Now in Jaisalmer, surrounded by the desert. The bus ride was pretty nice and we even saw some sand dunes. The desert here however doesn’t have much sand dunes as you normally would expect. The landscape is quite flat, with sandy and rocky ground where low vegetation grows in the shape of various bushes and small trees. Desert shrub. We arrived in the evening but can see the fort that is lit up in yellow light. It looks nice enough, more pictureque and cute as it lacks the impressive size and exterior of all the other forts in Bundi, Chittor and Jodhpur. We probably won’t stay long here and it all depends whether we can find musicians tomorrow. The visit to Barnawa in a few days is way more promising and it feels like we’re duly filling our time here. We might get surprised….

Since we have done most of our recordings in/around Pushkar and during the mela throughout November, why not a quick round-up of things visual and some audio clips?

Side road tattooing at the mela, squatted on the ground, with a pen attached to a little battery accu that gave sparks. Just alcohol was put on the arm and no change of needle. Why sterilize huh? All the customers were kids, the youngest ones being two 12 year-old girls. Whom by the way already had faded tattoos from last year and back to get them done over. Hardcore.

The broader folk dance programme of the mela had some amazing dances from the states of Orissa, Haryana, Maharastra, Madya Pradesh and Gujarat. The dance of the sea people from Gujarat stood out by a mile through the tribal drum sounds and the heavy African feel that it breathed in every way. It was said that the dance was 750 years old and from a Gujarati tribe that migrated from inland to the sea -which perhaps excludes that this tribe could have come from Africa, if one has doubts- We still wonder though…. Check out this clip!

Some audio clips from the mela, taken at the dance programme and the Rajasthani folk prgramme.

Gujarati dance with sticks, where males and females were dancing around each other, hitting their sticks together in different patterns.

Gujarati stick dance (excerpt)

Haryana dance, which is a sort of Punjabi dance. Haryana shares the same culture as Punjab except that they speak Hindi as the only difference.

Haryana dance (excerpt)

Maharastra dance, the state of the cities Mumbai and Pune, which was very vivid with a lot of costumed dancers dressed up as warriors, lions and tigers. The polyphonic beats are pretty special as it sounds like an effect from a sampler, but it was all played on acoustic instruments.

Maharastra costume dance (excerpt)

The Desert Symphony. An orchestra that was made out of many different Rajasthani musicians from the west of the state of the Jaisalmer and Barmer districts. It began with an amazing thrift of morchang (jew’s harp) that sounded like acoustic acid!

Desert Symphony, morchang intro (excerpt)

During the mela we met Neire, a mad and sincerely nice fellow Belgian from the west of Flandria (Diksmui’ jong!), travelling alone. He had just come from several months hopping around in Pakistan (some good stories about the northwest region) and at the mela and Jaisalmer he made excellent photo’s that he liked to share with us..and likewise with you all below! Other eyes scour for different beauty.

Ok, we’ll have some radio silence for a week now, -and not really thinking about christmas, that is-

ek~ Gypsykids

do~ Making spicey chutney

tin~ Going for the camera

chaar~ Musulman takin it chanti

paanch~ Never to small for a Biri

cheh~ Inbetween the raves

saat~ Hup met ‘t hooi

aat~ Ooooh

nau, Morchangplayer from Jaiselmer busstation.

das, Traditionnel Indian shitting @ sunset!

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….