Travel Day 881 – Kolkata and Berhampore, INDIA
It was one of those moments. I was looking up and into the blinding spot light that was warming my face. I was wearing a salmon colored kurta and found myself on stage and in the middle of a Tabla performance in a small town in India. How the hell did I get there?
My Tabla on Stage in Berhampore, India
If anyone would have told me that I would join a Tabla performance on stage in India, I not only would have called that person crazy, but a little over a year ago I would have also asked: Tabla what? Now I was not only studying Tabla in India, but I also seemed to be the only foreign face in the town called Berhampore and I was certainly the only tall foreigner in a kurta on stage in the middle of a classical Indian music concert…
Everything was a little bit of a surreal experience and I wasn’t really able to do much on stage, but at least I could play some bols and follow along with the slow parts. What was much more interesting to me was to feel the atmosphere, the tension and the emotional intensity while being on stage and looked at my hundreds of people. Actually I was not even able to see how many were present after all because of the bright spotlight, but I could see every other person wearing glasses and the reflections of the light they would cast back to me on stage…
Me on Stage at the Start of Tablaphilia
What a strange moment in my life. But I had joined all the previous rehearsals, I knew all the players and I had a sense of the overall composition. So probably it seemed only a natural call for my teacher when he asked me to be on stage because one musician was missing. While this didn’t seem to be a very big deal to him, for it actually was quite a big deal and I felt that I was the most nervous out of all of the people around me on stage…
Funny enough but there I was, on stage in a small town in India while playing some Tabla in the blinding spot light on New Years Eve and for an audience that must have regarded me as an alien in a salmon colored kurta. It was really funny and really strange at the same time and while I tried not to grin on stage, I had to think that this was definitely a special moment in my life… : )
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