The weekend
I had an awesome weekend. Me and a few buddies went out to Michigan to visit my roommate’s family, and to see my guruji in Michigan perform a concert. That was it in a nutshell, but we spent so much time jamming, talking about music, practicing different things we’ve never really tried before. The drive to Michigan has always been awesome. When I used to make the drive by myself, I’d bring classical cds with me and listen the whole way there, it was great time to just sit and listen to an 80 minute recording of one raag. With buddies this time though, on the way drive there we were trying to sing raags and figure songs out, and trying to sing taans on the fly. It was the first time I’ve ever really tried singing raags. They were even rappin while I was beatboxin beats. Lol, it’s on. One morning I was singing Oceans by Pearl Jam and Black Hole Sun my Soundgarden over kerwa beats. Rahul helped me break down some meends I’ve been practicing, and was getting me to play other variations. I finally saw Rajanji perform a concert. In the 5-6 years I’ve known him and studied with him, I’ve never seen him perform a concert, and played a classical piece in Raag Yaman, and he played two of the gats he taught me! He actually played the very first gat I ever learned. Some of the taans were even the same as what he’d taught me, it was awesome to hear. Afterwards he showed us pictures he had of him and Vilayat Khansahib and some of the other artists he used to bring to Detroit for classical concerts. He had some beautiful pictures of Vilayat Khan. He had this one black and white pictures of him early in the morning, sitting in front on a window with the sun shining in behind him, his hair still dissheveled from sleep, but really into what he was playing. It was just a beautiful picture. We had a small concert with Rahul and Maninder and stayed up late singing song, sharing melodies and just chillin. Oh man, so much happened this weekend, it was just awesome. Nowadays with all my friends having so many things going on in their lives, including myself, it’s really rare to get a weekend like that, it was just really great.