ISA Diwali Show
Last Friday we had the ISA Diwali show. Which was held a month late. A testament of adherence to IST? It was supposed to start at 7:00 pm and I called my American friend to watch. She turned up at 7:05 and apologised for being late. The show started at 7:45 after Pooja and setting up of the equipment. The MC of show gave 5 minute long introduction.
It was all downhill after that. The sound system sucked. Bad. The Classical performances were first. The Indian junta typically, was not listening at all and was more interested in saying "Hi and Hello" to friends they meet everyday, while the poor musician tried to play above the din. Looking at the bewildered face of my friend Lisa, I was in splits. Of course, when the Indypop hits started the whole crowd got excited. We Indians love to talk about our great culture but want to nothing concrete to even make an effort to appreciate it. Lisa thought that the concert would end by around 8:30. Well what do you know. It was fun translating the Rafi song. I think it's not at all easy to convey the desperate emotion and feeling. How can you explain well enough what,
"Pukarta chala hoon mai, Bas ek sham zulf ki,
Bas ek nigah pyar ki"
means?
She came to watch me and I did not perform till 10:00 pm and she waited. Thanks to impromtu prize distributions and zillion problems with the sound, more delays. Welcome to India!
Thanks to the ***tty sound system our first song "Kandisa" was butchered. Thankfully the second song the fusion piece called "Ananda" by Taufiq Quereshi and Kumaran-Ganesh from the Streams of Confluence was heard. As it is the bass guitar is not foremost in people's ears. (On second thoughts its good in a way considering the author's experience on the bass guitar)
I was ashamed of the rank unprofessionalism of the ISA people conducting it and the MC's who thought that they were in somebody's house yelling (announcing). Needless to say that the dances were a travesty of dances of any sort.
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It would have been great to have a nice show after all the practice and late nights. I still think that the practice is more fun. All that instant jamming. Playing and getting nowhere. The jokes, the banter and the tom-foolery during practice is more fun than a perfect audience, a perfect sound system and perfect musicians(ahem!)
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