For a few months, I've really gotten into Indian music that features the tabla. (The tabla is a 2-headed drum that often accompanies the sitar.) I love the sound this instrument makes, and I have been toying with the idea of learning how to play it. But finding a tabla in Japan is quite difficult and expensive. Plus I'd need to find someone to teach me how to play it.
Until recently, I kind of gave up on the idea of learning how to play. But low and behold: a week ago a friend of mine told me about a concert happening at someone's home here in Sapporo. The concert featured a semi-professional Indian bamboo flutist and a tabla player. Both players were Japanese, but knew how to play these ancient Indian instruments.
The concert was in someone's living room, and it was only open to 20 people. But that made it a very intimate and cozy experience. For example, I was sitting within arms length of the flutist, and I could watch very closely how the tabla player made different notes with his drums. In the background there were two tambura players making a harmonic accompaniment.
The concert was awesome, because the players just jammed freestyle for an hour. Then there was a break and they returned and played another hour-long set of songs. Both players were very talented and the music, low lighting and motion of the musicians put me into that familiar "zone" of listening to ancient Indian music.
During the break, I had an opportunity to speak with the hostess, who spoke really good English. (she lived in Pittsburgh for 3 years!) She told me that there will be more concerts at her home this fall, and that I should come. Then I chatted with a Japanese guy sitting next to me, who was also interested in learning the tabla. In fact, he was taking lessons privately from the tabla player! So we exchanged phone numbers and I'll soon arrange a time to meet on the weekends. (Luckily he lives fairly close to my home - only about a 20 min. bike ride away!)
The point of telling you this is: if you are interested in something and are dedicated to pursuing it, you are likely to find other people interested in the same thing. What are the chances of me, a little old foreigner, finding a private concert featuring Indian music in Sapporo!? And better yet, what are the chances that someone at the concert would invite me to his home to learn how to play!?
These are very cool moments - if you stop and think about them. They remind you how lucky you are to be alive, and how special life is. Also, life (and music) doesn't have to be so rigid and structured.
Watching the tabla and flutist players jam and create freestyle music reminded me that there are many ways to learn something new. See, when I was a child, I tried to learn how to play the viola, saxaphone and trombone. But I failed miserably at each instrument (although I was forced to stick with the viola for four years).
This is partly because I had bad teachers and partly because I found it difficult to read music and learn about keys, octives, standard rythm signatures, etc. In my view, Western formal music training is a bunch of inflexible hurdles, over which learners have to jump before they can be considered "real musicians."
Now compare that with the concert I attended last week. There were two wonderful, talented players who did their own thing, fed off each others' own talent, and produced beautiful music without reading a single note. Creativity and technical execution simply poured forth. (Granted, they obviously had some kind of prior training, and I'm sure they can read musical notation.) To me, this is how to make music, and it makes more sense to me than memorizing things like All Cows Eat Grass (a mnemonic for the notes A-C-E-G).
Music has never been something easy for me, but watching these musicians jam last week opened my eyes to the fact that there are many ways to learn to play and create music. One person that sticks out in my mind is Phil Collins. Do you know that he never learned to read music ? According to Wikipedia, "he practiced by playing alongside the television and radio, and never learned to read and write conventional musical notation; instead, he uses a system he devised himself." Yet how can anyone deny his creativity with drum sequences, especially in the hit song "In the Air Tonight."
Here's a review of the song, which came out in 1981:
"Musically, it's an extraordinarily striking record, because almost nothing happens in it ... It's the drum sound in particular that's amazing. You don't hear it at all for the first two minutes of the song ... then there's that great doo-dom doo-dom doo-dom comes in, and the drums come in half way through the song, setting the template for all the Eighties drum songs after that" - Stuart Maconie
Like Phil, maybe the right way for me to approach music is to not learn - at least in the conventional sense. Instead, just do, experiment, and take good notes about the results. Who knows if this will work out or not, but I'm in awe of many traditional Indian musicians, because they are free to just jam without necessarily having to learn notes, octives, etc. And it all sounds so good!
So my next step is to get in contact with that guy I spoke with at the concert. If all goes well, I'll be inivted to his home to learn some simple tabla beats. And when I go to India this winter, I may be lucky enough to buy a tabla or some other classical Indian instrument. I plan to just take it home, play around with it, and see what happens. Maybe I'll find other people to jam with - if I get good enough at playing it. If it doesn't work out, I will have at least tried something new!
