I saw the Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan last Friday.
And you're probably thinking, 'who are the Dhoad Gypsies?'
I didn't know who they were either until five minutes before the show, seated at the Museum of Contemporary Art for the World Music Festival in Chicago, a hostess handed me the show plugger and I read their bio. I was there, in part to support a spiritual empowerment group I'm a part of, LIFE, which is on a new adventurist mission and picked this as our fall kick off gathering, and in part to satisfy my eclectic leanings which the World Music Festival will always satisfy.
The Dhoad Gypsies are from the Thar Desert, an area in the north western Indian province of Rajasthan. Rajasthan is actually the ancient homeland of gypsies and the mythic travelling caravans of musicians and troubadours who hopped from town to town, across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe entertaining both royalty and commoners. The Dhoad Gypsies consider themselves to be heirs of these ancient traditions of artists and Friday was their U.S Debut.
After watching an exciting performance by a Chicago group called Lamajamal featuring their self coined "gypsy surfer," music a combo of Middle Eastern, European and African folk music punctuated with electric guitars circa 60s acid rock, I was, pretty much open to anything.
I've always been fascinated by the similarities between Middle Eastern, African, and Indian music. I'm equally as fascinated by the subtle relationships between the dance styles and instruments. The poetic hand movements in Spanish flamenco are identical to that in belly dancing. Belly dancing is a clear derivitive of traditional African dance. The percussion in belly dancing songs and the use of the tabla has the same rhythms as that in African dance.
I say this to say, that I shouldn't have been too surprised when the opening music of the Dhoud Gypsies, a rousing 16 count solo on the tablas, a Hindustani drum in classical music was very much like West African drumming circles. The drumming was extremely hypnotic, and the veracity that they rhythmically thumped their fingers and palms echoed with a distant familiarity that sent my mind.
In addition to an assortment of percussion instruments, they played a variety of instruments I'd never seen before. One, known in Rajasthan as the morhang, also known as the jews harp and some 40 other names across the globe, was one of the funniest looking instruments I'd ever seen. Its essentially a metal or bamboo reed attached to a tiny frame that's held in your mouth. The mouth as it opens and closes serves as a resonator for the sound as your finger plucks the reed. But this funny little instrument is unusually loud and sounds like the droning grooves a guitarist plunks and thumps in 70s style music. Its one of the oldest instruments in the world, and according to my research, its eery sound is associated with magic. The guy in the band who played the instrument, had all the swooning charisma of a lead guitarist in a funk band, which was amusing because, he was banging away on the morshang.
But no one topped the group's fakir, an Arabic word for a Sufi who performs feats of endurance. My words will only pale in comparison to actually witnessing what I saw; a petite man, among other things, balancing four glasses stacked on top of one another on his head, with a gigantic ceramic jug of water atop the glasses. And he danced as he balanced them. At one point he balanced the glasses and jug while dancing on top of a bed of rusty nails. Another time he balanced a three foot wooden wheel that must have weighed 50 pounds on top of a metal glass which was on top of his head and he kept dancing, shaking his hips and working the floor, like it was nothing more than a baseball cap. Totally unreal. Oh, did I mention, that he took sticks of fire and rubbed them up and down his skin in between swallowing the fire and spitting it out into a looming fire ball? It was truly unbelievable, and I wish I had more friends with me who could have witnessed it.
Last weekend, at the UNCF walkathon , I managed to balance a tiny box of business cards on my head as I walked for at least four blocks. But this guy put my amateur balancing act to shame. One of my friends who was fortunate enough to witness the fakir at work, remarked that after watching the Dhoud Gypsies, we're, and he included me in his summation, are really half stepping when it comes to maximizing our potential. We thought we were okay just running along the lake and taking a kung fu class every now and then. Clearly, we haven't even scratched the surface.
But the enchanting nature of the Dhoud Gypsies did make me wonder what other exciting feats and performance styles were lost over the centuries, particularly those that came out of Africa.
Nevertheless, I'm inspired. The Dhoud Gypsies give us a window into yesteryear while forging a bridge to our future potential.
So instead of balancing one book on my head and walking around my house for kicks, I guess its time to pile on two. And if I could balance two books while doing Soldier Boy's "Superman" . . . now that would be enchanting.
And you're probably thinking, 'who are the Dhoad Gypsies?'
I didn't know who they were either until five minutes before the show, seated at the Museum of Contemporary Art for the World Music Festival in Chicago, a hostess handed me the show plugger and I read their bio. I was there, in part to support a spiritual empowerment group I'm a part of, LIFE, which is on a new adventurist mission and picked this as our fall kick off gathering, and in part to satisfy my eclectic leanings which the World Music Festival will always satisfy.
The Dhoad Gypsies are from the Thar Desert, an area in the north western Indian province of Rajasthan. Rajasthan is actually the ancient homeland of gypsies and the mythic travelling caravans of musicians and troubadours who hopped from town to town, across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe entertaining both royalty and commoners. The Dhoad Gypsies consider themselves to be heirs of these ancient traditions of artists and Friday was their U.S Debut.
After watching an exciting performance by a Chicago group called Lamajamal featuring their self coined "gypsy surfer," music a combo of Middle Eastern, European and African folk music punctuated with electric guitars circa 60s acid rock, I was, pretty much open to anything.
I've always been fascinated by the similarities between Middle Eastern, African, and Indian music. I'm equally as fascinated by the subtle relationships between the dance styles and instruments. The poetic hand movements in Spanish flamenco are identical to that in belly dancing. Belly dancing is a clear derivitive of traditional African dance. The percussion in belly dancing songs and the use of the tabla has the same rhythms as that in African dance.
I say this to say, that I shouldn't have been too surprised when the opening music of the Dhoud Gypsies, a rousing 16 count solo on the tablas, a Hindustani drum in classical music was very much like West African drumming circles. The drumming was extremely hypnotic, and the veracity that they rhythmically thumped their fingers and palms echoed with a distant familiarity that sent my mind.
In addition to an assortment of percussion instruments, they played a variety of instruments I'd never seen before. One, known in Rajasthan as the morhang, also known as the jews harp and some 40 other names across the globe, was one of the funniest looking instruments I'd ever seen. Its essentially a metal or bamboo reed attached to a tiny frame that's held in your mouth. The mouth as it opens and closes serves as a resonator for the sound as your finger plucks the reed. But this funny little instrument is unusually loud and sounds like the droning grooves a guitarist plunks and thumps in 70s style music. Its one of the oldest instruments in the world, and according to my research, its eery sound is associated with magic. The guy in the band who played the instrument, had all the swooning charisma of a lead guitarist in a funk band, which was amusing because, he was banging away on the morshang.
But no one topped the group's fakir, an Arabic word for a Sufi who performs feats of endurance. My words will only pale in comparison to actually witnessing what I saw; a petite man, among other things, balancing four glasses stacked on top of one another on his head, with a gigantic ceramic jug of water atop the glasses. And he danced as he balanced them. At one point he balanced the glasses and jug while dancing on top of a bed of rusty nails. Another time he balanced a three foot wooden wheel that must have weighed 50 pounds on top of a metal glass which was on top of his head and he kept dancing, shaking his hips and working the floor, like it was nothing more than a baseball cap. Totally unreal. Oh, did I mention, that he took sticks of fire and rubbed them up and down his skin in between swallowing the fire and spitting it out into a looming fire ball? It was truly unbelievable, and I wish I had more friends with me who could have witnessed it.
Last weekend, at the UNCF walkathon , I managed to balance a tiny box of business cards on my head as I walked for at least four blocks. But this guy put my amateur balancing act to shame. One of my friends who was fortunate enough to witness the fakir at work, remarked that after watching the Dhoud Gypsies, we're, and he included me in his summation, are really half stepping when it comes to maximizing our potential. We thought we were okay just running along the lake and taking a kung fu class every now and then. Clearly, we haven't even scratched the surface.
But the enchanting nature of the Dhoud Gypsies did make me wonder what other exciting feats and performance styles were lost over the centuries, particularly those that came out of Africa.
Nevertheless, I'm inspired. The Dhoud Gypsies give us a window into yesteryear while forging a bridge to our future potential.
So instead of balancing one book on my head and walking around my house for kicks, I guess its time to pile on two. And if I could balance two books while doing Soldier Boy's "Superman" . . . now that would be enchanting.
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