After the quiet evening yesterday, came the loud evening today. Really loud. At the Selena Gomez show chaperoning Nikita and her two friends.
Now, most of you know that I am as much conversant with Western music as I am with the inner workings of the Higgs Boson theory 🙂 As a result, I have no clue what they are singing or which one is Selena, for that matter. Without my red wine, I would have been a nervous wreck by now!
That said, I am amazed by a few things in Western music compared to the Indian music I practice or listen to (admittedly it is not Bollywood music).
1. The sheer amount of energy. This is not a great orator moving the crowd with brilliance of words. Most of the audience can barely see the singer. But a couple of familiar songs into the show, the crowd is on its feet breaking into dances as if in a trance!! The music that I grew up with – the audience would quietly listen and give an approving nod or a smile at the end if it was a great rendition.
2. The ability of the singers to run all over the stage, jumping, hopping and yet singing along without missing a note. How they don’t pant and lose breath, I can’t understand. I can barely say a few words after a quarter mile run! Singers that I grew up with would sit in one place for hours. Harmonium was about the only exercise they got!
3. So much else goes on with the song. The pyrotechnics, stagecraft, lights, waving of LEDs, megawatts of sound. The music I grew up with was bereft of all these.

The power of Western music, I am learning, can move a large crowd physically off its feet, at once.
The power of Eastern music that I grew up with, I know, transcends the person, one at a time.

I am absolutely fascinated by the power of both!!

Lit a fire and sat with Nikita outside as she quizzed me on her newly acquired knowledge of stars, colors of stars and the moon.
Forty years back, my dad used to sit out in the open sky in his “easy chair” (a cross between a lounge chair and a hammock) and I used to sit by him and ask him a million questions about the clear sky above.
I remember being very dissatisfied with his answer to my question “How many total stars are there”? – “Uncountable. There is no end”. I reckoned this being his tactic to shut me up. I had decided to grow up and someday actually count up all the stars!!
That never happened!!

Natasha with her BFF

Sharmila with her patrons and art show. I showed up later since I had heard they were giving free wine 🙂