Karo Trio in India

Karo Trio in India: the diary

January 1st 2002: Daniel Schell and Carlo Strazzante arrive in Mumbai, we meet Arun & Shaila Piplapure who bring us to our hotel. Mumbai is tropical, so winter there is like summer in Brussels with a temperature of 30 degrees at noon time. Nice city, situated along the sea, with a Marine Drive which looks like Cannes or Nice, except that Mumbai has 15 million people working there.

January 2d: The flutist Fabrice De Graef joins us. Rehearsal in the afternoon. In the morning, Fabrice joins the class of Hariprasad Chaurasia. We are interviewed in Bombay's Mid Day by Nerendra Kusnur, the Indian jazz and fusion specialist in Mumbai.

January 3rd: The music we present in India are the compositions which Daniel wrote for tiptar and small ensemble. Some of them are quite well known 'karo' compositions such as 'La Nuit-The Night'. These compositions do use some Indian concepts such as taala, or modal forms but not in a strictly Indian literal way. We continue to rehearse all day. Fabrice is very strict on the improvisation, me on the execution of the themes. In the evening, my excellent friend and master, the famous singer Pandit Jasraj visits us in our hotel. Kala Ramnath, the violinist who accompanies him regularly, is also there. Jasraji is working on a project of music therapy in which specific raaga are sung for specific cases.

January 4th, we meet Terry D'Souza and his assistant Renu, the efficent and friendly team from the ICCR. They bring us to the wonderful hotel Taj Mahal. Everyone of us receives a great room. My room looks like the one of Marlon Brando on the Bounty ship, and my bed is about as large as a football ground...

January 6th, we join the team at the Sofia Bhabha Hall. Excellent PA, competent engineers. And there is an audience of 600 people. Big question: Will they appreciate our music? Yes, Our music is appreciated. The audience recognises well the Indian elements present in the music and enjoys the way we perform it. They like the bansuri of Fabrice, the way he presents these nice chromatic - almost be-bop like - passages in his improvisation. Carlo impresses with his North African percussion, bendir, derbuka and tambourine. And of course the tiptar - namely the Megatar tm - is an entirely new instrument for India. The interesting possibilities, such as gliding and bending, which allow the interpretation of ornaments, are very much appreciated, as well as the chord possibilities and , of course, the hand independence.

January 7th Departure for Puna, in Train. Puna is a 'small' city 300 km South of Mumbai. Interview for the Pune Time by Ahmed Karim.

January 8th: Concert in Puna in Mazda Hall. Organised by ICCR and the Puna Music Society. Puna is some 400 m high in the mountains. It has a little air of a Swiss town. The audience and the organisers are charming and friendly. Daniel has some troubles with an old PA. Fortunately the little mixer and amp do help a lot.

January 9th, We fly to Delhi. Reception by ICCR Sunil Mehdirreta and Tejveer Singh. Arrival in Intercontinental hotel.

January 10th, Delhi, Concert in the Teen Murti Auditorium. Great PA people, very competent. Nice audience. We meet the Belgian Drupad singer Philippe Falisse and the Indian violinist Rupam Ghosh. Next day we go to another music conference to listen to the South Indian flutist Sashank. Some of the audience there recognises us.

Jan 12-13 From now on, we are on our own. The ICCR tour stops here. We visit Delhi. The great Moghuls, the Muslim emperors of the 1500's, have built there wonderful palaces, such as the Red Fort. Nice city. We walk through the inner city markets. Hours of walk surrounded by an incredibly dense crowd. Nice weather. 20 degrees during the day, but 12' by night. We like our pull-over!

January 14: We take the train. 25 hours through the Ganges plain. The train is quite an experience. It is a world apart, with a circulation of tea, magazines, food, shoe cleaners.... Very cheap compared to the plane. You receive a reserved berth so you can sleep. The definitive advantage is that you see the wonderful country and the life in the small villages. There are frequent technical stops an the average speed is 50 km/h. In the stations, local employees dressed in red, take your luggage (including the tiptar!) and carry them on their head .

January 15th. Arrival in Varanasi (ex-Benares). Boating on the Ganges with the wonderful view on the palaces of the ex maharajas. Varanasi is a holy city were Hindus go for their ritual bath in the Ganges. It is almost medieval, with very small streets, full of cows and bicycle rickshaws. We are in Ganges View Hotel, a wonderful small palace owned by Shashank, an aristocrat humanist who organises literary and musical events in his music room. The hotel is situated on Asi Gat, north of Benares, where artists live. Amongst his treasure, Sashank shows us a painting of Alain Danielou, the famous French musicologist (who was living in the palace next door).

January 18th; Concert in the festival of the B.H.U., the Benares Hindu University. The music school of the BHU is one of the mythic places in India. The building of the school is a closed circle, in the middle of a beautiful parc. It has its own concert room. The dean of the Music Department, Prf. Jyotishi invites us to perform at their annual Music Festival. An audience of about 800 students is there, including great teachers such as the tablist Lal Mishra.

January 19th : We walk in the city and see our photo in Varanasi Times. Concert in the Gange's View Hotel. House concerts are quite common in India. Announced, just two days before, we have an audience of 60 attentive listeners. Delightful moment in the wonderful music room of Sashank. After that, we rush to the station. The train comes twelve hours too late. Then 15 hours to Calcutta, through the plains of Bihar.

January 20: Arrival in Kolkata ( Indian name for Calcutta). Sandip Banerjee is there waiting for us. Impressing, we go through the station with hundreds of people sleeping all over. Central Kolkata, looks a bit like London with its huge avenues and buildings, and reminds to Marseille or Napoli for the climate. The circulation is absolutely chaotic and the pollution unbelievable. You hardly see the end of the street. Fortunately, Bengalis are very friendly and laugh all the time.

January 22 Terrorist attack on the American Centre. Four soldiers are killed. No panic in Kolkatta though. People just disapprove. In the evening we go to the Dover Lane festival, the biggest classical Festival in India. The concert starts with one minute of silence, in memoriam of the soldiers. In the Dover lane we shall see great concerts by Tejendra Majumdar & Pandit Jasraj , the guitarist Debashih Bhattacharya, and many others.

January 23. Bengali marriage. The guitarist Barun Kumar Pal invites us to the reception for the marriage of his daughter. Great. It is a modern and much shorter form of ceremony which young people tend to choose these days. We meet the whole musical Kolkatta.

January 24th Concert in the Rabindra Bharati University. Organised by Sanjoy Bandopadhya, dean of the Music Department. We play for about 400 students, most of them musicians. All the teachers of the music department are there. I am impressed to see them counting the taala-s of Pancam Savri on their fingers, but apparently we do well! We play part of the concert with Sandip Banerjee on tabla. Great reception.

January 26-27: Visit to the Ajanta and Ellora caves, near Aurangabad. There are 25 Buddhist caves from 2nd BC till 6th AC. It is in a big rocky circle, excavated in basalt cliffs. As you can imagine, it is impressing and beautiful. The monasteries and churches are excavated directly in the basalt. There are stupas, buddhas, and very nice wall paintings.. Ellora is just as beautiful and has also Hindu and Jaïn caves.

January 28th Back in Mumbai. Evening, Daniel meets and plays with the great guitar player Vishmamohan Bhatt. Projects.

January 29th. Work with Shaila Piplapure on the mukkhras of her songs.

January 30, meeting with Septune Music, Gaudi Shankar. Projects of distribution and production of the Karo CD's in India. Departure to Amsterdam.

The equipment of a tapper musician

The tiptar I used was a Megatar which has has given all satisfaction and more.

Weight

In order to fly I had chosen to use a flight case. During a previous trip in India, I used the Stick tm tiptar and carried it in a gig bag. The Stick is actually much lighter than the Megatar which weighs about 5 kgs. So I could carry the Stick as a hand luggage and handle it to the crew.

This time, before leaving I had a call to KLM company, who insured me that they would not accept the Megatar as hand luggage, given its dimension and weight. However they confirmed that they would accept it as special Musical Instrument not to be carried as normal luggage. Normally there is a total weight limitation to 20 kgs and one hand luggage only. So I went to buy a light case, weighing some 6 kgs. This case is not the real hard flight case, which would have been much too heavy. It is made of light black fibreglass and is kind of semi-rigid. I chose the dimensions so that I could include the Megatar in its gigbag. I placed also soft clothes under the neck, right before the head piece, in order to prevent accidental pressure. The instrument was then very well protected and I had the advantage to have the gigbag with me for local activities.

Also, Paul Belgrado had advised me to slide some plastic sheets between the strings and the frets. I did that in order to prevent the frets to be damaged by some hard string contact. (I had such a problem in Neufchâteau, when my GSM felt on one string, damaging a fret. So I didn't want that kind of problem in India). The case with the Megatar, gig bag an some effects, weighted now 15 kgs. My total luggage weight was now 40 kgs. Carlo, on the other side, had about 25 kgs with his percussion. So quite an overweight.

We had no problems whatsoever. We always handled the case to the desk as musical instrument. Employees of the company picked and delivered the instruments away from the belts. The case was neither lost, nor damaged. So good experience with KLM and Sahara Airlines (in India).

The companies showed clemency and did not charge any supplement (except once)! I had all my official letters of invitation ready , but nevertheless, Thanks.

Hardware

For the rehearsals, I carried with me a small Yamaha VA tm with a 10 watts output. It has two small speakers and some effects (reverb, chorus). It can be battery operated. It was very useful for rehearsals and I used it as personal monitor on stage.

I also carried a Samson Mixpad 4 tm It is a small mixer with two inputs and two main outputs plus an auxiliary output for monitoring. I used it at all concerts, panned the melody on R, the bass on L and handled the L-R outputs to the PA.

As effects, I carried both Bass and Guitar Pandora tm digital multi-effects from Korg. I only used them when the PA had no effects.

Carrying a little 2-channels mixer is very useful. First it can serve as a DI, as most Indian PA-s don't have them. Second, you can always adjust your own monitoring, without affecting the general monitoring.

Classical music in India is dominated by acoustic instruments. There are hardly any electrical instruments I know except perhaps some mandolin or electric guitars. In large cities, like Mumbai or Delhi, the PA's we had were just as good and modern as in Europe. In other cities, it was different, sometimes PA's had only microphones. In this case, I played through the Yamaha, which was just miked. It even happened that there was no power at all on stage. Fortunately I had the batteries for the Yamaha.

We also played some house concerts for say 60 people, without any PA. The Yamaha proved to be wonderful.

Notes by Daniel Schell, March 2002

Megatar, Stick from Stick Enterprises, Yamaha VA, Pandora Korg, Samson Mixpad are registred trade marks of their respective owners.