We arrived in Ahmedabad for several days in residence at Darpana Academy, a school founded in 1949 by Mrnalini Sarabhai, the dancer who introduced Indian classical dance to word audiences.  The space is stunning, created by artists with both traditional Indian imagery set into the walls at every turn, and whimsical mosaics, modern sculpture and functional components like seating and tables all created by artists.  There are maybe 8 or 9 classroom spaces, most of them outdoors, shaded by canopies and trees, or occasionally by cantilevered office space above.  They run a whole gamut of classes, including ones taught by visiting international artists.

We spent a couple of days working with the Darpana house band to assemble a joint performance.  These are world class muciains, and they are well accustomed to collaboring across cultural boundaries, having previously worked with jazz, rock and hip hop performers.  You all would have been proud of the way Reggio jumped right in, organizing the team of percussionists (2 Indian drummers joined by an Australian who was also in residence at Darpana during our stay) into a really dynamic performance. We played in the Academy’s outdoor ampitheatre, a real high point.

While in Ahmedabad we also offered a workshop at a wonderful school, and performed at an Institute of Rural Management which is a training center for small scale dairy farming operations, funded through a dairy cooperative with 13 million members.  Then it was off to Baroda where we had by far the largest audience of the trip, more than 1000 people who could not have been a more energetic audience.  It was a great gig, but this is India so it also had its strange moments:  in the middle of our set we were interrupted by a local politician who got up and gave a speech for 5 minutes; and then a famous cricket player showed up and about a third of the audience swarmed all over him for autographs.  Dan responded by pretty much shredding his guitar on a smokin’ version of “Pinball Wizard.”

Now we’re in Mumbai, the last stop of the tour, with a gig tonight at a place called the Blue Frog Club, which we’re told is the hottest club in town.  They’ve got us advertised as the “Chicago Fold Ensemble” — I guess somebody hit the wrong key on their computer to make us “fold” instead of “folk” — maybe it will attract a huge crowd of curious music fans.

Thinking fondly of Chicago.  We heard it was snowing there!  It’s 95 here.

In late afternoon we gathered at the home of a musician in a tiny village way off in the desert. We were served tea and the whole village came to check out the party. The women went off to one of the houses — really huts made of clay and camel dung — to have a henna party. The guys were loaded into a few vehicles and headed off even farther into the desert, along with a whole wedding band and a chorus of about ten ten-year old boys. The priest marked off a sacred space (“Rama’s house”) in the sand with string and proceeded to create two beautiful mandalas, one made mostly of sand and rice and the other on a piece of cloth with rocks, coins, rice, flower petals and I don’t know what else. In loco parentis, my wife Phyllis and I were designated as Nicole’s parents and received multiple blessings, strings tied on our wrists, dots on our foreheads, and hand washings with bottles of Ganges river water. Reggio and Dan were designated as brothers and received most of the same; Mary became a sister and had several other tasks during the ceremony. The band began playing and the boys’ singing in the desert as the moon rose was rather enchanting.

Ronnie and Nicole arrived, Ronnie in a turban and brocade vest that he’d had made for himself that day, and Nicole in an outrageous sari. They were immediately garlanded with flowers and had their hands tied together in a scarf. The priest lit a fire right on top of one of the mandalas and the ceremony began. Of course none of us understood a word, but the flow of symbolism was urgent. As the priest chanted, Phyllis was given a box of ghee and was instructed to throw spoonfuls of it onto the fire every ten seconds or so. I was given a bag that contained — I think — dried, pulverized camel dung, and I likewise threw it onto the fire, maybe 100 or more times, while the priest chanted. Periodically, Ronnie and Nicole were asked to get up and walk together around the fire (not easy in a sari). The musicians sat by occasionally joining in the chant and obviously getting primed to play.

As soon as the ceremony ended, the music began, an entire catalog of music used for solemnizing weddings. By now it was pitch dark except for the wedding fire and a couple of gas lamps and the moon. The music was ecstatic and prolonged and the band included grandfathers and their grandsons. Except for the fact that we’d all arrived in motorized vehicles rather than on camels, this ceremony was probably pretty much exactly as it has been practised in Rajasthan for 1000 years. It was pretty primal.

After a couple hours we piled back into the cars and went back to the village where dinner was served, the multi-course extravaganza that we have gotten accustomed to here in India. It was a remarkable night, that I don’t think any of us can ever forget.

Contrasts. Everywhere we go, there are ancient monuments, forts, palaces, remarkable and grand scale expressions of Indian culture and they are enormously impressive. Last Saturday night we performed in a courtyard of a palace on top of a cliff with the sun setting on one side and the moon rising on the other, with intricately-carved marble screens silhouetted by the clear Rajasthani sky. You could not ask for a more amazing performance venue. But on the same day I saw some little girls of 3 or 4 years old dodging in and out of traffic to come knock on our taxi windows to beg for a few rupees. We’re talking about kids not much above wiggleworm age. It takes your breath away.

Music. We have been very fortunate to meet a large number of musicians already. Our group was invited to dinner with a singer and flute player that performed with us in Delhi, and it was really something special. Night before last we spent sleeping in tents in the desert after a musical evening with a large group of musicians and dancers. You would have been proud of Reggio dancing with these three elaborately costumed Rajasthani
women, while Dan and Ronnie played along. It’s a special experience to wake up at dawn with sarangi music drifting across the desert to your tent.

Food. Plentiful and great. So far we’ve suffered only a few short bouts of Delhi belly and everyone is enjoying the local cuisine — except Reggio, who brought along his own peanut butter and jelly!

Traffic. I thought Italian drivers were insane, but they don’t come anywhere close to the Indians. Not only are the drivers crazy, but they have to contend with cows wandering at random all over the roads, even major highways. Sometimes the cows, who seem impervious to human cajoling, travel in slow moving herds that can block up the whole road. Sometimes they just stand there in the middle looking holy. Yesterday, our driver used a moving herd of cows as – I’m not kidding — a makeshift slalom course at 50 or 60 miles per hour. And that’s just the cows, there’s a lot of othjer animal life on the roads here, too.

The gang is calling me now for a trip into the bazaar, so I’ll sign on for more later. We’re building up a good store of stories. — Bau

It’s great here. The “winter” weather is 75-80 degrees daily. The people just as warm. The food really pretty unbelievable.

We are teaching at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, which is a huge campus, the 3rd largest in Brazil with about 40,000 students. The Musica building is spacious and very well equipped. Like almost all the public buildings here (schools, restaurants, banks, you name it) it is open and airy, with whole sections of wall open to the outdoors. A very large garden is planted in a big central counrtyard INSIDE the building.

Our host, Prof. Walenia Silva, teaches in the music program. and is an encyclopedia of information about Brazilian traditional music. We’ve been offering workshops for her students and others in the music school. The students are all well trained musicians, very quick on the uptake, and full of interest in American music. Many of them have a lot of knowledge about our music already — which is a little humbling since we have so little insight into theirs. Even though we’re singing in a language foreign to them, all of the students know the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Last night we visited a small private music school called Pro-Musica, which has about 800 students and focuses on popular music. Students there sign up for a year of classes and they all take three classes per week — their specialty instrument, ear training/theory, and ensembles. They seem to run their operation on a shoestring and the amazing energy of their director. He invited us to offer a workshop on Friday so we’ll be able to experience the students then.

More to come soon. Boa tarde. Bau

Some things we saw that could find a home in Chicago. In the British Museum, sculptures created by Mozambiquan artists using decommissioned weapons — beautiful and moving. In Heathrow airport, corridors lined with images depicting apparent opposites that could switch signs according to the viewer, i.e. a high heel and a hot pepper labeled variously as “pain” or “pleasure.” In our Helsinki hotel, elevator doors filled with photographic representations of the wondors of the Finnish environment, different on every floor. In every British pub, beautiful varnished mahogany bars that offer such a warm contrast to Americas chrome, formica and marble. In every classroom at Sibelius Academy, vitrines displaying ancient or exemplary instruments, a bit of musical heritage on permanent exhibit.

How to convey this energy? Our delegation saw some extraordinary performances and our immediate response was a desire to share this with the entire community at Old Town School — we’ve just got to figure out a way to get some of these amazing artists to Chicago. But the next challenge will be generating a critical mass of enthusiasm among our Chicago colleagues and students. Those of us who traveled have the experience of having witnessed these incredible artists, butmost people at the School have no particular reason to get excited about Northern English fiddle tunes, Chinese sheng players or ancient Finnish shamanic vocal styles. What is our strategy for impressing our friends with how really special some of these things can be? That something they’re probably never stopped to imaginecould offer sucha powerful experience. If our hoped-for exchange program is to work, somehow we’ll have to engender an open-ness, a desire to try something new, that is not most people’s default setting.

Prospects for future exchanges. Our hosts were very enthusiastic about their encounters with Old Town School teachers. In the last 24 hours in Finland, Boogie taught two hip hop classes, Barb taught a clogging workshop and a vocal class, Maria taught a fiddle class, Joe was whisked away by the harmonica students and gave them a seminar that occupaied about 7 hours over two days. Over our farewell meal I asked one of the faculty how she felt things had gone, and she responded that the students were “ecstatic.” I believe with both Britain and Finland the only hurdle left to surmount before we can initiate some serious faculty swaps is to consult the calendar to find dates that work for both institutions. There is an excitement from both sides that will drive this process forward.

What’s next? This trip represents a beginning. It is a beginning on what could evolve into ongoing relationships with the Sage Gateshead and Sibelius Academy. And it is also the first step in building a program that can and should expand to other cultures and parts of the world. Due to the MacArthur Foundation’s funding proclivities, I suspect the next steps will be with Mexico and India. In any case this trip was a success on multiple levels, for the School, for our hosts, for the individual teachers involved, and for the prospects that it opens for future evolution. I offer my deepest appreciation to the team from Old Town School who made this all possible. Thank you.

Bau Graves

Sharing music. There are people everywhere who love American music, and some of them are passing experts in specific subgenres. But encounters with country singers abroad inevitably bump up against our ingrained knowledge of what that music is really supposed to sound like. For me, the more satisfying encounters are with those who are carrying on their own local styles: Geordie fiddle tunes, English music hall numbers, Finnish polskas. And here is the thrill of discovery: something steeped in its own place with a long history standing behind it and with more meaning and nuance than we as outsiders can comprehend. We’ve been very fortunate to experience several virtuoso level performances, most delivered in the most casual, relaxed manner. A delight.

Old Town School folks. Our teachers are excellent traveling companions. Curious, tolerant, flexible, ready for whatever is around the next corner, fun to be with. But getting seven of them aimed in the same direction at the same time is like herding cats!

Public spaces. We’ve been in some very interesting — and vastly different — public spaces on this trip, which of course make me reflect on the nature of the public space we’re about to create across Lincoln Avenue. The Sage Gateshead is an enormous new public performance facility. The lobby is about the size of two football fields, lots of glass and marble, a little chilly to my taste; the concert venues are all trimmed with wood, making them warm spaces to inhabit. But in all of it the scale fights against the intimacy of face to face interactions. For that everybody retires to the local pub, a very different kind of public space. Small, narrow, crowded, almost haphazardly decorated — and totally delightful. Somehow, we require both, the arena and the pub. A day at Durham Cathedral offered another kind of space, this one deliberately constructed to impress individuals with their smallness in relation to the grandeur of God. But again, one feels that the big church may have been good for inspiring awe, but the real interactions took place out in the comparative confines of the cloisters and side chapels — or down the street at the pub.

Ensembles. We had the chance to sit in on some ensemble classes at Sibelius Academy, and they are working at a very high level, far more polished and professional than anything we have at Old Town School. Granted, these are students in a degree program preparing for their performance critiques, but still it makes me wonder whether we could create mechanisms for allowing advanced students to immerse themselves in sophisticated ensemble playing that is up to professional performance standards.

The Old Town School sitcom. While riding the three-hour tour of a train from Newcastle to London, our crew fell to casting ourselves as the stars of Gilligan’s Island. The results: Bau Graves as the Skipper; Maria McCullough as Gilligan; Joe Filisko as the Professor; Robert Tenges as Ginger the Movie Star; Boogie McClarin as Mary Anne; Barb Silverman as Thurston Howell the Millionaire; and Steve Levitt as Lovey, his Wife. “Lovey” might even stick as a nickname for Steve…

Lots more to come, but we’re headed back over to Sibelius Academy soon and I need to go have a little smoked reindeer meat for breakfast.

Bau