Today a travel back in time. Obviously all our video’s have been a look in the past (as are recordings by default, but that’s obviously not what I mean here- but keep it mind when watching The News though), but these are special because today we had our last ravanattha lesson from our teacher Rampal. A bit of a full circle feeling for our stay in Pushkar as we soon will head down to Bundi.

These are special recordings for several reasons:
This was our first recording of live music in Pushkar. As in Ajmer it was we that were approached by the musician(s), not we approaching them. We where lucky then and lucky now. This time in Pushkar, we were walked around the Sunset Cafe Terras and as we sat near a holy tree, Rampal appeared out of nowhere and started playing in front of us. As in good custom that Ravanattha players hold: before you have set up your gear properly.
But he didn’t play as we heard the ravanattha being played before. He played it in a very special way: very gently yet the sound was like it came from everywhere, resonating into the air. As if the heavens opened up and the sun, moon, rain, and clouds all came out and started to dance. That sort of thing.
Later we made more recordings of him with his wife Sita, they sounded allright together but never reached this same magical sound. This is the best recording we have of his play. You can’t replicate moment like this. We tried and tried, believe it. It just didn’t work.

Another funny detail of this video is that it shows India in a way we encountered a few times: you have a very special moment, people start to flock around and undeliberately it breaks the moment.

After the recording, we met Rampal quite a few times. He was always playing in front of the nice Sunset terrace, away from the business hustle that was the Camal Fair Ground. Seb bought two ravanattha’s of him and we both got lessons playing them. It’s a pretty hard instrument to master – it’s a little bit like a violin but with extra caveats: like when you squeeze your finger to hold the instrument or make a sliding for the note to change, it quickly turns false, ruining your efforts. The hardest part is to keep the clear notes and to find the next ones that you want. And then ofcourse there are these quick parts in the songs. We tried to learn two Rajasthani songs, but don’t ask us to play them: we only know parts of them and we five days of lessons aren’t enough.
Rampal was actually a very good teacher. He loved his instrument and he was very patient and kind with us. Actually in some way he felt proud to be teaching Rajasthani songs to foreigners interested in his skills, which doesn’t happen much otherwise it seems, as he told us many things about his everyday life. A true pity, since he’s such a master. We are going to miss him.

So if you ever want to learn the ravanattha from a master while you’re near Pushkar, call him at: 0091 9829317796.
No kidding, that’s his actual number.
The beauty of progress, right there to pick up and learn!

The mela has ended and the peace has returned. Yesterday we spent some time on the desert grounds in Rampal and Sita’s tent. They had invited us after the ravanattha lesson to walk along from Pushkar to meet their children and to see their temporary makeshift housen in which they had lived during the mela. Dotted around them on the sand, there were similar tents of fellow musicians, gypsies, merchants and other assorted people. A mixed brew of people so to speak, those that are regarded by many Indians as a lower caste and get the not so plush social treatment that comes with it.
If you’re overly used to comfort, you probably would have thought their living conditions were appalling and perhaps have gotten shocked by it. I guess we both are easy at switching off this western mindset, as we were just happy to be invited by them in the first place and spend some time outside of the tourist boundaries. Sitting on blankets covering the dusty ground and sipping chai with some spicy fingerfood aside as prepared by their daughters, it surely felt nice to relax with them. Kids were playing everywhere around with anything they could entertain themselves with, most of them barefooted or half naked either way and stained from nature’s dirt sweeps. Neighbours and other passing folks came for a quick glance at the 2 white *gora’s*, laughing at us out of curiousity. Ofcourse they must have wondered why we were sitting there with a sheepish smile. We took some nice pictures of the family and onlookers, surely these follow in a few days.

At 6ish here would be an open air premiere screening of the documentary Bhopa: The Art of Survival. The makers Jessica Leung and Paco Beltran, we did not know, were still around and had organised this. So we heard from Rampal and Sita, who also sold us the dvd earlier last week and we walked back with them to Pushkar to be on time.

When we came at the Sunset cafe where the screening would be, it was a bizarre open air circus of sounds as Maarten put it. Many street performers were playing and vying for the attention of the tourists at the same time in the shape of rope walkers, drum players and ofcourse the ravanattha players who were part of the documentary. We met the usual street kids and little Puka came up at us again asking for cookies.

Some weird Indian woman -let’s call her the witch- came sitting next to me and Puka. For some reason I had agrieved this witch a bit before, when she tried selling me weed on the holy bridge, or, wanted me to sit down to talk. For whatever reason.
And for whatever reason she started ranting at me for being a tourist and showing pity for the street children and so on, a yawning tirade. Puka was sitting next to me as I was someone she knew, not someone she was trying to sell bracelets too or begging at. I just looked at the witch without saying anything. The witch then turned her attention to Puka and declared the little girl daughter of a whore and whatnot. I motioned Puka not to listen and just said to the witch something sarcastic along the lines that her ‘positive’ spirit would surely make India a better place. At least it made the witch leave.

The screening started and tourists huddled together with the street musicians. Pidgeons from the wires above occasionaly dropped unexpected fluids, which made some tourists unlucky on the spot, splat. When the film started and the musicians saw each other on the big screen, they started laughing a lot. Either in self-wit or about the others and commenting on each other acting skills. It was funny to see how they experienced it. How many times in their life would they ever see their work and art celebrated on a big screen? Not many times, I’m sure. It’s good that it did happen, hoping that they now will earn more respect, within Pushkar and beyond.
Afterwards we had dinner with Jessica and Paco and talked about our current and upcoming projects, sharing views and creative idea’s. Our paths might cross more, whether soon or in the more distant future. It’s always nice to meet people who are doing same-but-different creative projects while travelling.

some more cuts from the 1st session with the Saregama family Dewara, daughter Sharwa singing in these ones:

Delhi streetside shave

Some photo’s……

misplaced advert….?

our ceiling.

our ravanattha’s, resting in room

I got snapshotted into a Rajasthani newspaper….


little village nearby Pushkar, we drove their by motorbike and got a puncture. In return we got nice scenery and contact with jeery shepherd kids. Pity I didn’t takes photo’s of them. Perhaps because I was being busy getting pushed and teased by them



van Nistelrooy #9 in India, while ‘England’ and it’s flag was written on the front of his shirt

The daughters of Polly and Tolly -our Brahmin hotel managers-, cheerfully posing in front of our hotel.



Bhopal, Kelasi and Pucca




Ravanattha player and teacher Rampal and his wife Sita. They are also featured in the documentary; ‘Bhopa, the Art of Survival’, about the ravanattha (see the links on right hand side)



best friends holding hands

scenery of the desert grounds before the Mela started and camel caravans were arriving.

From wednesday onto saturday…..
The mela has since been in full swing, filling the town with floods of foreigners and Rajasthani villagers alike.
The foreigners, mostly old and some young, are being driven in by charter buses day by day from their safe and plush safari tent camps outside of the town. The 1km road to the mela ground surely is too dangerous for them to walk. As if. Security folks circle their fenced compound, making them locked into their own luxury cage. Smirk. At least they get breakfast served on bed, or so a dutch tourist told Maarten. Inmates with a good catering to boot, all according to their own prepaid package of desired exposure. Each to their own liking of experiencing the fair. It must be said, it’s funny to see the older tourists in typical safari or leisure dress getting besieged by gypsies adults and kids when they enter the camel grounds. Funny because they do get terrified way too easily, helplessly, so that their guide has to come to the rescue. Mind you though, this doesn’t work with the elderly Israelian tourists who are better at being fierce to the gyspy ways, without a blink or chuckle.

Last night, there was live music all night long in many of the Pushkar temples.
The temple next to our hotel was still playing religious hindu chants when I slumbered out of my sleep early this morning and likewise still going steady when I really woke up. During the evening we had passed a few temples and entered barefeet to soak up the atmosphere and recording some sounds and scenes. In nearly every temple we were the only foreigners which prompted a lot of heads to turn to our direction and with the obvious cluster of Indian men herding around us to see what we were doing with our recording devices. The people here don’t mind at all if foreign folks enter a temple during such sessions, but they are all too curious to find out who you are, where you come from and so on. Especially we with our devices at hand are an easy target for attention. Perhaps more so because we smile more at them, opening ourselves up on the go. Perhaps we should become sour faced instead like many tourists here.
Nah.

Besides some occassional temple recordings, we have finally started recording helluva lot of live music at the mela stage, since we had been lacklustre at doing anything useful there the days before. On one night there was a diverse array of Rajasthani music from a cassette label. Cassettes still go strong over here, though they face more and more competition from vcd’s. Veena Cassettes showcase so it was! Some of the artists were utter crooners singing slow and epic songs about whatever soft subject to do with love. The dances were more fun along with the folkier performances.
On another night we catched some amazing folk dances from the states Madya Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Orissa and Gujarat. Especially a Gujarati dance was amazing as it completely took you into Africa through similar moves, pounding drum rhythms and screeched animal sounds. Ten or so guys dressed up in peacock feathers and suits with faces painted white n black as the bird were dancing around in a strutting manner and throwing coconuts high up in to the air to crack them with their heads. Splashing photographers and filming crews with coco juice in the process. Great fun! The dance was a 750 year old tradition and belonged to a tribal community that moved from inland to the coast of Gujarat. So that kinda ruled out it being an African community that once came by sea. Yesterday evening the musical programme was all Rajasthani folk under the presentation title Desert Symphony. It was a varied performance of artists from allover the state, bringing many different styles in sound and dance. At the end of the evening the Desert Symphony orchestra was created out of different folk artists coming from many instrumental disciplines. On morchang (mouth harp), kamaycha (bass violin), algoza (2 flutes at once) and dhak hourglass drums and many other instruments, 2 improvisations were spread over 25 minutes. Fantastic stuff as it sounded not like anything Indian or worldlike. The morchang players sounded as it they were playing acid techno while the drums gave it a bizarre echo. Full on Rajasthani acoustic rave music so it was!

Tonight is the last night of the mela so we hope to catch and fetch some more good music. Maybe even have a long sit in one of the temples if there are other all-nighter sessions going on. Enough to do.

No luck with recording the snake charmer songs yet. There are enough of them sitting on the streets with flaky and tame cobra’s. but it’s too busy and noisy for now during the mela. Perhaps in the coming days or otherwise in Jaisalmer in a few weeks.

post scriptum:
I’ve started reading Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus, -truly excellent if not whimsical gloomy stuff-. Which proves why these dance moves of selfwit and sarcasm here come somewhat inspired. Only time will tell how I’ll stay in this momentum.

Below some new viddy’s, yay!

Cut from the first session with the Dewara family. The sau ran raga of father D.C.

How to go down off a dusty mountain by motorbike

munching away….