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

Udaipur without octopussy, we're not fussy

Udaipur, week 7 into the pursuit of Rajasthani culture -pop and folk alike-

We spent a total of 5 days in Udaipur and its smooth lakeside. At the start we weren't recording much. Rather using our time on to do some fruitful editing (Maarten especially, since we had quick enough internet again) whereas I did less. Except for scouring and ripping the radio. Since we left Puskhar it was nearly impossible to find clear frequencies in Kota and the smaller cities. With multiple stations at the dial again, recording time once again! Modern Rajasthani pop, old folk, bollywood, slow raga's and bizarre remakes of western hits into bhangra style, yup all there. And check out this radio pop rip, recognize anything? ;)

Radio pop goes Europe

Udaipur has nice areas around the lake which are refered to as 'ghats'. At the same time the ghats are quite touristy for obvious picturesque reasons, but mostly as Udaipur is regarded as India's most romantic city and it attracts a lot of Indian tourists just for that. Perhaps it does resemble something of Venice, with a Rajasthani charm thrown into it.
We didn't really explore the famous sights, temples nor the 2 big palaces in the middle of the lake, so that's where this tourist talk stops. In February we'll go back and see more, without the project on our mind -hmmm, I wonder-.

Oh yeah factoid. The Bond movie Octopussy has been filmed in Udaipur, especially in the 2 lake palaces and one of the mountain palaces. Every hotel rubs this in your face by showing Octopussy at 7pm sharp, night after night after night. We didn't see it. Dinners took more of our attention. And sometimes we got candlelit, oh wow ;)

One evening we stumbled upon the Tibetan market, a bit away from the ghat area. Instead of finding special Tibetan handcrafts and local produced wares that we expected, only normal generic winter clothing was for sale like once could get in every local shop. It was just a winter market for warm, fleece or thick cotton clothing and the only thing Tibetan about it were the Tibetan immigrants behind their stands. Oh and that every item of clothing had a tag atacched to it, saying *Tibetan market, free Tibet -and so on-*. That's all there was to it. Bargaining wasn't the bizz here, so the signs told us (see below hah). Hmm, how's that for a little yet good social scam to have the honour to buy from temporary travellers. Beyond all this context, I still bought a thin scarf, leaving the Tibet-tag on it. We talked to some Tibetans and all of them actually speak good Hindi and live allover India, from up north to down south. We wanted to buy a warped cheap-ass keyboard which gave the most distorted sounds on a China produced toy ever. It was an Indian stand filled with everything plastic and possibly toxic by all that shine.
Naturally, they also held themselves to the no bargaining scheme. Bleh.

We didn't encounter musicians as we had hoped, although there were several ravanattha players walking around the lake. We didn't record them for the repetition -and out of honour for our teacher too-, but their style was quite nice to hear. They played in a lower pitch that consisted of a different tuning alltogether. Alas, we didn't talk to them either so that we have no info backing up the method of their style.

There was a local cultural programme every evening in the city palace museum and though we got in halfway through the show, we got some recording done. It was a tourist filled place, so the variety of the songs was narrowed down to just the familiar ones. I'm sure we even felt ourselves being a bit jaded at that moment, by perhaps knowing too much about the superficial selection of Rajasthani songs as they are always presented to tourist crowds. For me nothing new music-wise, but Maarten got some nice footage of Kabeliya dancers, one dance in particular where a small and stocky mid-aged woman was dancing with 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-lost count earthwork pots on her head, while standing on glass shards. Amazing.

The day after I was walking around and met a holy baba wanderer -at first glance-with an Ektara in his hand. The Ektara is a 1-stringed instruments made out of a big palmnut and a long round neck. Its sound is like a plucked *twang*, vibrating with the body and the soft added pressure of another finger. Actually the picture on Wikipedia is wrong, as it shows a Bhapaong/Bhaoing stringed bucket which sounds similar to the unexperienced ear.
The player was from the Jogi caste, the spiritual sub branch of the Kabeliya caste where the musicians travel as spiritual performers, singing holy songs. He was small, greasy long haired and thinned to the bone and was handicapped by a large hunchback that deformed his upper body by the shoulders. Nevertheless, his playing was amazing and he started with instrumental pieces, plucking the string with one hand and clapping the shruti's in the other (by the way, shruti's is the general term for anything that clangs, like bells). He onyly spoke marwar and not much hindi, so he didn't understand what I was trying to say in vague hindi. Luckily one of the boys working at the hotel helped so I could get him to sing one song. Not just some song, because his raspy voice was amazing and complemented the ektara perfectly. What a sound, goosebumps allover! Below an excerpt of it :O
A pity that I was on my own, so that this was only recorded in audio and not filmed. I asked him to come back to the hotel the next moring and promised more money, but he didn't turn up. Perhaps next February when we're back in Udaipur -see there's the window, opened again-.

Jogi wanderer - Ektara Baghwan (God) song

On the night of the touristic cultural programme, we had spoken to the musicians about their traditions and ways of teaching. Ashok, the tabla player of the Rao caste (musicians and painters), was most open to us because of his good english and we saw him more during the next days as Maarten took up Dholak lessons and also bought one.
Ashok interested me in an antique harmonium, as a relative had a harmonium restoration and repair shop in the city. The shop existed since the 1920's so he assured me no bad quality of make came from here. An hour and some tarnishing and chai drinking later I had an old restored harmonium with me on the motorbike ride back home. yay.
His brother -and neighbour- Lalit, also played a variety of instruments. One room was more a place of collecting Rajasthani and classical Indian instrument, as he earned a bit of extra money with trading instruments besides being a tabla teacher -alike his younger brother Ashok-. Lalit played the Santoor from Kashmir, the zitherlike instrument like the eastern European Cimbalum (ah yes yes Pascalou :)!!!). 96 strings stretched over a wooden body and he played it with 2 ivory bone sticks while another relative peddled the tabla. Albeit not Rajasthani music and rather a fusion of classical Indian music meets Kashmir, the sound breathed a perfumed Persian air.

In one of the evenings after visiting Ashok, we walked past a big courtyard place filled with people. Catering tables and gourmet dishes, running kids, chattering adults. It again ment some celebration so ofcourse we checked it out and this time it wasn't a wedding (no stage nor entertainment) but a babyshower for a newborn son. Soon enough we were led into the courtyard by a local, as it always happens, and we got plates of good spicy food. Happy times. We at least wanted to congratulate the family of the newborn, but they weren't even there! All these people; relatives, neighbourhood friends and unknown wanderers..buty the organizers were still amiss and would only arrive hours later. The Indians never cease to amaze us.

Another music stumble-upon the next day, as we started to get active by luck and persistence. Whle driving around the hustled city on a rented bicycle, I came across a building of All India Radio, the one national state radio. 'Weren't they based in Delhi?' I thought. I talked my way sneakily inside at the guard booth by claiming I had an appointment. Skin color or nationality can get a white foreigner go a long way, positively discriminating as it is. I talked to the station manager on duty and learned that this was the Udaipur branch for folk music of the Marwar region, for which they once a month provided a special hour to AIR hq in Delhi. As our time in Udairpur would soon be over, there wasn't much to arrange on such short notice in ways of specific Udaipur music -which are 3 kinds: gorband, devotional and one I forgot right now-. Next to us sat a middle aged man with red painted hair. Many older Rajasthani men like their hair painted red, we don't yet know why. He introduced himself as M.M. Ali (one of the M's standing for Mustli) and clairvoyantly told me that he had a musical group and was under contract with AIR Udaipur. 'Just come tomorrow at 7pm to the university auditorium and we will play for free for you and your filming friend, we'll have dancers too', he said and wrote it down on a scrap of paper. Quick headscratch, s-s-s-say what? We drunk a chai outside and he assured me of our appointment tomorrow evening.

So ofcourse we went. Arriving through the university gates we found many people spilling into a big hall. 'Is that really the auditorium?'. Yes. There was a convention going on for the steel engineering industry and a Rajasthani cultural programme was to be offerend to the 1000 guests as entertainment. On the side of it there was a big catering tent where glorious high class food was again being prepared -as we seem to encounter more than enough- and we wandered in, looking for a quick bite for our growling tummies. Some young engineering students started talking to us, asking where we were from and when the answer Holland fell, Phillips was an easy name to use, so we pretend something that we weren't. ahem. Food, yes.
We got into the auditorium, quite filled with only Indian people so all heads turned to us. oh oh. M.M. Ali and his group of musicians was indeed sitting on the stage and tuning up. What a promise! He nodded to us with a content look for showing up with camera, our end of the promise. He himself played the harmonium while others played the tabla, dholak and clarinet -an unusual instrument in Rajasthani folk, unless a musician is of the islamic caste-. Although the music was again presented in the same pallet of famous Rajasthani folk songs, the clarinet added a different air. The dancing however was above our expectations! Several female Kabeliya gypsy dancers in shining dresses and bells allover took the stage and owned it. Near the end one female dancer, the best of them all, danced with 4 burning pots on her head. And while stepping in glass. Awe. Amazing performance and at the end we thanked Mustli sincerely as he thanked us. He took us under his red-haired wings and guided us into the catering tent where we had an abundance of fine food to pick from. We ate together with the musicians and the Kabeliya dancers as if we belonged to their posse and then M.M. Ali waved us goodbye. We were fullfilled in many ways.

Oh yeah, at these catering places the Indians always eat while standing. It never seems obvious to them to have chairs. So there aren't any.

Ok bye to Udaipur and we would take a morning bus to Jodhpur.
Ps, hello to Cassienne (who we again met, at the same hotel by chance) and to Josh from the Windy city, have great travels both! :)

pics of inside Chittor fort, temples and Indian tourists...

far away view

body afloat!

inside Chittor






the Jain temples inside





Maarten took some nice portrait shots of Indian tourists.