel Indian shitting @ sunset!
Since we have done most of our recordings in/around Pushkar and during the mela throughout November, why not a quick round-up of things visual and some audio clips?
Side road tattooing at the mela, squatted on the ground, with a pen attached to a little battery accu that gave sparks. Just alcohol was put on the arm and no change of needle. Why sterilize huh? All the customers were kids, the youngest ones being two 12 year-old girls. Whom by the way already had faded tattoos from last year and back to get them done over. Hardcore.
The broader folk dance programme of the mela had some amazing dances from the states of Orissa, Haryana, Maharastra, Madya Pradesh and Gujarat. The dance of the sea people from Gujarat stood out by a mile through the tribal drum sounds and the heavy African feel that it breathed in every way. It was said that the dance was 750 years old and from a Gujarati tribe that migrated from inland to the sea -which perhaps excludes that this tribe could have come from Africa, if one has doubts- We still wonder though.... Check out this clip!
Some audio clips from the mela, taken at the dance programme and the Rajasthani folk prgramme.
Gujarati dance with sticks, where males and females were dancing around each other, hitting their sticks together in different patterns.
Gujarati stick dance (excerpt)
Haryana dance, which is a sort of Punjabi dance. Haryana shares the same culture as Punjab except that they speak Hindi as the only difference.
Haryana dance (excerpt)
Maharastra dance, the state of the cities Mumbai and Pune, which was very vivid with a lot of costumed dancers dressed up as warriors, lions and tigers. The polyphonic beats are pretty special as it sounds like an effect from a sampler, but it was all played on acoustic instruments.
Maharastra costume dance (excerpt)
The Desert Symphony. An orchestra that was made out of many different Rajasthani musicians from the west of the state of the Jaisalmer and Barmer districts. It began with an amazing thrift of morchang (jew's harp) that sounded like acoustic acid!
Desert Symphony, morchang intro (excerpt)
During the mela we met Neire, a mad and sincerely nice fellow Belgian from the west of Flandria (Diksmui' jong!), travelling alone. He had just come from several months hopping around in Pakistan (some good stories about the northwest region) and at the mela and Jaisalmer he made excellent photo's that he liked to share with us..and likewise with you all below! Other eyes scour for different beauty.
Ok, we'll have some radio silence for a week now, -and not really thinking about christmas, that is-
ek~ Gypsykids
do~ Making spicey chutney
tin~ Going for the camera
chaar~ Musulman takin it chanti
paanch~ Never to small for a Biri
cheh~ Inbetween the raves
saat~ Hup met 't hooi
aat~ Ooooh
nau, Morchangplayer from Jaiselmer busstation.
das, Traditionnel Indian shitting @ sunset!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Jodhpurian delights and institutional highs
The city of Jodhpur, mid-west Rajasthan, last big city before the great Thar desert starts spreading westwards towards the Pakistani border.
Early in the morning we had taken a coach from Udaipur. At the bus stand we met several tourists from the States and Canada (hi Ben and your 2 female friends!), one of them was Peijman from Seattle and we soon during the ride we came talking about music in general and then our project. It was nice to travel with folks that liked what we were doing, understanding the idea behind it. And then by a stroke of pure coincidence, it turned out that Peijman personally knows the folks from the Sun City Girls very well and by that also Sublime Frequencies, also from Seattle. What are the odds ey! Peijman has been playing with the SCG's and is the drummer of the experimental rock-meets-arab outfit Secret Chiefs 3, the band of Mr Bungle's Trey Spruance. On our going-away party at Rebel Up, I even played a Secret Chiefs track! Again, what are the odds? Small world indeed. Peijman has been here since September, following tabla classes with a master in Kolkata. I hope the inspiration will work out to something good for you back in the States! Get that European tour on the road! :)
Arrival in Jodhpur and straight into the dry air of traffic pollution when stepping off the bus. Yay. For once we let ourselves be led by station hawks who claimed to have a cheap hotel right in the centre. And actually, they were right. We got the biggest room so far, clean and decent for the price. The guys of the hotel, including the 2 hawks, turned out to be very fine folks. It's just that a first station hassle impression can put you on the wrong and cautious foot. We keep on learning more and more.
We especially came here to talk with the people of the Rupayan Sansthan institute, dedicated to the Rajasthani folk music culture. In Pushkur, I had found a book on the history of Rajasthani life and culture, with the title *Rajasthan, an oral history*. It was written by Rustom Bharucha through conversations with Kothal Komari. Komari started the institute back in the 1960's as before that, no documentation on Rajasthani culture was carried out, let alone the archiving of patron and court music, the main outline of Rajasthani folk music. Before he died of cancer in 2004, Komari had already passed on the torch to his son Kuldeep Komari and he has kept the institute running. Kuldeep received us amazingly open, better than we had expected since our European belief was that time is not a virtue at such institutes (at least in the west). Even while we weren't academics he answered our enthusiasm with all the knowledge that he wanted to share and gave us the whole afternoon. Again more than we had expected, such overflow of history and current affairs. We got to see the archives and yeah, bewilderment and drooling excitement overwhelmed us. Cupboards full of reel tapes, tapes, video's and whatnot, all recorded, researched and collected since the 1960's. Not all material just done by themselves but also by many western scholars who shared their recordings with the institute. Like the Norwegian research lady whose research gifted them a staggering 150 tapes of epic folk storytellings and rural music. Imagine all that history, well preserved and archived for future generations to come! Kuldeep liked the idea of our project as we explained him into detail what we have been doing so far and what we are still looking for. In all fairness he confided to us that what we do has no pure relation to the academic documentation of folk music, since most folk songs we recorded or will record are already known. We knew that to some extent, but he did like our idea of our project being presented as a collage of Rajasthani music culture as it is now, from radio pop to acoustic street folk. Academic or not, he felt that anything that people record in Rajasthan to have value for the archive. On the pretext of getting help or support from the institute in our last days of the Rajasthan project, we didn't even have to ask Kuldeep this question. Halfway during the afternoon, 2 musicians stepped into the office. Dark tanned, carrying instruments and dressed in white Rajasthani kurta's. They introduced themselves as from the Khan family and therefore were from the Langa caste. The Langa's are a professional music caste who in olden times were supported by patrons, like a certain well-to-do family in a rural area.
They just came from a radio performance and came to see Kuldeep as they hadn't seen each other a long while (as they had been touring earlier in the year and Kuldeep had been on tour with another folk group). The institute had bought an antique Surando violin from Pakistan and Kuldeep wanted to know the quality of the instrument though the 2 musicians, since they play the Rajasthani adaptation of this instrument.
After they tuned and measured it, they started playing instrumental folk songs without hesitation. With even more bravado, as they wanted to impress these white folks who were recording and filming them with their permission. Kuldeep was very attentive to pick up on our unspoken desire and asked them in Marwari if we could spend time in their village Barnawa to record and film them. The musicians said yes without having to think a second and we agreed that we could come on the 23rd. We were just baffled, such an honor! As the village of Barnawa lies 100 km's away inbetween Jodhpur and Barmer, in a remote rural region where the Thar desert begins, we'll have to take a bus to another village where from there we will be picked up by jeep.
And that's not all. The oldest one of them told me that he had been in Brussels a few months ago, as well as touring the rest of Europe and States. He vaguely referred to Latcho Drom, the movie about Eurasian gypsies by Tony Gatlif. "You can hear and see me playing the sarangi in the movie and also other family members play in it" he blankly said. Say what? Here a scene of the Rajasthani part of it, youtube'd. Or see here:
We started talking about Langa music and I asked them if they knew the group Musafir, which is a mixed group of Langa's, Manganiyars and Kabeliya's. "Well, yes that is my younger brother", he answered. Such a small world, again.
I could go on an on, about the foresight of spending time with the Khan family in their rural village, about the many old and special Rajasthani instruments in the showroom of Rupayan Sansthan, the many deep talks we have had with Kuldeep in the last few days -as we have gone back to him every day since monday-, the idea's that are spinning our head right now about plans with the institute and the archives. A near overload that we can't fathom right now. We'll just take it as it comes along, they way we have been lucky and helped at so many occasions. It's not any different now, even so close to the end of our 2 months in Rajasthan and project.
Another nice meeting that links to this all was with Tom and Wim, fellow Belgians from Ghent who teach at a dancing school and who we met at a roadside parcel packing shack. They are in India for learning specific Rajasthani Sapera dances -Kabeliya style-. After we told them of our meeting with Kuldeep and the Khan Langa's, we were once again amazed when we heard that the Khan musicians (and brother of *our* Khan) of Musafir actually live in Ghent and that Tom and Wim work with them! Such small world, like an old record on repeat you all must think.
And no, the records keeps on repeating. At our hotel next door, a group of Bhopa folk musicians is playing every night, drums and ravanattha. On the second night we talked to them, joking with them that we know how to play the ravanattha a little bit. When we dropped the name of our teacher Rampal, the musician's mouths fell open: the drummer said in amazement "he is married to my sister Sita!", while the 2 elder women exclaimed "Rampal is our brother!" As soon as they spoke this out loud, we could spot the resemblance in their looks and were equally amazed. While Pushkar is 200 km's away, the family tree of the Bhopa's does not care about distance. Oh small w.....nah, I'll leave it unspoken this time ;)
That kinda wraps it up for now and perhaps for a small while. We did many more fun stuff here like eating good food, buying old cassettes and tomorrow going to a music wholesaler to find exclusive folk cassettes. Later in the afternoon we'll make our way to Jaisalmer for 2 nights before we'll head down to Barnawa at the Khan's musical outpost. I reckon we might not have internet in the week or so, which is why this long post before we set off.
Oh, a big hello to Chitose from Japan, who plays the Arabic oud lute pretty darn well! wow, bow down to that.
Udaipur pics. a lot.
the lake palaces
these torn and real posters make arty stencil graffiti look kinda bleak hah :)
visiting a family haveli home, 3 smiling ladies in their 500 year old room with same old mural paintings
young generation of the family
Not rabid, toothpaste.
Ashok Rao
home altar
Ektara Jogi
singing
Tibetan market sign
at Tibetan market, with neon fleece hat.
finally sunny again!
awesome kid
pics from the veggie market
those eyes...
sweet banana family
Santoor player Lalit and cousin on tabla
entertainment at the steel convention, our man M.M. Ali on the far left- and his group
Early in the morning we had taken a coach from Udaipur. At the bus stand we met several tourists from the States and Canada (hi Ben and your 2 female friends!), one of them was Peijman from Seattle and we soon during the ride we came talking about music in general and then our project. It was nice to travel with folks that liked what we were doing, understanding the idea behind it. And then by a stroke of pure coincidence, it turned out that Peijman personally knows the folks from the Sun City Girls very well and by that also Sublime Frequencies, also from Seattle. What are the odds ey! Peijman has been playing with the SCG's and is the drummer of the experimental rock-meets-arab outfit Secret Chiefs 3, the band of Mr Bungle's Trey Spruance. On our going-away party at Rebel Up, I even played a Secret Chiefs track! Again, what are the odds? Small world indeed. Peijman has been here since September, following tabla classes with a master in Kolkata. I hope the inspiration will work out to something good for you back in the States! Get that European tour on the road! :)
Arrival in Jodhpur and straight into the dry air of traffic pollution when stepping off the bus. Yay. For once we let ourselves be led by station hawks who claimed to have a cheap hotel right in the centre. And actually, they were right. We got the biggest room so far, clean and decent for the price. The guys of the hotel, including the 2 hawks, turned out to be very fine folks. It's just that a first station hassle impression can put you on the wrong and cautious foot. We keep on learning more and more.
We especially came here to talk with the people of the Rupayan Sansthan institute, dedicated to the Rajasthani folk music culture. In Pushkur, I had found a book on the history of Rajasthani life and culture, with the title *Rajasthan, an oral history*. It was written by Rustom Bharucha through conversations with Kothal Komari. Komari started the institute back in the 1960's as before that, no documentation on Rajasthani culture was carried out, let alone the archiving of patron and court music, the main outline of Rajasthani folk music. Before he died of cancer in 2004, Komari had already passed on the torch to his son Kuldeep Komari and he has kept the institute running. Kuldeep received us amazingly open, better than we had expected since our European belief was that time is not a virtue at such institutes (at least in the west). Even while we weren't academics he answered our enthusiasm with all the knowledge that he wanted to share and gave us the whole afternoon. Again more than we had expected, such overflow of history and current affairs. We got to see the archives and yeah, bewilderment and drooling excitement overwhelmed us. Cupboards full of reel tapes, tapes, video's and whatnot, all recorded, researched and collected since the 1960's. Not all material just done by themselves but also by many western scholars who shared their recordings with the institute. Like the Norwegian research lady whose research gifted them a staggering 150 tapes of epic folk storytellings and rural music. Imagine all that history, well preserved and archived for future generations to come! Kuldeep liked the idea of our project as we explained him into detail what we have been doing so far and what we are still looking for. In all fairness he confided to us that what we do has no pure relation to the academic documentation of folk music, since most folk songs we recorded or will record are already known. We knew that to some extent, but he did like our idea of our project being presented as a collage of Rajasthani music culture as it is now, from radio pop to acoustic street folk. Academic or not, he felt that anything that people record in Rajasthan to have value for the archive. On the pretext of getting help or support from the institute in our last days of the Rajasthan project, we didn't even have to ask Kuldeep this question. Halfway during the afternoon, 2 musicians stepped into the office. Dark tanned, carrying instruments and dressed in white Rajasthani kurta's. They introduced themselves as from the Khan family and therefore were from the Langa caste. The Langa's are a professional music caste who in olden times were supported by patrons, like a certain well-to-do family in a rural area.
They just came from a radio performance and came to see Kuldeep as they hadn't seen each other a long while (as they had been touring earlier in the year and Kuldeep had been on tour with another folk group). The institute had bought an antique Surando violin from Pakistan and Kuldeep wanted to know the quality of the instrument though the 2 musicians, since they play the Rajasthani adaptation of this instrument.
After they tuned and measured it, they started playing instrumental folk songs without hesitation. With even more bravado, as they wanted to impress these white folks who were recording and filming them with their permission. Kuldeep was very attentive to pick up on our unspoken desire and asked them in Marwari if we could spend time in their village Barnawa to record and film them. The musicians said yes without having to think a second and we agreed that we could come on the 23rd. We were just baffled, such an honor! As the village of Barnawa lies 100 km's away inbetween Jodhpur and Barmer, in a remote rural region where the Thar desert begins, we'll have to take a bus to another village where from there we will be picked up by jeep.
And that's not all. The oldest one of them told me that he had been in Brussels a few months ago, as well as touring the rest of Europe and States. He vaguely referred to Latcho Drom, the movie about Eurasian gypsies by Tony Gatlif. "You can hear and see me playing the sarangi in the movie and also other family members play in it" he blankly said. Say what? Here a scene of the Rajasthani part of it, youtube'd. Or see here:
We started talking about Langa music and I asked them if they knew the group Musafir, which is a mixed group of Langa's, Manganiyars and Kabeliya's. "Well, yes that is my younger brother", he answered. Such a small world, again.
I could go on an on, about the foresight of spending time with the Khan family in their rural village, about the many old and special Rajasthani instruments in the showroom of Rupayan Sansthan, the many deep talks we have had with Kuldeep in the last few days -as we have gone back to him every day since monday-, the idea's that are spinning our head right now about plans with the institute and the archives. A near overload that we can't fathom right now. We'll just take it as it comes along, they way we have been lucky and helped at so many occasions. It's not any different now, even so close to the end of our 2 months in Rajasthan and project.
Another nice meeting that links to this all was with Tom and Wim, fellow Belgians from Ghent who teach at a dancing school and who we met at a roadside parcel packing shack. They are in India for learning specific Rajasthani Sapera dances -Kabeliya style-. After we told them of our meeting with Kuldeep and the Khan Langa's, we were once again amazed when we heard that the Khan musicians (and brother of *our* Khan) of Musafir actually live in Ghent and that Tom and Wim work with them! Such small world, like an old record on repeat you all must think.
And no, the records keeps on repeating. At our hotel next door, a group of Bhopa folk musicians is playing every night, drums and ravanattha. On the second night we talked to them, joking with them that we know how to play the ravanattha a little bit. When we dropped the name of our teacher Rampal, the musician's mouths fell open: the drummer said in amazement "he is married to my sister Sita!", while the 2 elder women exclaimed "Rampal is our brother!" As soon as they spoke this out loud, we could spot the resemblance in their looks and were equally amazed. While Pushkar is 200 km's away, the family tree of the Bhopa's does not care about distance. Oh small w.....nah, I'll leave it unspoken this time ;)
That kinda wraps it up for now and perhaps for a small while. We did many more fun stuff here like eating good food, buying old cassettes and tomorrow going to a music wholesaler to find exclusive folk cassettes. Later in the afternoon we'll make our way to Jaisalmer for 2 nights before we'll head down to Barnawa at the Khan's musical outpost. I reckon we might not have internet in the week or so, which is why this long post before we set off.
Oh, a big hello to Chitose from Japan, who plays the Arabic oud lute pretty darn well! wow, bow down to that.
Udaipur pics. a lot.
the lake palaces
these torn and real posters make arty stencil graffiti look kinda bleak hah :)
visiting a family haveli home, 3 smiling ladies in their 500 year old room with same old mural paintings
young generation of the family
Not rabid, toothpaste.
Ashok Rao
home altar
Ektara Jogi
singing
Tibetan market sign
at Tibetan market, with neon fleece hat.
finally sunny again!
awesome kid
pics from the veggie market
those eyes...
sweet banana family
Santoor player Lalit and cousin on tabla
entertainment at the steel convention, our man M.M. Ali on the far left- and his group
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