Music season 4 – surprise dance, and Tamil Orchestra for the blind, street fest
On January 9th we tried to go see Kadri Golpanath, and Kanyakumari again, but at this point our guide for season events was becoming more and more inaccurate. The guide was assembled long before the music season, and seemed to only have approximate listings for everything after early January. We had already gotten lost trying to find a Lalgudi kids concert. On January 9th we actually found the venue (a small temple in mylapore), but Kadri Golpanath and Kanyakumari were playing on Jan. 12th at 11am! The concert was listed for Jan. 9th at 7pm. The people at the temple felt sorry for us for walking so far, and told us about a street festival nearby. Street festivals in India are usually abit too much. Sometimes walking down the street on a regular day feels like a festival (for instance today there is drumming, and fireworks going on outside about every hour. I may or may not go and check out the reason)….but we were already there, so we decided to check it out. There were lots of kids to distract the vendors from selling toys to me + some cool rides, and food that was probably pretty good (but there were too many people around to see it). I bought some reasonably priced eggplants from a vendor who tried to sell me everything. The rides were the best to look at. The pictures almost capture the energy of the families, and kids in festival mode at night. They set up a small man-power carrous-wheel, and a small ferris-wheel (just like the ones at the beach here). I have been offered rides in these tiny things from operators at the beach. Thinking about sitting in one of those things gives me a similar feeling to sitting in man or bike pulled rickshaw. I couldn’t bear to put the weight of my big body on these tiny thin men. Just as I was thinking a thought of that sort I realized that one of the mom’s didn’t feel quite the same way! One boy was blowing bubbles. These were quite beautiful lit up by street lights. My camera managed to capture the trails of their movement.
After about 30 minutes we left the street festival only to run into an open-air stage in front of the famous mylapore temple. The performances were another part of the street festival. We watched the end of a dance performance, and waited another hour for the “Tamil film orchestra for the blind” which we saw posted as next. The 20 odd members were already on stage (most of them wearing sunglasses) along with drum-kit, keyboards ect. We were excited to hear what the music would sound like. Surely nothing like carnatic music, and maybe nothing like we had ever heard. The band was certainly charming to watch. They all really enjoyed playing, and they were good, but it was too loud!!!!!!!! It was so loud we could barely hear it. We had to leave after the 2nd song. The music was different. It was definitely influenced by carnatic music, but it had harmony, and simpler beats. The chord progressions were VERY simple, and sometimes strange. It really seemed like they were an afterthought. The singing was great, but WAY TOO LOUD.
