Punjabi gunshots from the liquor store and soothing spiritual raga's on pillows

first off all, a very shanti 2008 from me and Maarten! May all the best come to you and so on! :P

Jalandhar New Year - Drinking Shooting Laughing
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Jalandhar, what fame the city holds? Well, the manufacturing of sports articles and fashion like Adidas and Reebok. Hence a lot of the guys walk in sweaters or track suits of said brands. Oh, and wikipedia tells us that Apache Indian originally hails from Jalandhar. Wow, boom shak-a-lak it is. :)

We were at the Harballabh festival for 3 days, the main days that the Indian classical masters would perform their intricate styles of improvisation and themed raga's. The festival was set in the Devi Talab temple where we also cheaply stayed in the Mandir of the temple (a Mandir is a sort of holy hotel for pilgrims on temple grounds). Very handy for us, as we just had to walk up 2 stairs to be at peace in our rooms after every festival night.

The temple complex was quite a surreal place because it also was a holy entertainment park where many locals and Punjabi's come looking for blessings, like a small Disneyland -or Efteling- of some sorts, but then hindu inspired! One *attraction* was a grotto that had a big lion mouthed entrence in which faithfull kids and adults could walk into knee deep water and make a blessing at a Shiva shrine. Allover the park there were big plastic or stone statues of Hindu gods and holy animals, made colorful to attract the children's attention.

We sort of got a press accreditation by request and the organization arranged the room cheaply for us. sweet! But we didn't get press cards or anything, rather our skin color seemed to be enough so that every festival person including the armed guards with AK47's, let us into the backstage and vip buffet area. Yup, again free buffet food of high class quality. We're almost getting a bit spoiled from it you might think heh ;)

We weren't just there to freeload, but really for the 3 days of live music by a whole lineup of famous classical Indian musicians, mostly from Northern India.
I only know a little bit about raga's and what specific rhythms they consist of in building up their improvisation, but by far not enough to give it a decent review. Plus, that would be too academic and not fun to read if you have no clue what raga's are or how Indian classical music sounds like. The simple approach it is, so here it goes. Reviews!

oh yeah, It all took place in a big white tent and everyone was seated upon thin matrasses on the floor. You needed to take your shoes off and deliver them to the shoe-keepers. This worked well for softly sitting down in a lotus position, or lying down and slumbering. Finally, no standing up to do at a festival with good music. Only downside was that there was a faint socky and footy smell in the air though.

Day 1, 28th

Ustad Ali Ahmed Khan & Party (Ustad is like the title of Maestro in the west)
bah, we arrived late as we spent too much time in the internet cafe, writing the previous post, so we missed him playing. I really wanted to hear his Shehnai (double reed flute) improvisations. We did see him though, backstage that is. We heard from the other press folks that it was amazing. yay.

Shri Sabri Khan & Family
2 fella's -father and son- where duelling each other on the Sarangi goatskin violin with a Santoor (zither/cimbalum) on the background. It sounded quite nice but it only really got going after 45 minutes when the improvisations went fluent and the tempo of the raga's became faster and heavier. It did sound a little bit clean and on the safe side compared to Sarangi playing of the Langa's in Rajasthan that is played in a rougher and more melodical manner. It's Indian classical music after all, which is always more safe than the Indian village folk music.

Pandit K. Upendra Bhatt (Pandit indicates the master level of a skilled Indian musician)
Bhatt is famous for his vocal quality, we read. The raga's he performed were done in a very deep voice which he could also raise and twinge to get that extra special quality in Hindi singing. He was accompanied by harmonium, tabla and tambura and it went well as the focus was still more on his voice than the instruments. He had a good grasp on us and his voice soothed our minds with spiritual hymns.

Shri Nishat Khan (Shri is the term for Mister btw)
Nishar Khan is a special case, being one of the young generation he likes to experiment more with other world styles and has taken bits and pieces from contemporary jazz, rock and flamenco into his playing style. He took a looooong time tuning up his Sitar, which was quite annoying. It began a bit slow and with average repetitive sitar melodies where the rhythm was walking at a slow pace. He was showing off quite a lot too, with every quick turnover looking at the audience with bubbly eyes to get a reaction. So people clapped and gave him too much respect for flimsy play. -You'll never find this kinda show-off behavior with fingerpick guitarists, who are equally a skilled, but ok-. Finally after meddling 1 hour of his 2 hour show, the pace pick up and by wonder, he started to play good! Inspired as he suddenly was, he mixed classical Indian raga's with flamenco and fierce roughly played segments and he reached the height that was promised in the booklet. In the end I must admit that he was really good, but that says more about his second hour than his total performance.

side note:
-He wouldn't be the last one either to annoy us with tuning, as a lot of artists took their time too easy to tune all strings. This caused 30 minutes of twiddling around and a lot of uninspired beginnings to their raga's so that half of their performances were uninteresting. We simply wondered why they just couldn't tune up backstage or in their hotel room (the same mandir as us) instead of letting people lose time.....-

It was around 2 o'clock at night around this time and still an artist to come. wow!

Ustad Mubarak Ali
Last performance was a singer from Pakistan, Ustad Mubarak Ali as he was added to the bill last-minute and traveled from nearby Pakistan just the day after the Bhutto assassination. He did some talking beforehand in foreigners Hindi, but no words about the political situation. I guess in this part of the world one is not so easy to denounce a political system as western artists sometimes like to say about their own governments or leaders. His vocal style was way more different than Bhatt's style as Mubarak Ali sounded more raspy and closer to the Arab style of singing, making it a very interesting and spicy contrast to the general style of the night. It were still raga's that he sung, but the twist he gave on them made them sound more Sufi than Indian. He held our attention for the first 4 long raga's and after that it dwindled a little bit and repeated the same vocal style until there was no more new qualities to discover. It was about 4am by then, so I left to get sleep. After that he did pick up again and took a faster pitch, as we could hear from our room.

Day 2, 29th

For half of the afternoon we were busy walking around the streets of Jalandhar, eating a 20cent breakfast with nice massala and veggies, buying a whole stack of old cassette tapes of Punjabi folk, Sikh temple music and Pakistani pop. And basicly getting a lot of stares from locals. Jalandhar isn't touristy at all since there isn't anything of interest to visit for the average wanderer, so you quickly find yourself surrounded by people who want to get to know you. Though the city is ugly, the locals are quite nice folks. Much different from the bawdy and more direct Rajasthani's. Punjabi's like to introduce themselves in a more delicate way, not just the men but on several occasions even flirting teenage girls, with or without their mothers came up talking to us. The people also like taking photographs of us, putting their flustered baby in our hands, or posing with random groups of youngsters. It's kinda like being a sort of famous person without the heckling, but just the nice chat. We've figured out that the Punjabi's are more easy to unlock than the Rajasthani's and they open themselves all too eagerly to you, explaining you their problems our what's on their mind. They're chattyboxes by heart! Even their accent indicates a level of soundwaves that bounce up and down, giving it a charming blabbering ring. Also their looks are diverse. You have the Sikh people who have a more pale skin color that gives them a near Arabic/Persian look. Or the people with light skin color and blue/greenish eyes from the old northern tribes. Or those with a darker skin color and pointy noses, with ancestry from the old Sindh/Indus area (Pakistan) across the border. Since this region has been flooded so many times with different invaders like the Persians, Pathans, Mughuls who mixed with the local Vedic and Aryan population, the result is a vast pallet of mixed genes. Also here there are quite a number of people who have a certain skin disease -or rather a deflection- than turns them pale, near to white. White like someone from Iceland or the UK, or white as an albino. Michael Jackson even springs to mind. Sometimes their skin still has some patches of darker pigment, but sometimes not and paleness rules their lack of skin color. In India all these mixed looks are an interesting feat of numerous multicultural societies since the dawn of the continent.

We took a lot of photographs during our walk and while traffic was congested, all the folks on cycle riksha's were only to happy to pose. We've added those to the photo's in the Jalandhar folder. -and some below-
Back to the festival.

Ajay Singh
He had won last year's youth competition in the percussion category and we saw a bit of him before we went into town. His ruffling style on the tabla was amazing for such a young person in his early twenties and he ventured into more experimental rhythms than the traditional ones. We later talked to him and learned that he lives in the UK and is trying to land his career in Europe. He's surely on his way.

Shri Tejendra Narayan Mazumdar
This Indian musician also hailed from the UK and played the Rudra Veena, a traditional instrument that is the ancient ancestor of the Sitar. Its sounds are more delicate and softly plucked. You probably will have heard the Veena as background music if you've eaten in an Indian restaurant as it sounds as the typical instrument for spiritual tones. Not many musicians play this instrument anymore and we found it interesting that an Indian immigrant from the UK would keep this tradition alive while people in the native country don't do so much anymore. Perhaps old traditions die hard abroad in cultural exile, while they are easy to perish within the place of origin where culture evolves as societies also do. Mazumdar's set was quite nice, but as the Veena goes, it's such a delicate sound that it can quickly get overhauled by a rash tabla (or its high levels from the sounddesk) and so it happened. It's a pity, as the music was far more fitting and soothing without tabla. During dinner I would liked to speak to Mazumdar about above topic on transmigrated traditions, or at least his view on it. But I didn't, food took away the attention.

Pandit Rajan Mishra & Pandit Sajan Misra
Both folks from the east of the country on the Benares (Varanasi) - Kolkata (Calcutta) line where most classical artists live or come from. As we were eating, we heard bits and pieces of their set. They both played the Sitar and sung raga's. We can't remember much memorable from it all. Blame it on the class food.

Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma
Sharma was the star of the night we suddenly realized as people rushed him into the backstage area with a whole battery of press and fans on his tail. He sat down, looking bewildered from all the hustle, while we were eating across him. He's from Jammu the state north of Punjab and below Kashmir and he is a quirky pale fellow with a nearly grey haired afro. Maarten said he looked like dutch cabaretier Wim Sonnevelt. he plays the Santoor, the zither from Kashmir and he's the best master at it. He also took 30 or more minutes to tune up and appeared to be a sulky character on stage. His raga's began a bit dull again but halfway it picked up and he was off his virtual ways. We didn't stay for the full show and went for some *early* sleep at 3am.

Day 3, 30th

Ustad Maqbool Hussain Khan
As we woke up quite late, we didn't see him play but could hear him on the PA announcers from across the road where we had our breakfast. His vocals were amazing and with a deep tone he sang beautiful raga hymns that trembled with vigor. In between we also spent some time in the media room doing internet stuff, like writing letters to family and -ahem- the invisible editor ;)

Shri Kartik Kumar & Niladri Kumar
Father and son Kumar both play the Sitar and dueled each other with fast and layering melodies. It was a special contest and in the last 30 minutes they brought it to amazing heights when they started playing the Sitar roughly, as if bringing classical metal noise, wow! Also here the son was more on the experimental side, which was a perfect and matching contrast to the tidier tones of his father. Some more western influences where to be heard from N. Kumar junior and flamenco, fingerpick blues and rock riffs were to be heard. One of the more memorable performances of the festival for sure.

Smt. Savita Devi
Devi is a vocalist from Benares from a family line of musicians. As her mother was a famous vocal raga singer, she followed into her footsteps. Her voice was a bit on the high side, with the crack one someone that is in her middle old age. It was nice for 2 songs, but her voice wasn't our thing. A younger Indian fellow said it resembled the singing of a crow. Sure other people enjoyed her instead.

Ustad Tari Khan (Pakistan)
yes the famous Tari Khan, coming all the way from California where he runs his classy tabla school (like Zakhir Hussain). His skill is said to be equal to Zakhir Hussain, or no, perhaps already better as Tari Khan is younger and bound touch higher skies than his Indian counterpart. He started straight off with steady ruffling and steady tapping that continued for nearly 2 hours. Wow, exhilarating! It was like acoustic mathematics brought alive in sound and everyone held their breath, clapping loudly with every turnover and completion of his vocational calculation that he poeticly sung into the mic (that went like: ba ba ki bi ba, tak tak, ra sa ra bi do bi do etc., read more about that in the raga wikipedia piece). He was giving many a percussionist a run for their money, not to mention him easily outdoing the likes of Autechre or Squarepusher by merely the touch of 2 hands. "Why copy and paste rhythms in electronic music" he perhaps was speaking through his acoustic skills. Another fun bit was that he was drowning out the sound of talking people in the audience by providing a backfeed ring with a certain tap on the side of the tabla! How's that for controlling your audience in playful tones. Such class! Maarten was mesmerized by it all and we found ourselves lucky to have witnessed this display of beat divinity.
After the show, the whole press circus and fans followed him backstage so that the armed guards couldn't stop people anymore. Guns are just fashion, not an item to use thankfully. We followed the circus, trying to get a quick interview with Tari on camera. We had the luck of skin color and our faux press credentials that we got into the small room where Tari was. Just as Maarten was about to shake his hand and to ask a few question, his rucksack stuck to the light switch and turned it off, giving the people in the room a quick scare for no reason and rushing out haha. And *poof* when the lights switched back on, gone Tari was, out of the door aww! We did speak to the fellow who was accompanying him on the harmonium (which was unnecessary really), who in fact was a tabla master himself. He spoke about the mathematical quality of Tari's music, it being totally uneven, calculated straight from his head by pure improvisation and not put in quartered rhythms that you otherwise find in western or any style of percussion in pop music. Even this master admitted that Tari could not be followed by the best, so his gleaming manic smile and sweaty dripping on the stage next to Tari explained a lot suddenly :)

Pandit Bhola Nath Mishra
Nath Mishra was the closing act of the festival and promised to be a good raga vocalist which he made to be fully true, if not more. His voice had the deep droney quality that is fit for raga's but he could bend his voice in such a lush and livid manner that the raga's more sounded like spiritual folk songs. I was captured by his sound and melancholic melodies that went on an on as a parting song without end. An end had to come and the people of the organization assembled in front of the stage to throw heaps of orange bud flowers onto Mishra and the band, thereby spreading a sweet scent into the cold winter air.

The festival was over and we can only say to have been happy to be there. It also celebrated its 132nd edition, hats off! It therefore can rightfully calls itself the oldest and longest festival of Indian classical music. And all that for free, as no one has to pay entry because all the funding comes from donations and sponsors in the shape of rich individuals or corporate companies. All that without any promotional spam or annoying billboards to advertise, except for only a *thank you* board naming all the persons/entities who have given funds. Compared to all our more or less corporate festivals back home that prick out your eyes with brand names or commercial propaganda slander, this was a fresh and hassle free experience. Plus the organization didn't make you feel like cattle. Should you be a secret lover of Indian classical music, this is the festival you once must have attended.

Ok, enough about all that. In between we also did a lot of filming and recording in search of the Punjabi culture. In the next 2 weeks we'll return to Jalandhar as through some people in the Harballabh organization we can get help in recording Punjabi folk or special styles limited to Punjab. Jalandhar houses one of India's most renowned art institutions, which includes music ofcourse and more! The daughter of one of the organizers is a famous raga singer nowadays, so let's see what might come from that.

At the last night of the festival we also met Seema from Ludhiana, a widow who was all by herself at the festival, a combination of facts that otherwise condemn a woman to solitude and social restrains through traditional rules. Not Seema, as she explained herself to be an active person who has the permission from her deceased husband's family (with whom she and her daughter still live) to be as free as she wants to be. She is part of a theater group that touches social issues that play in India and has just finished doing a film on an AIDS awareness in India. Unlike the west, India still has a long way to travel as the knowledge about the AIDS virus is below par in the general opinion. *No AIDS = Know AIDS* is the rhyming slogan given to the campaign. Although of Hindu faith, Seema would normally be against contraception and safe sex by Hindu tradition, but she actually thinks open minded of the issue by also believing in the freedom of one's choice. Only that people should make conscious decisions and take appropriate protection if one should have pre-marital intercourse. She invited us so we will go to Ludhiana next week and record the theater on these issues. She might also be able to help us with local Punjabi folk musicians, so we'll see what will happen. Open books are a good thing here :)

New Year. Yes. We didn't do much. Hours before the clock stroke 12 we were sitting at a roadside bar, next to the big interstate highway overhead passage. Nice gritty and polluted setting. We had met Andy from Manchester at the festival who was here on his own. Andy is living in India for 8 years already, in a small village between the peaks of the northern state of Uttarakhand (or as Uttaranchal), where the first high slopes of the Himalaya loom. Andy before ran music shows in the UK and was acquainted with the Manchester and Birmingham indie scene until he packed his stuff to live a more free life in India in his own justified and self-made way. Nice to meet a person like that who knows the same people from your own network, making it another fun twist of fate. So us three ended up drinking at the roadside bar, where they served alcohol which is rare. In Punjab, alcohol is to be found aplenty, you normally can only buy and take home. We hadn't touched much alcohol since leaving Europe, but new year called for some relaxation. They had fine red Indian wine from the Maharashtra area, so it was a blessing. Indians by the way, can not hold their liquor. Really. After a few drinks they already are past their limit and get elastic legs, queasy bellies that need emptying or unintelligent waffling. It doesn't complement their soft characters at all and Andy told us that they can easily get aggressive after a few shots. The owner of the makeshift cafe and liquor store came for a talk and Maarten spotted a pistol tucked under his belt. He just asked what the gun was for and so on. Normal chatter. The owner explained about having gotten a permit from local police as he needs to protect his store. God knows from what. He then proceeded to entertain us all of the sudden by wanting to shoot the gun as an ode to us. Ermmmm ok... Maarten got the camera ready to film and so he shot his bullet, into the concrete of the interstate wall. Or so we think. That's not you average end to 2007, but it was ours. We took some cans of black imitation Guinness stout with us and went to the plot of land where Andy was camping out with his car, amidst a dark industrial area with patches of ground around. As Andy's town is cut off by snow till late this month, he is traveling around and sleeping in his car. With a matrass and even an internet connection built into his 1950 taxi car! Not bad at all. We talked, listened to music and nearly missed the new year passing by. Just some distant firework rockets, some people shouting in joy. Minutes later all was silent again on our side of the city. We could hear the thumping of beat music in the distance, but had no need for it. Instead we were listening to 70's Krautrock, Ivor Cutler and Bert Jansch. Not bad. Much better than the radio advertised *Latin Salsa Party in Hotel Maya, Jalandhar*, though that would have been funnier to film perhaps as a quaint experience of imported music. So the night went, guitar strummings and openings of cans while Andy spoke about how snow leopards had already killed 4 of his dogs. Snow leopards that also snatch small children of the town if they go out for a pee on the edge of the woods at dawn.
By 5.30 am we heard Big Ben striking through the airwaves of BBC Radio 4 on the internet. Some western sounds are more fun when you're far away remote from them. We got a bicycle riksha ride to our Mandir early in the morning, the very fresh morning as the nights here aren't too far from many European climates.

That was Jalandhar and yesterday we made our way to Amritsar, the holy place of the Golden Temple of the Sikhs.
Before at Jalandhar station we had been playing with 3 homeless boys for a while, giving them some banana's. They even threw their money coins at us, which we playfully threw away only for them to come back and wanting us to throw it further. It were funny boys, little rascals who seemed to like our unbiased contact and just wanted to play to undo their day, while the Indian people around us didn't like their presence so much. Big deal.
Our train ride of 1 hour took 5 hours. Delays and broken down trains in the middle of nowhere. Such is India.

Upon arrival at the temple, the goldenness beamed towards us and we decided to stay in the Gurudwara of the temple (the hotel for Sikh pilgrims), the Guru Ram Das place as recommend by a Punjabi couple from Amritsar. The entry was guarded by long bearded Sikhs armed with big spears, how great is that!
The rooms there are for free, though they rely on the base that you give a donation when you leave. And to add to it, there's even lukewarm water here! Which most Indian budget hotels do not even offer. There were already a lot of people asleep on their matrasses on the marble courtyard floor. Whole families, elderly couples, the impoverished and more, hundreds. That we got a room to shush our own spoiled habits are in stark contrast to the chilly air and cold floor that the pilgrims sleep on. Perhaps that's part of the true pilgrimage, though we haven't found out.

After that we went to see all of the temple complex and had to deliver our shoes as you need to before entering. Walking barefoot in winter time and ice cold marble isn't the most fun, but our feet got used to feeling numb. We also had to cover our heads with a scarf, so I made a turban out of my blanket shawl that made me look as a mushroomed Rajasthani nomad rather than a Sikh ;) Again we posed with the Indian and Sikh tourists before their camera's, "such fun time with the Indians" as Maarten likes to utter with joy ;)
Alike the sleeping, the food is also for free in the form of a donation. We took a metal thali plate with the pilgrims and sat in lotus positions in long line. As beggars we looked from down up to the food distributing Sikhs walking around with kettles and pots full of chappati bread, sour pickles and yellow dal lentils, holding up our hands as if proclaiming "spare some food please sir!" We ate ourselves full bellied, dropping dal sauce allover us.

On the belief of the Sikhs, it is a peculiar one as it really meddles between Islam and Hinduism, with slightly leaning more on the Islamic side through ways of dressing, praying (on knees, head touching ground) and the way how holy scriptures are being read by Sikh priests. Also the way how all accommodation and food is basically for free for those who have nothing is a genuine social gesture that is not easily to be found in the general world religions. I wouldn't say that the Sikhs are philanthropies by definition as they don't do good deeds to clear their own conscience. The Sikh community strongly believes in the virtue of work and in sharing the burden of it by voluntary shifts so everyone has to chip in.

On Bhutto and Pakistan. We won't be going to Pakistan since everyone is advising us to stay in India and also many of the western consulates and embassies have closed down so that we couldn't count on their help either (well, can we ever unless we pay through the nose?). But it's just way too unstable in Pakistan now. About Bhutto's death; the Musharraf government has released a statement that she died of fracturing her skull by banging her head against the roof from the bomb blast. No mention of any bullet wounds. That while all other reports and eyewitnesses accounts say that she was hit twice by shots in her neck and chest. Now her 19 year old son will lead the party. Imagine that, a 19 year old leading the most profiled key country in the Islamic world that both the Arabs and US are trying to pull apart, fighting for scraps of faith and oil pipe connections. Back to ancient times where rulers were always young. This time hopefully more wise than fierce. At what age did Alexander the Great pass through Pakistan, ravaging it all?

In the next days we will cover Amritsar, explore the Sikh temple music (which starts at 6am by the way) and go to the Pakistani border at Attari.

I'm off, have been sitting for 4 hours in the smell of paint now and I feel bubbles of hallucination prickling my mind, yowwwww.

Ok, some best photo's below. some Rajasthan (Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Barnawa, Deshnok), some Jalandhar

indeed so

honesty is the best

old Rajasthani instrument collection at Rupayan Sansthan

Malaram, the morchang player

Santa claus in Jodhpur, woah!

smoke in the hole

what the...

Jodhpurian moustache

cheeky wild street kids


blind old woman getting hair brushed

with Japanese oud playing friend

Jaisalmer fort






rawwwkstar!




posing females

family from our teacher Rampal in Jaisalmer



says it all

The Langa Khan's in Barnawa

with Mehruddin, the patriarch (white turban) and Nijam (black jacket)

Barnawa sand road

red beard!

at deshnok, rat temple

slurrrrp up!


wall poster at Bikaner. husbands, don't beat your wife!

inside the tent at Harballabh

theme park Devi Talab, yeah!



Maarten's tailor


bicycle riksha man. He waved to us on our last day




true stencil art!

shop board

ch-ching money decoration!

the garbage collecting gypsies of Jalandhar