June 12th, 2010: Sacred drums of India

@théatre de la ville

That’s a somewhat pompous name, but they at least endorsed it during the initial introduction. I liked that one of them took time to explain a few things about the pieces they were playing, it was helpful for me because I’m still at a loss to figure out much on my own. There were five musicians, and four kinds of drums. Subhankar Banerjee played tabla, Bhawani Shankar pakhawaj, Gopal Barman shreekhol — new to me, with a nice sound if which I’d like to hear more –, Suresh Vaidyanathan gatham and Rakesh Chaurasia stood out playing flute.

Chaurasia seemed very important to me, in that he provided a more melodic otherness for the drums to integrate with. That was made obvious when he left at the end, and the remaining musicians took a solo in turn. I liked the show, but I think the limit of this kind of thing is that it ended up feeling like an introduction somehow. They are all good enough to me more prominent, and that made me want to hear more of them, but with no more than maybe two at a time, and preferably just one in an ensemble. But being a beginner this was nice to hear this as an introduction — anything more that took place went straight over my head — and it succeeded in making me more interested.