Hello everybody. I hope your Februaries are swimming along. I've been having fun doing the normal old stuff. I did get to accompany Kala to a recording complex in Gujarat, however, and watch her make her newest record. It's kind of 'light-classical' you might say. At any rate, the percussionists, Abijek and Somnath (tabla and ghatam, respectively) were fantastic. The complex belongs to a family of Indian-born U.K. citizens, all Patels (36 of them live in one neighborhood of Leicester!). It was really swank; there were a bunch of servants, and it turns out that many of the biggest names in Indian classical music (kind of like big names in astrophysics or underwater basket-weaving) have recorded there. So, in between takes and rehearsals, I got to overhear choice gossip about performers, and lots of funny stories. Would that they were jazz musicians gossiping about people I knew! There were impressions, humiliating stories, etc. To balance the light hearted atmosphere I read C.S. Lewis' 'The Problem of Pain', which I very much enjoyed. (And Mark Twain's 'Pudd'nhead Wilson', which I found rather formulaic, but maybe I just wasn't in the mood.) I've been working on ragas Jaunpuri and Bhairav. Funny enough, Bhairav, while it has a specific parent-scale, allows for the use of any chromatic note as long as you bring a phrase back into the melodic fold, so to speak. I'm having a lot of trouble concentrating on practicing this week; I hope this lifts, because as of today I'm only in Mumbai for two more weeks! Kala leaves for good on the 22nd, and that's when I'll hightail it to Nepal to go freeze my ___ off in the mountains. I've also decided to go back to Minnesota in early April. I won't find another teacher as good as Kala (and if I did I couldn't afford it), and she's going to be living in California this summer anyway. I'm also sick of struggling with my student violin from 9th grade (although I'm not ungrateful, Dad) and it's time to get some better spruce and ebony under my fingers.
I'm not feeling too bloggy today, so that's all the news that's fit to print. Happy seventh of February, and don't let the sheriff getcha down.
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