Catching up on some old posts - This past August 11, I had the great pleasure to accompany sitarist Uwe Neumann at the Open Mind Festival in Curran, Ontario. This Eco-Festival includes live music, kirtan, DJs, and various environmental and healing sessions and workshops. Upon arrival, our travel distance was calculated and our parking cost was based on our CO2 emissions! This is the first time that I have seen this approach; I think the festival organizers pass on the money to an organisation that will plant trees to counteract everyone's emission pollution.
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| Indian classical music workshop with Uwe Neumann |
In the afternoon, we gave a 90-minute workshop/performance on Indian classical music. Uwe started with the ektara, explaining the idea of drone and how the overtones contain all the pitches of the scale. We then played a short Bengali folk piece with the ektara. Next, we got into more of the nitty gritty, demonstrating the sitar and tabla, and talking about raag and taal. We played a short classical piece, and afterwards had an interesting exchange with the audience.
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| Uwe and his huge ektara |
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| Reciting tabla bols during the workshop |
Later that evening, we performed a full sitar and tabla concert. It's great to have the time to do a full alap-jor-jhala, with gats in vilambit, madhya, and drut. Uwe was really in the mood and we had some great exchanges. As is the tradition with Uwe, we ended with a short piece on sansa and tabla.
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Evening concert at Open Mind
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Photos by Caroline Tabah
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