Running Gamak: Warren Senders' Blog

A Quick Report on the June 12 Concert

The “Singing For The Planet” concert happened as planned last Saturday. We had an excellent crowd and raised a little over $800 for www.350.org — and the music was lovely.

Mili Bermejo, Dominique Eade and Me

I’m just putting a few photographs up for now. A full report with video will go up later this week. These images are courtesy of Hadley Langosey, and there will be more to come.

Dominique, Will Slater, Will Graefe, some guy, Harriotte Hurie, Mili Bermejo, Dan Greenspan, Priti Chakravarty, Akshay Navaladi. Missing: Doug Johnson

First Set: The Mili Bermejo Trio

Mili Bermejo with Doug Johnson on piano and Dan Greenspan on bass

Second Set: Warren Senders & The Raga Ensemble

Me, with Akshay Navaladi, tabla; Priti Chakravarti, harmonium; Harriotte Hurie, tamboura.

Third Set: Dominique Eade & Friends

Dominique Eade with Will Slater on bass and Will Graefe on guitar.

While we wait, more India photoblogging

I’m writing some more detailed stuff about practice strategies, but it’s still under construction.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of signs in India.

Patent medicine. Unfortunately, you can’t see the “after” picture. Take it from me that the guy is smiling.

Bombay travel agents.

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Hindustani Instrumental Photoblogging

As part of my continuing drive to provide visual, auditory and intellectual content, here is an assortment of the photographs I took of Hindustani instrumentalists during the 1980s. Zakir was performing a great deal in Pune during that time, and I got many good images of him.

Amjad Ali Khan and Zakir Hussain. Sawai Gandharva Mahotsaav, Pune, 1985

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Dagar Photoblogging: Pune, 1985

These photographs were taken at a Dhrupad Sammelan in Pune, late in 1985. These are Zahiruddin and Faiyazuddin Dagar, the “Younger Dagar Brothers.”

Zahiruddin (L) and Faiyazuddin Dagar.

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India Photoblogging: Benares, 1986

I was in Varanasi in early 1986, and I greatly enjoyed it. Here are a few random scenes and images from that trip. At another point I’ll put up the photos I took on the “Sunrise-on-the-Ganges” boat tour, which is an important tourist activity. These, however, are simply the things that happened when I pointed my Minolta and pressed the button. Remember, taking fascinating pictures is very easy in India.

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Karela blogging

I’m going to grow some Karela this year in my garden. I grew some two years ago and it was a lot of fun. I got the seeds from Evergreen; they have a great many varieties of Bitter Gourd along with lots of other stuff I’m anxious to try.

Although it’s early days yet, I thought I’d start a few seeds and see how they did in my grow-box. Here’s “Arthur,” the first to emerge. Arthur is an India Long Karela; the classic Indian bitter gourd, warts and all. But those tasty warts are a long way in the future.

Right now, Arthur is just about an inch and a half high. Cute, isn’t he?

I will update from time to time.

India Photoblogging: Pune, 1985-1991

I took a lot of pictures while wandering around Pune in the mid-1980s and early 90s. I was using a Minolta SLR which I still have somewhere in a box; digital cameras have now taken over completely, so I haven’t looked through the lens of my 35mm camera in a very long time. Getting interesting results when you’re photographing scenes on an Indian street is not difficult; Indian streets are inherently interesting. Here are some of my favorites.

Somewhere in City section; I have a vague recollection this was in the vicinity of Appa Balwant Chowk, but that’s probably just my senility kicking in.

Shukrawar Peth, most likely. Probably somewhere close to Phule Market.
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Juna Bazaar, Pune, 1986

Pune’s weekly junk market. I rode past this bazaar all the time, and finally got around to spending a couple of hours there with a camera, sometime in early 1986. I have always loved the bustle of street-level commerce; this place epitomizes a wonderful mix of high event density (on a moment-to-moment level) with the calm sense that “we have been trading in other people’s discarded objects for hundreds of years.”

In 1988 I went there and bought a suitcase for my return trip to the US. It failed catastrophically, bursting all its seams, between Pune and Bombay, en route to the airport. Anticipating this, I’d bought a giant needle (4-5 inches long) and some string, and I sewed up the suitcase. It lasted until I arrived in New York, at which point I was able to borrow another piece of luggage for the trip to Boston. If this story has a moral, it’s probably something like, “Don’t buy shitty luggage.”

If you like seeing these India Photoblogging posts, please let me know, and I’ll do some more in days to come.

A Package of Cookies, Purchased in Rajasthan, 2000

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Rajasthani Music: Tulcharam Bhopa plays Ravanhatta

In 2000, Vijaya and I traveled to Rajasthan, staying in Udaipur and Jaisalmer. I have loved Rajasthani music from the first time I heard it, and it was really a treat to listen to traditional artists in both cities.

The Ravanhatta (wiki spells it ravanahatha) is one of the oldest bowed instruments in the world.

The bowl is made of cut coconut shell, the mouth of which is covered with goat hide. A dandi, made of bamboo is attached to this shell. The principal strings are two: one of steel and the other of a set of horsehair. The long bow has jingle bells.[1]

The artists come from a lineage of bards, the Bhopas:

Every prominent family of the land-holding Rajput caste, I discovered, inherited a family of oral genealogists, musicians and praise singers, who celebrated the family’s lineage and deeds.

(snip)

…unlike the ancient epics of Europe – the Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf and The Song of Roland – which were now the province only of academics and literature classes, the oral epics of Rajasthan were still alive, preserved by a caste of wandering bhopas who travelled from village to village, staging performances.

Some Bhopas, of course, make their living performing for tourists. There were three or four ravanhatta players on the cobbled walkway up to the Jaisalmer Fort. We listened briefly to each; the one who really stood out to our ears was Tulcharam Bhopa, and we recorded a few of his pieces. It was early evening of Indian Independence Day, August 15, 2000.

Here are some of our photographs of Jaisalmer accompanying the beautiful playing of Tulcharam Bhopa, whom I’m told died a few years ago.