Travel Day 932 – Bangalore, Karnataka, INDIA
While my walk around MG Road and UB City Mall yesterday had not felt like actually being in India, at least one other aspect of Bangalore felt like India, the classical Indian music…
Five Day Concert Series in Bangalore
From Kochi I had really only come north to Bangalore to see my Tabla teacher and to listen to two of his concerts, but in the end I was lucky enough to listen to much more than just my teacher’s concerts. This was mainly due to the fact that I had been invited to stay with the family of a gurubhai of mine who was also learning Tabla from my teacher…
As it turned out, the whole family I was staying with was involved in music and so I was able from the first day that I arrived in Bangalore to visit concerts and listen to classical Indian music involving Tabla. Actually my first day in Bangalore happened to be the last day of a 5 day music concert series and my gurubhai, his brother and his cousin were all performing together as one of the closing acts of this concert series…
Evening Tabla and Vocal Concert in Bangalore
Once my teacher had arrived I was not only fortunate enough to listen to him play and practice at home, but I could also come along to see his Tabla performances on stage. Unfortunately only one of the two evening concerts took place due to a general strike in India, but at least there was another arranged performance in a local school as part of the local musical education…
As it appeared, my host family had been invited to a school in Bangalore for some practical music demonstrations and my teacher was joining them on stage, as I was joining on a chair in the audience. This meant that not only my teacher was playing Tabla and accompanying the dad of my host family with his vocal demonstrations, but they also initiated a question and answer session…
Tabla and Vocal Demonstrations in Bangalore
Obviously it wasn’t an easy task to keep kids interested in what was happening on stage for the duration two hours, but once questions could be asked and feedback had to be given by the audience, everyone seemed to be very interested and got involved. This was a great, fun experience for me and I loved listening to the Tabla music as well as seeing all excited students around me, even if I became a bit of an attraction myself in the end…
Even if I was just attending as a guest, I ended up giving many autographs to the kids… just for being what I was, a tall white foreigner visiting their school… : )
Leave a Reply