Stepping into the Culture Corner with Jazz, Opera and Rockstar
After a long hiatus, I decided to catch up with some cultural and social events in London. It was not my explicit intention to mix the bizarre and the bohemian, but that's the only way to describe how my week turned out.
I started out on a Sunday of jazz music joining a group of serious jazz enthusiasts. To me jazz has mostly been something that plays in the background, or perhaps adds character to a lazy afternoon spent reading a book. So it was fortunate that the event was in fact 'The history of jazz music' and I got up to speed with the names of popular artists and change in style from 1930s, 40s, 50s.... right up to 2010. And I discovered that I was happy to be stuck in the 1930s where it seemed a lot more fun and played to the foxtrot and other interesting dance styles.
Invigorated by this finding, I decided to attend a proper concert mid-week where a prominent jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was joined by the rather-talented jazz-pianist Joachim Kühn. It was a 3-hour concert and an excellent way of discovering that my jazz-listening limits extend to just about 1.1 hrs, after which point I spent more time marveling at the exuberant lady in front of me who knew the start to every number being played. And all that jazz sure made us hungry, so we made a beeline for Pizza Express, me braving myself for some more background jazz but luckily (or not) it was Christmas melodies instead.
Undeterred by these huge doses of culture, I decided to kick off the next weekend by watching a live High Definition screening of the New York opera production 'Satyagraha'. Now Satyagarha has been running since 1980s in various forms and is based on Gandhi's years in South Africa that were a sort of a 'testing ground' for the ideas he would use in Indian freedom struggle later. The opera was being performed live in NY by, what appeared to be, an American cast. It was ostensibly a matinee show there, being telecast live to a screen at The Metropolitan Opera in Greenwich, London where a friend and I settled ourselves for the evening. So far so good.
But then the presenter said, and I paraphrase loosely-....this is not really based on a story like regular operas. In fact it consists solely of verses (shlokas) from the ancient Hindu text Bhagwad Gita which Gandhi used in his meditation every day. Once again- understandable. The Bhagwad Gita describes an ancient Indian mythological war scene between two sets of 'cousins' and it is said that these verses guide one to a elevated spiritual level helping one understand the meaning of life, the meaning of death or perhaps the meaning of meaning. The host then went on to ask the composer- "How difficult was it to compose this in Sanskrit? " At that point, I turned to my friend and said- 'did he just say "Sanskrit"?
So in Act 1, sitting at the edge of my seat I listened hard, very hard and in fact very, very hard. After 20 minutes I thought nah... this is operatic Italian for sure. Interval, and more words from the presenter on screen asking the lead "...How difficult was it to memorise all this in Sanskrit?". Act 2 began and I found myself sitting again at the edge of my seat listening hard, very hard and yes very, very hard. Nope- still nothing that sounded familiar. Till they reached the very last stanza. And then I heard an elongated operatic version of the words 'yada yada hi dharmasya...' and heaved a sigh of relief. Finally something recognizable! This relief turned out to be premature, for the remaining shloka disappeared beyond recognition into accented operatic Sanskrit.
But I must not be too harsh. The performers get full marks for effort, for trying to sing from what is arguably the most difficult text of the Sanskrit language and the Hindu religion. Even fluent Hindi speakers are likely to stumble at the pronunciation of the complex compounded words. I'm no expert on opera (and bizarrely still trying to decide if I enjoy it or not!) but the music score was definitely fascinating for most of the show. Ditto for stage props and the acting. So yes, the only drawback was that neither the performers, nor the viewers had any real clue about what was being sung! Those who were familiar with Gandhi's life, the Gita or like me grew up on BR Chopra's Mahabharata (!) probably got a bit more out of it.
As Sunday approached, I thought what better way to round off a week of varied culture than watch a new bollywood flick? So off I went to watch 'Rockstar'. But even bollywood flicks are no longer safe territory. So here was story of a Jim Morrison wannabe from Delhi- played by an Indian actor, the heartthrob of many Asian women, but not particularly mine (Sorry Ms S ;-)
The first half was fun, Delhi-Harayanvi dialects honed to perfection, as also the home-knitted sweaters so popular with the middle-classes. Some of it was pleasantly predictable. The leading lady was pretty and her outfits even prettier. Ho Hum. Oh well, to be fair, 'glamour' and 'cinema' go side by side in India so it is only right that the leading lady should be nothing less than Cinderella in the ball-gown or rather, as she was aptly called in the movie, Heer - a fictional, tragic-stricken beauty from northern India.
As the movie proceeded, the story seemed to make sense and some of us thought there was yet hope that the movie-makers were going to treat us like modern, mature adults. But alas, the melodrama had to be thrown in. It all ended in sobbing, weeping and a touch of hallucination. And it wasn't just the protagonist who had trouble disentangling the beginning from the end.
Whew! With all that in a week, I'm almost ready to go back into cultural hibernation now.
However, I just might try the 3-hour French movie first. It a classic I hear, and most importantly, it has sub-titles.
I started out on a Sunday of jazz music joining a group of serious jazz enthusiasts. To me jazz has mostly been something that plays in the background, or perhaps adds character to a lazy afternoon spent reading a book. So it was fortunate that the event was in fact 'The history of jazz music' and I got up to speed with the names of popular artists and change in style from 1930s, 40s, 50s.... right up to 2010. And I discovered that I was happy to be stuck in the 1930s where it seemed a lot more fun and played to the foxtrot and other interesting dance styles.
Invigorated by this finding, I decided to attend a proper concert mid-week where a prominent jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was joined by the rather-talented jazz-pianist Joachim Kühn. It was a 3-hour concert and an excellent way of discovering that my jazz-listening limits extend to just about 1.1 hrs, after which point I spent more time marveling at the exuberant lady in front of me who knew the start to every number being played. And all that jazz sure made us hungry, so we made a beeline for Pizza Express, me braving myself for some more background jazz but luckily (or not) it was Christmas melodies instead.
Undeterred by these huge doses of culture, I decided to kick off the next weekend by watching a live High Definition screening of the New York opera production 'Satyagraha'. Now Satyagarha has been running since 1980s in various forms and is based on Gandhi's years in South Africa that were a sort of a 'testing ground' for the ideas he would use in Indian freedom struggle later. The opera was being performed live in NY by, what appeared to be, an American cast. It was ostensibly a matinee show there, being telecast live to a screen at The Metropolitan Opera in Greenwich, London where a friend and I settled ourselves for the evening. So far so good.
But then the presenter said, and I paraphrase loosely-....this is not really based on a story like regular operas. In fact it consists solely of verses (shlokas) from the ancient Hindu text Bhagwad Gita which Gandhi used in his meditation every day. Once again- understandable. The Bhagwad Gita describes an ancient Indian mythological war scene between two sets of 'cousins' and it is said that these verses guide one to a elevated spiritual level helping one understand the meaning of life, the meaning of death or perhaps the meaning of meaning. The host then went on to ask the composer- "How difficult was it to compose this in Sanskrit? " At that point, I turned to my friend and said- 'did he just say "Sanskrit"?
So in Act 1, sitting at the edge of my seat I listened hard, very hard and in fact very, very hard. After 20 minutes I thought nah... this is operatic Italian for sure. Interval, and more words from the presenter on screen asking the lead "...How difficult was it to memorise all this in Sanskrit?". Act 2 began and I found myself sitting again at the edge of my seat listening hard, very hard and yes very, very hard. Nope- still nothing that sounded familiar. Till they reached the very last stanza. And then I heard an elongated operatic version of the words 'yada yada hi dharmasya...' and heaved a sigh of relief. Finally something recognizable! This relief turned out to be premature, for the remaining shloka disappeared beyond recognition into accented operatic Sanskrit.
But I must not be too harsh. The performers get full marks for effort, for trying to sing from what is arguably the most difficult text of the Sanskrit language and the Hindu religion. Even fluent Hindi speakers are likely to stumble at the pronunciation of the complex compounded words. I'm no expert on opera (and bizarrely still trying to decide if I enjoy it or not!) but the music score was definitely fascinating for most of the show. Ditto for stage props and the acting. So yes, the only drawback was that neither the performers, nor the viewers had any real clue about what was being sung! Those who were familiar with Gandhi's life, the Gita or like me grew up on BR Chopra's Mahabharata (!) probably got a bit more out of it.
As Sunday approached, I thought what better way to round off a week of varied culture than watch a new bollywood flick? So off I went to watch 'Rockstar'. But even bollywood flicks are no longer safe territory. So here was story of a Jim Morrison wannabe from Delhi- played by an Indian actor, the heartthrob of many Asian women, but not particularly mine (Sorry Ms S ;-)
The first half was fun, Delhi-Harayanvi dialects honed to perfection, as also the home-knitted sweaters so popular with the middle-classes. Some of it was pleasantly predictable. The leading lady was pretty and her outfits even prettier. Ho Hum. Oh well, to be fair, 'glamour' and 'cinema' go side by side in India so it is only right that the leading lady should be nothing less than Cinderella in the ball-gown or rather, as she was aptly called in the movie, Heer - a fictional, tragic-stricken beauty from northern India.
As the movie proceeded, the story seemed to make sense and some of us thought there was yet hope that the movie-makers were going to treat us like modern, mature adults. But alas, the melodrama had to be thrown in. It all ended in sobbing, weeping and a touch of hallucination. And it wasn't just the protagonist who had trouble disentangling the beginning from the end.
Whew! With all that in a week, I'm almost ready to go back into cultural hibernation now.
However, I just might try the 3-hour French movie first. It a classic I hear, and most importantly, it has sub-titles.
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