Travel Day 880 – Kolkata, INDIA
After one day of no concert, it was obviously time for another Indian classical concert, but time in a huge temple in Ballygunge, Kolkata…
Birla Mandir Temple in Ballygunge, Kolkata
The morning was actually pretty uneventful and I just used my time for some Tabla practice on the roof, but after lunch I was off to the Tabla shop again. The nice shopkeeper who let me watch how a Tabla was built from scratch had promised me to build a lighter, smaller Tabla for me that I could fit more easily into my backpack while travelling. We had actually picked an old wooden body out of his storage room and today the re-skinning was supposed to be finished…
Actually once I arrived at the Tabla shop, my new Tabla appeared to be almost finished. He had left it in the shelf and insisted of doing the final touches and tuning in front of my eyes, while I was in the store. Once finally finished and tested, he gave it to me to approve his work. While this only supposed to be a small cheap Tabla for travelling, all of a sudden I found myself having a much better sounding Tabla than the one that I already had…
This not only meant that he actually did quite a good job when fixing up the old Tabla body, but for me it also meant that I decided to order a second, much bigger one for practicing purpose. I really liked the deeper richer sound of the bigger drums a lot and I thought it might be a nice addition to the Tabla that I had ready…
Happy with the day’s result so far, I took off for a concert on the Ballygunge area with my Tabla in hand. Actually the Tabla was in my bag, but I still felt funny going to a concert with a Tabla. Luckily it turned out that bringing the Tabla along was not a big deal at all, finding the concert location on foot was much more of a challenge and it took me a really long time to reach the huge temple complex Birla Mandir which was nicely lit up in the early evening…
Hindustani Dance in Kolkata, India
I actually could not believe how big this Birla Mandir complex was and I was even more surprised that the concert happened underneath the temple itself, but it appeared to be a great venue for the occasion. Once I had found my local friend who had been my Tabla teacher one year ago in Goa, we enjoyed a really interesting dance performance…
There were actually several performances, but the Hindustani dance with little bells on the ankles, accompanied by Tabla, Sitar and a Vocalist where absolutely great and something I had not seen before. This arrangement traced back to the routs of Tabla while accompanying dancers rather than being plaid as a solo instrument and I enjoyed seeing this interplay…
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