The city of Jodhpur, mid-west Rajasthan, last big city before the great Thar desert starts spreading westwards towards the Pakistani border.

Early in the morning we had taken a coach from Udaipur. At the bus stand we met several tourists from the States and Canada (hi Ben and your 2 female friends!), one of them was Peijman from Seattle and we soon during the ride we came talking about music in general and then our project. It was nice to travel with folks that liked what we were doing, understanding the idea behind it. And then by a stroke of pure coincidence, it turned out that Peijman personally knows the folks from the Sun City Girls very well and by that also Sublime Frequencies, also from Seattle. What are the odds ey! Peijman has been playing with the SCG’s and is the drummer of the experimental rock-meets-arab outfit Secret Chiefs 3, the band of Mr Bungle’s Trey Spruance. On our going-away party at Rebel Up, I even played a Secret Chiefs track! Again, what are the odds? Small world indeed. Peijman has been here since September, following tabla classes with a master in Kolkata. I hope the inspiration will work out to something good for you back in the States! Get that European tour on the road!

Arrival in Jodhpur and straight into the dry air of traffic pollution when stepping off the bus. Yay. For once we let ourselves be led by station hawks who claimed to have a cheap hotel right in the centre. And actually, they were right. We got the biggest room so far, clean and decent for the price. The guys of the hotel, including the 2 hawks, turned out to be very fine folks. It’s just that a first station hassle impression can put you on the wrong and cautious foot. We keep on learning more and more.

We especially came here to talk with the people of the Rupayan Sansthan institute, dedicated to the Rajasthani folk music culture. In Pushkur, I had found a book on the history of Rajasthani life and culture, with the title *Rajasthan, an oral history*. It was written by Rustom Bharucha through conversations with Kothal Komari. Komari started the institute back in the 1960′s as before that, no documentation on Rajasthani culture was carried out, let alone the archiving of patron and court music, the main outline of Rajasthani folk music. Before he died of cancer in 2004, Komari had already passed on the torch to his son Kuldeep Komari and he has kept the institute running. Kuldeep received us amazingly open, better than we had expected since our European belief was that time is not a virtue at such institutes (at least in the west). Even while we weren’t academics he answered our enthusiasm with all the knowledge that he wanted to share and gave us the whole afternoon. Again more than we had expected, such overflow of history and current affairs. We got to see the archives and yeah, bewilderment and drooling excitement overwhelmed us. Cupboards full of reel tapes, tapes, video’s and whatnot, all recorded, researched and collected since the 1960′s. Not all material just done by themselves but also by many western scholars who shared their recordings with the institute. Like the Norwegian research lady whose research gifted them a staggering 150 tapes of epic folk storytellings and rural music. Imagine all that history, well preserved and archived for future generations to come! Kuldeep liked the idea of our project as we explained him into detail what we have been doing so far and what we are still looking for. In all fairness he confided to us that what we do has no pure relation to the academic documentation of folk music, since most folk songs we recorded or will record are already known. We knew that to some extent, but he did like our idea of our project being presented as a collage of Rajasthani music culture as it is now, from radio pop to acoustic street folk. Academic or not, he felt that anything that people record in Rajasthan to have value for the archive. On the pretext of getting help or support from the institute in our last days of the Rajasthan project, we didn’t even have to ask Kuldeep this question. Halfway during the afternoon, 2 musicians stepped into the office. Dark tanned, carrying instruments and dressed in white Rajasthani kurta’s. They introduced themselves as from the Khan family and therefore were from the Langa caste. The Langa’s are a professional music caste who in olden times were supported by patrons, like a certain well-to-do family in a rural area.
They just came from a radio performance and came to see Kuldeep as they hadn’t seen each other a long while (as they had been touring earlier in the year and Kuldeep had been on tour with another folk group). The institute had bought an antique Surando violin from Pakistan and Kuldeep wanted to know the quality of the instrument though the 2 musicians, since they play the Rajasthani adaptation of this instrument.
After they tuned and measured it, they started playing instrumental folk songs without hesitation. With even more bravado, as they wanted to impress these white folks who were recording and filming them with their permission. Kuldeep was very attentive to pick up on our unspoken desire and asked them in Marwari if we could spend time in their village Barnawa to record and film them. The musicians said yes without having to think a second and we agreed that we could come on the 23rd. We were just baffled, such an honor! As the village of Barnawa lies 100 km’s away inbetween Jodhpur and Barmer, in a remote rural region where the Thar desert begins, we’ll have to take a bus to another village where from there we will be picked up by jeep.

And that’s not all. The oldest one of them told me that he had been in Brussels a few months ago, as well as touring the rest of Europe and States. He vaguely referred to Latcho Drom, the movie about Eurasian gypsies by Tony Gatlif. “You can hear and see me playing the sarangi in the movie and also other family members play in it” he blankly said. Say what? Here a scene of the Rajasthani part of it, youtube’d. Or see here:

We started talking about Langa music and I asked them if they knew the group Musafir, which is a mixed group of Langa’s, Manganiyars and Kabeliya’s. “Well, yes that is my younger brother”, he answered. Such a small world, again.

I could go on an on, about the foresight of spending time with the Khan family in their rural village, about the many old and special Rajasthani instruments in the showroom of Rupayan Sansthan, the many deep talks we have had with Kuldeep in the last few days -as we have gone back to him every day since monday-, the idea’s that are spinning our head right now about plans with the institute and the archives. A near overload that we can’t fathom right now. We’ll just take it as it comes along, they way we have been lucky and helped at so many occasions. It’s not any different now, even so close to the end of our 2 months in Rajasthan and project.

Another nice meeting that links to this all was with Tom and Wim, fellow Belgians from Ghent who teach at a dancing school and who we met at a roadside parcel packing shack. They are in India for learning specific Rajasthani Sapera dances -Kabeliya style-. After we told them of our meeting with Kuldeep and the Khan Langa’s, we were once again amazed when we heard that the Khan musicians (and brother of *our* Khan) of Musafir actually live in Ghent and that Tom and Wim work with them! Such small world, like an old record on repeat you all must think.

And no, the records keeps on repeating. At our hotel next door, a group of Bhopa folk musicians is playing every night, drums and ravanattha. On the second night we talked to them, joking with them that we know how to play the ravanattha a little bit. When we dropped the name of our teacher Rampal, the musician’s mouths fell open: the drummer said in amazement “he is married to my sister Sita!”, while the 2 elder women exclaimed “Rampal is our brother!” As soon as they spoke this out loud, we could spot the resemblance in their looks and were equally amazed. While Pushkar is 200 km’s away, the family tree of the Bhopa’s does not care about distance. Oh small w…..nah, I’ll leave it unspoken this time

That kinda wraps it up for now and perhaps for a small while. We did many more fun stuff here like eating good food, buying old cassettes and tomorrow going to a music wholesaler to find exclusive folk cassettes. Later in the afternoon we’ll make our way to Jaisalmer for 2 nights before we’ll head down to Barnawa at the Khan’s musical outpost. I reckon we might not have internet in the week or so, which is why this long post before we set off.

Oh, a big hello to Chitose from Japan, who plays the Arabic oud lute pretty darn well! wow, bow down to that.

Udaipur pics. a lot.

the lake palaces




these torn and real posters make arty stencil graffiti look kinda bleak hah

visiting a family haveli home, 3 smiling ladies in their 500 year old room with same old mural paintings






young generation of the family


Not rabid, toothpaste.

Ashok Rao

home altar




Ektara Jogi



singing

Tibetan market sign

at Tibetan market, with neon fleece hat.



finally sunny again!




awesome kid

pics from the veggie market














those eyes…


sweet banana family










Santoor player Lalit and cousin on tabla

entertainment at the steel convention, our man M.M. Ali on the far left- and his group

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

It’s been a week since a decent -which might mean a boring long- post has been typed, editted and whatnot scribbling foolery.
We’ve mostly been busy with the project and slacking/enjoying life with fellow backpackers. Life could be much worse. So far it isn’t. Such happy bums we are. Here it goes once more.

Oh before all this, we celebrated Divali. In the morning we did the puja with Polly, our hotelmanager at the holy lake, as he comes from a Brahmin priest family. He could guide us into doing a full puja instead of the short ones that other tourists get lured in by makeshift waterside priests acting as hawks. -holy touts are not uncommon here-. Yeah religion is an economy here but that’s not unexpected. Like everywhere in the world people need (or like) to be milked out in order to believe in something worth living for. As agnostic, atheistic or paganistic we like to be, doing the puja felt good and serene as it was not meant for a specific god nor religion, but to make sincere wishes for the upcoming year. Speak and wish with an open heart, as Polly said. So we did. Flowers, rice, paint powder and coconut milk into the water. Drifting away in circles.

Later with the Saregama Dewara family on Divali night, it was a nice experience setting off fireworks with them from their hillside home. The high open view over Ajmer showed thousands of uncovered rooftops also joining in the joyfull explosions on this peace-meets-war-like night. Bang!
Taking the overly full nightbus from Ajmer to Pushkar was great fun. Being the only foreigners on board the people quickly jeered at us for the sake of cheery banter. Getting to see some pixeled Rajasthani music clips on their mobiles was worth it. Good moves, hipwigging and a catchy tune of folk instruments along a heavy bass of sythesizer inspired rhythms. I liked it way better than the usual Bangra and Panjabi music styles that always seem to be aimed at an urban crowd while keeping the instrumental influence as low as possible. Thumbs up for Rajasthani pop. Since video cd’s are really big over here at little music shops ‘n market stalls, you can find loads of good stuff for barely 1 euro. Indeed, why use the limitation of a redbook cd or a dvd if you can have video and audio together on a vcd? The Indians are more clever in this scheme than back in the west and video clips still lives a good healthy life over here. But as most Euro/US video’s suck anyway -bar the few creative ones-, it’s for the better to keep things strictly ears only.

So, what else?

We did a second session with the Dewara family a few days after Divali. It taking up a whole day from the morning till pas midnight. Not it was such hard work or long session, but rather the ease of waiting, relaxing and taking it easy while friends & family came to give their best wishes to the family during the whole morning and afternoon. We didn’t mind and their courtyard was nicely shadowed to not make us quell in the hot sun. Plus there was freshly made chai and fingerfood aplenty. Why sulk indeed.
Not to mention us helping son Alaap (who was visiting his family while he lives 400km’s south in the Gujarat state, working as a music teacher) with writing the English lyrics into his brokenhearted hindi pop song. Not by our own will, but he kindly requested our help. Oh dear. The slick instrumental and vocal skeleton he wrote for it sounded already quite nice from the start. Perhaps with some good luck he’ll make a hit out of it. Who knows. Pop works a jangling treat in the eyes of the talented, even when coming from a traditional music family.

Maarten recorded a dv tape for the father, as he wanted to record some of his own written songs of the last 30 years of his musical career so that he would have an archive on tape that he could show to tv station and agents (since he plays on national tv and concerts from time to time). ‘Oh, which to pick’ he pondered in doubting agony, as the dv tape could only register 1 hour of his lifetime achievement. Out of +20 songs, he did 11 of his best in the end. It all took over 3 hours since he wanted things to be perfect in the setting, sound and many changes had to be made. It bit of a pity in all fairness, because everytime the musical build-up was disturbed so that the atmoshere could not settle. It somewhat looked and sounded staged without much joy and therefore missing the pacey energy that their improvisations had.
Afterwards the whole family played their 2nd session for us and the energy came flowing back as we wanted to have no sudden stops and most of all no changeovers of settings and clothing. Just open spirited Rajasthani folk in the way that they wanted to play it. They did interchange the instruments or vocals from time to time, but it worked well. Father D.C. mostly played the harmonium, son Alaap on guitar, harmonium tabla or vocals, son Sunil on tabla, daughter Mamta on shruti’s and daughter Sharwa on shruti’s and vocals.
In the end we even got youngest daughter Mamta to sing a few lines, while her voice isn’t as beautifully sculptured as her sister’s, her lower tone sounded really special in the slow melody she sung. Also the grandmother of the family (whose name we didn’t find out, calling her dadi-ji instead) sung an old folk tune accompanied by her son (the father) on harmonium, as I had hear her sing before in the background. 95 years of age and she still was as vivid as she wanted to be, such a happy sweet person. Amazing how her worn and weary voice sounded through the room, while little imperfections of coughs and chuckles crept in the recording. Raw versus perfection; I rather keep a raw recording with minor bumps yet giving goosebumps than a perfect cut lacking the spirit.

We’ve also recorded sessions with Bhopal and his wife on the dry grassy hill overlooking the camel fair grounds, as you can see in previous post, as he’s from the younger and more bold generation of local ravanattha players. Him being a cheeky fella too on the side, with a good sense for selling and negotiation so I had some fun with that on many chai drinking sits. Perhaps you might be inclined to think that Bhopa’s are gypsies but it’s easy to generalize on that. They might share the same outskirts of small towns or cities, living in tents or shanty houses, lacking the same facilities and living a similar life when having to earn money on the street, but they don’t share bloodlines by some sort of unspoken rule. Even among the poor, a certain caste system exists. Bhopal didn’t speak romantically about gypsies and cursed the for their haggling and threacherous ways. Ofcourse he himself was not a haggler like them, he said. I just smirked at my little poke at him. But pokeing one another is all too normal here with anyone who makes money on the street. Only serious people get suckered into shabby deals too quickly.

His little 8 year old sister Pukka was funny to have along on the session as she provided added sounds -subconsiously- as she was playing with rocks, making a rhythm while hitting upon one another while ankle bracelets with tinkerbells in her hand -her selling wares- softly jingled along the playing of her brother and sister in law. Every day I saw her, her nose was uncleaned, yellow drop in the left nostril as was her face with blackened stripes on the cheeks, her hair dusty and wild, some locks mildly blond colored from daily exposure to sunshine. Without doubt, she was able to always produce a sweet smile on her face, laugh and play, in the faux-innocent manner like many other street selling kids do. I reckon they are all already way past the very innocence that we once knew from our own secure childhood, yet they are not bitter about their situation. It’s rather the many tourists here being bitter, who do not seem to be able to handle a confrontation with these kids, imposing their fingerwagging western etiquette on them if they feel hassled when trying to live it large here. Pity that. But I won’t moan too much about annoying tourists -coming in droves on package tours or whatever-, because I could go on more than I care to waste time on. bleh.

The days after we also met Rampal (see pic some posts ago), a ravanattha player of the oldest generation and we did some sessions with him and his wife Sita. His instrumental playing exceeds the level of say Bhopal, but that’s hardly surprising. Old play ages good. Till it stops one day, missing a heartbeat. I bought a few ravanattha’s from him, as he makes them himself and their are of good quality. Support your woodstringed craftmanship yeah! We also have taken up daily lessons with him and we are able to play the easier parts of old style Rajasthani tunes. Bowing down and strike with a gentle touch on multiple snares, it’s pretty hard.

Oh the footie match! It was in the main stadium on the mela ground, a sandy pitch with white walls and stands around it. Hundreds of people were watching and all our names got called on the intercom echoeing in the air. Kinda bizarre moment, like one you perhaps dreamed of a sa child; playing a big match for lots of spectators in a special place…for nuts or glory! I think we all felt some goosebumps of amazement for standing there suddenly.
Ofcourse we lost, 1-0 to the local Pushkar top team. Yet for a bunch of thrown together foreigners (Swiss, Israeli’s, English, Spanish, French, US and Ozzies) we weren’t bad at all. We were even say slightly better since we had the best chances (they had one half one and scored it). I missed a closeup chance in the first minute of the game in a clutch moment before their goal, narrowly puntering the ball past the post, typical. But try playing football in hiking shoes, running around on an uneven and thickly layered sandy pitch. We all did that for 40 minutes in the blazing sun and managed to pass and run around quite well, that against a team who trains every week. Hmmm. We unfairly had a goal disallowed and just after that their best player lobbed the ball over our keeper (who was playing barefeeted). In the 2nd half we were better balanced and wasted some chances. In the dying moments of the game I gave a pass that splitted their defence and our spanish striker free to run to goal alone, we unfairly got flagged offside -3 metres is beyond doubt surely-. Bah.

Despite the dubious reffing, seeing the total joy of the local team at the end whistle gave a good feeling as I realised this would make them the local hero’s for a long while till next year. Like, there wasn’t much glory for us in it anyway besides the simple joy of playing. We ended up being photographed and filmed by the press and tv, kinda bizarre. With the winning team celebrating, I joined them with my water bottle in champagne stylee to cheer with them
Oh and we got a loser trophy and each a certificate, how considerate and nice!

That’s been keeping us busy, plus meeting a load of spirited and witty people from allover to keep us company -or that we could annoy at will-. Some blabber morning talk with some Swiss villagers (ow hello Hansel and Sigrid hah), climbing the temple rocks with the individually trawling Miguel, Nico, Pascal, Necane and Gabriele. Not to forget the every day jeery company of Julia, Koby and Felice for many meals or breakies. Plus the many folks crossing our path more than often. Everybody rethinking their life, travelling into new pastures and chasing new idea’s. It keeps one healthy while on the road.

Allrighty dinnertime, tomorrow more sounds and pics will follow!

Here some sounds a clip:

dadi-ji claps along, enjoying the session

Camels galore, all around the hill. Recorded before the mela started, so imagine the sound of thousands of camels now! hmmm, should record that too.

Camels around the hill overlooking the Mela

Flamenco style Bollywood song, short one as I halfway recorded it from the radio. Brilliant song. I think it’s Lata Mangeshkar singing, might be Geeta Dutt or Asha Bhosle perhaps.

Bollywood Flamenco

Just outside our hotel, this kid was playing a tiny toy keyboard. He walked along with us and played for the fun of it. Ofcourse he asked for ‘paisa’ as you can hear him say

Streetkid with mini keyboard

A sweet Bollywood styled love song. I like the sad slowness of it. She’s singing about *paresan* = being angry. Someone angry at her, or she at someone? Oh dear.
It might be Lata or Geeta singing again. Who knows, answers on a comment card
Sound isn’t always too clear, blame it on the mountain winds, grrrr.

Paresan Bollywood song

Preliminary video clips from the lovely Pushkar: Bhopal playing the Ravanattha (or Rawanattha) and singing together with his wife Kelassi while his little sister Pukka sits next to them. They are from the Bhopa caste, a caste where music has been their tradition and occupation for centuries since the ruling days of mughuls and sultans.

This is recorded with a simple digital photo camera. The image with my own camera is way better, but the wide angle on this camera isn’t shabby at all! Seb recorded the audio on his sound recording device and I used a good video camera, but this got the job done. And quickly too!

I still can’t cut – and therefore not upload- any clips from the high end camera because my laptop adapter died in action. An unhealthy diet of irregular power feed did its wires in back in Ajmer -about two weeks ago. I got a new one sent from New Deli but it is still trying to find it’s way to me in postal bags. As is the powersurge protector – thanks to ebay!
update: but under big relief the Mac cable arrived yesterday, so the editing is well underway, wa-hey!)