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  1. Nerm's Travels to India (Part Three)

    • Nerm
    • 14 Dec 06, 05:14 PM

    Arriving back to London was a culture shock. My head was spinning from the international flight and the smaller internal flights I took for gigs. People often ask “What’s Calcutta like? How’s Indore?” and I honestly have no answer. Mine is a short sharp existence in towns I’d love to explore but it literally is: Airport, Plane, Airport, Car, Hotel, Gig, Hotel, Car, Airport. You never actually see anything.

    That was until I went to Delhi. I was there to cover the Shalom Peace Festival for the 麻豆社 Asian Network, so there was no actual performance from me - I was just an observer and it was quite liberating.

    The Shalom Peace Festival is the brain-child of the Midival Punditz.

    Shalom started life as a restaurant/bar in New Delhi that catered for a more relaxed audience. Delhi is the capital of India so wealth, power and status are permanently on display. Shalom is a place where people can take off their coats of power and take a break from all that.

    Shalom then released a compilation album in conjunction with the Punditz, who got their brothers-in-arms Karsh Kale, Jayant and J-Viewz on the album. Live gigs soon followed which lead to a platform for alternative arts and music in Delhi. The next logical step was a festival. And the line up was superb! Karsh Kale, Midival Punditz, Vishal Vaid, Jalebee Cartel, Ustad Sultan Khan and J-Viewz featured over three days at the Qutab Hotel (one of Delhi’s more well-known hotels).

    I was invited to the rehearsals for the Festival at the most magical place I've been to since I was 8 years old: The Ravi Shankar Institute for Musical and Performing Arts. There I saw the Midival Punditz, Karsh and Vishal rehearsing (as always if you want to see pictures, head over to the )

    The Ravi Shankar Institute is a wonderful building with an Ashram-like air of calm. The walls are covered with pictures of Ravi Shankar with George Harrison, Pundit Nehru, the Royal Family and more personal pictures including him as a young actor, his parents and of course his luminous daughters.

    Live Sequences, drums, bass, guitar, flute and soaring voices filled the acoustically perfect rehearsal space. The Midival Punditz have been part of my personal soundtrack over the last three years and I was simply lost when I heard them live. Vishal’s powerful voice sung refrains that I’ve attempted to hum along to in the past but I kept my mouth shut and ears open.

    Karsh’s set was up next and this is where I was surprised. Not only can the dude produce, play tabla and drums but man, can he sing!

    He sounded amazing doing the vocal parts of tracks from all three of his albums (Realize, Liberation and Broken English). My all-time favourite Karsh tracks are “Milan” (a track written about his daughter) and “Saajana” (from his debut album) and I was nearly bought to tears when I heard them live.

    It’s at these rehearsals that I realised that the Midival Punditz, Karsh and their collaborators are really an evolution of their "classical" Indian heritage. Their music is often described as "Asian Underground" or "Fusion", but it's actually way beyond that. Theirs is the next step in a long line of illustrious Indian musicians. Their instruments just happen to be electronic sequencers, samplers and synths, but most importantly, the upper echelons of Indian Music seen them as the next step too.

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  1. 1.

    This was an interesting piece about India which I like.

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  2. 2.
    • At 05:46 PM on 14 Dec 2006,
    • Nerm wrote:

    Please excuse my rubbish grammer!

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  3. 3.

    Don't worry, your writing was great.

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  4. 4.
    • At 11:18 AM on 27 Dec 2006,
    • orange wrote:

    Isn't grammar spelt with an 'a'?

    great piece - when are Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale coming over here? I heard your show it was great. The music sounded fantastic.

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  5. 5.
    • At 09:35 AM on 04 Jan 2007,
    • Vibhuti wrote:

    "Theirs is the next step in a long line of illustrious Indian musicians."

    That just sums up what I feel about people like the Punditz and Karsh Kale. They seem to have captured everything that is the essence of classical Indian music and developed it into a new incarnation.

    Great reading, thanks Nerm!

    V xx

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  6. 6.
    • At 04:15 PM on 02 Feb 2007,
    • Toni wrote:

    Grammar is spelt with an a, I checked!

    Nerm, sort it out!!

    And oh, really enjoyed the reading. Thanks.

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  7. 7.
    • At 04:17 PM on 02 Feb 2007,
    • Toni wrote:

    Grammar is spelt with an a, I checked!

    Nerm, sort it out!!

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  8. 8.
    • At 12:01 PM on 17 Feb 2007,
    • Nerm wrote:

    Ha! Thanks Toni. I think "Orange" caught that earlier :P

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