Global Music
The Voices of Bahai performed at the Lotus Temple auditorium on the 25th of June 2010. 
We had escaped respective work dreading calls from work calling us back to our desks at about 6:30pm. The program was to begin around 7pm. We walked into the lounge area to see the doors to the auditorium still closed.
Finally the doors opened and also the mystery of the delay. Seems that stairs that had been created on stage were unstable and therefore needed to be attended to.
We had escaped respective work dreading calls from work calling us back to our desks at about 6:30pm. The program was to begin around 7pm. We walked into the lounge area to see the doors to the auditorium still closed.Lotus temple is known to be an Indian place so delays of about ten fifteen minutes are taken as a regular feature. However this friday the minutes ticked on with the doors still shut firmly.
By this time the entire lounge area was filled with people, mostly the old and retired who had difficulty standing but were reluctant to leave.
The volunteers finally after half an hour brought out chairs along with the information that the program was delayed due to technical issues and would start in another fifteen odd minutes.
We waited while wondering what a large contingent of North east students were doing there. The usual audience to these programs always tend to be atleast three times their age.
I moved away to take a call and returned to see a bevy of these beauties sitting around the partner and an animated discussion on (well what esle can be expected) . So we got to know that it was a team from a Nagaland College visiting Delhi for a performance at the Teen Murti Bhavan the next day.
Finally the doors opened and also the mystery of the delay. Seems that stairs that had been created on stage were unstable and therefore needed to be attended to.After a mercifully short welcome speech the program started with Tom Price introducing the team which apart from 120 singers from 25 countries also had Rachael Price and Ava.
Thereafter bliss descended. I am not learned enough to be able to explain all the different kinds of music we heard. However I can say one thing, the music didnt leave a single person untouched with its beauty and simplicity. The words were not important the harmony and the energy of the singers filled the auditorium.
From compositions by Pandit Ravi Shankar to Gospel music from America to Arabic to European it truly was global fusion.
Comments
My favourite was the Farsi Bahaii number Allahummm - where the singer Ava sang in a voice that penetrated the marrow of my bones and lifted me to an ethereal level. Goosepimples and tears came on. Catharsis perhaps, given the times we are going through. And for me, at best a secular agnostic - a surprise, unexpected communion with the inner voice
Rayshma: it was wonderful...try and catch them if you ever hear of them performing in your part of the world.
P.S.: And of course, men will be men :)
living in delhi has many problems but the good parts are also there...being able to expereince things like this being one very important one.
I remember the dervish performance we had also seen in the open on IIC grounds with nostalgia for the same reasons. Got completely transported to another world.