Day 18 Zakir Hussain Concert

Sooper Looper @ Dolally’s Deck

Immo wanted to create some loops while in Mumbai, so he set up his Sooper Looper at the open air Bar next to our Hotel and did some sessions in the afternoon.

In the evening we visited a concert of Tabla Master Zakir Hussain in the evening in a pretty posh Auditorium.

Day 14: playing at Bandra Base

Daily Movie:

Day 14: Concert at Sandra Base in Mumbai

We played a concert at a small cultural Venue called The Bandra Base

Gepostet von Scylla am Samstag, 19. Januar 2019

Waking up in Mumbai, seeing the surrounding in the light of day, listening to the constant concert of honking is a special experience.

We walked around the neighborhood, had some chai and got settled in.

Haase and Immo tried to get a Riksha, but they would not take us with the taximeter running, they wanted to charge a fixed price, that was obviously too high, so we ended up walking to a restaurant that Haase had been to before.

We went to Bandra Base after lunch, to check out where exactly it was and met Wood, an american, who is somewhat working there.

He told us to come back at 16:30 to setup and soundcheck, as there would be a dance class from 18-20h.

This time, we were looking for a taxi, and again: fixed price!

Well, 150 Rupees later we arrived at Bandra Base with all of our gear. 5 or 6 Tickets had been sold online, so we knew, there would be more people in the audience, than on stage, which is always good.

We did not book the sound guy for 1000 Rupees, so Immo fulfilled his duties as engineer and also installed the recording equipment, while Haase and Buttlar got comfortable on stage.

At the end of our soundcheck there were already a few people waiting for the dance class to begin, so we left to get some dinner around the block.

We ended up eating in front of a take away place, sitting on the stools of their drivers, or rather riders, because they were delivering on bicycles.

On the way back, we stumbled across a beer and wine shop and could not resist, so we hid in a dark alley and enjoyed a cold one, while fantasizing about being apprehended by police for drinking on the street. We kept the bottles wrapped in paper, figuring, if that is legal in the US, maybe they have a similar rule here. We still don’t know.

We played for about 75 minutes and at 23h everything came to an end.

The deal was a 50/50 split, so our payout was 500 Rupees!

Back at the Hotel, the accumulated Data was transferred and our concert setup discussed, as to how we can improve our common playing situation.

Work in progress!

Day 12: Concert at Goethe Zentrum in Thiruvananthapuram

Daily Movie:

Scylla and Flowin IMMO in India – Day 12: Concert in Thiruvananthapuram

We played at the Goethe Zentrum Thiruvananthapuram and had a lot of fun! Here also a videolink to our "Zugabe" in Malayalam: https://youtu.be/xOetrnlRVeQ

Gepostet von Scylla am Freitag, 18. Januar 2019

One last dip in the Ocean, one last coconut for breakfast and we were on our way to the big city.

Charles got two porters to carry our suitcases up the hill. Tough dudes, who carry heavy loads on the head!

Sadiq dropped us of at the Windsor Hotel around 14:30h, for the first time on hour trip we had three single rooms on the 8th floor. Great view over Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala.


We jumped into the pool and were ready for pickup at 16h to go to the Goethe Zentrum for setup and soundcheck.

This is where we met Bobby, who Haase had been in touch with for the coordination of our concert. The Goethe Zentrum is a language school, but they also host cultural events in their garden, where a small amphitheater is set up.

A huge backdrop with our names had been printed and the sound crew was almost ready for us. A group of young german students was there and eager to try their first real life small talk with Germans, and take some selfies, of course.

Djidin, the sound guy, was very cooperative and soundcheck was done quickly, we even setup our recording devices to record individual tracks of the music for later mixing.

After soundcheck we went to the front of the house and met a few young men, who had been studying german for the past few months, as they are planning to come to Germany to continue their engineering studies. Their german was pretty good already, although they also had not had a normal conversation with a native german. Communication is fun!

The theater filled up pretty quickly and we started playing on time, splitting our set into three parts: first Flowin Immo , then Scylla and finally the collaboration of both acts.

The Kerala crowd reacted well, and things got wild, when for the last number some words in their language called Malayalam were used instead of german words. They proposed Sundaren (beautiful man) and quickly Sundari (beautiful woman) was added. Sundaren Sundari !

After the show, we were presented with a gift basket of almonds, cashew, dates, raisins and some chocolate sweets, and we had to take one group selfie after another.

You can see a lot of photos from the show here:

We packed our instruments and were taken back to the Hotel, had dinner and went to bed after an exciting day in beautiful Kerala, the land of the coconut!

Day 10 : Rooftop Session for real!

Coconut, Fruit Salad and a dip in the sea for breakfast. Add a scoop of ice cream and some coffee.

Ready to set up the rooftop session before lunch. The sun is relentless. burning down on us, the bodies sweating, the machines melting.

But still, we were done in time, to get some good food at Anitha’s and then beginn at 16:30 with less heat and still enough light.

We played a session and then suddenly the electricity was gone. Vincent, who was working the reception, kindly offered to switch on the generator so we could continue. 

Charles dropped by and started live streaming , although most of the music could only be heard on our headphones… Great setting on top of the Vedic Heritage Boutique Hotel, overlooking Kovalam. 

Scylla recording a music video on the rooftop

Gepostet von Vedic Heritage am Dienstag, 15. Januar 2019

The electricity once again disappeared after two to three sessions, but came back so we finished the day with a piece called „Strom“, german for Electricity. 

Packing up went quickly and in the fleeting daylight, but then the Gigabytes of material had to be transferred to hard disk. Johannes and Johannes went to the beach to find the place for dinner, as Immo kept feeding the computer with todays data and typing the blog. 

152 Gigabyte later time for dinner…

While the data transfer was still running Johannes and Johannes tried to go for a little evening swim in the dark, when they were caught and yelled at by Kovalam Police. A serene goes of for about a minute at 18h to get everybody out of the water… the ocean is closed for the day….

Here is the daily movie:

Day 10: Kovalam Rooftop Sessions

We did some live Recordings on top of Vedic Heritage Boutique Hotel, the music you hear was created on this day.

Gepostet von Scylla am Mittwoch, 16. Januar 2019

 

We met at ABC , which was the first ever restaurant in Kovalam back in 1977, things have changed since then…. Dinner was delicious and we finished things off with a Kerala Cocktail at fusion bar.

Back at the Hotel we skipped through the sessions we recorded today, dope results with just about 7 Songs/Jams.

Day 9: Kovalam Beach Rooftop Session Soundcheck

The first alarm sounded at eight but somehow the day started at eleven. 

Down at the beach we had fruit salad and fresh coconut und took the Gopro for a swim, bodysurfing the waves. Immo got washed around while trying not to loose the camera and landed straight on his head and right shoulder, ouch.

After not buying the beach towel, the wooden box or the cigarettes, which we were offered kindly while sitting on the beach, we needed to get out of the sun and ended up at a vegetarian restaurant to have a fresh juice. The waiter came back and told us, that the electricity was off, so no fresh juice. We switched to lime soda and plain rice, Dal, Chili Gobi, Lemon Rice and butter papadam instead. 

Upon heading back to the hotel we explored the upper floors and the roof for our planned recording session. From the roof there is a great 360 degree view over all of Kovalam which is pretty much covered by green palm trees. But: no electricity so we have to wait for it to come back on.

Our modular setup is tricky, different components from different companies, lots of cables and signals and sampling rates… plus the cameras! 

The Sun was sinking quickly and our setup was still not right. We still did some Soundcheck Sessions to know what we had to fix afterwards. It turned pitch-black within a matter of minutes and we moved everything to Immo’s room to fix the setup for tomorrow. 

That took a little while, but the results seemed to be a better situation for tomorrow.

Gigabytes were transferred before we headed down to the beach for dinner, this time at Malabar, our host Charles had recommended the style Kadai, be it veggie lord with fish or seafood. We had a very funny waiter, the Beer was once again served in Tea Cups and named Pop Juice on the bill. 

Day 4: Rehearsal and Concert

After a good nights sleep we tried to get breakfast although most of the participants were gone, as we missed the chance to get up at 5 in the morning to witness a concert at sunrise and morning yoga at a local palace. We ended up getting omelette and sandwiches and chai masala.

We wanted to find out where exactly we had been the last two days, as we had not really left the Fort yet, so we went for A walk around the town of Luni, which is actually called Chanwa, as we would later find out.

A lot of cows just roam the streets and chew up whatever they can find, which often is the trash laying around. Two bulls were dueling withers their horns, but we left after the first round of the fight.

Chanwa is a village with some shops on the main street and the residents were doing their thing as we passed by. At night we could frequently hear the trains honking so we wanted to find the railway. Welcome to Luni station. Not much else to see here, so we grabbed three espresso size chai for 20 rupees, which is 0,25€.

We arrived back at the Fort and Imran was already looking for us to start our second rehearsal.
Last night we had already setup in the Poolroom next to the swimming pool and practiced some of the pieces from last years concerts in Leipzig and Bremen, but more work needed to be put in.
Johannes brought a special type of drum set with him, a snare drum case is used as a bass drum and a small snare is attached right to the high at stand. Genius!

We ended our rehearsal at 15h with eight pieces on our set list and moved the equipment to the stage.

A real drumset was brought in and while we installed ourselves on stage the tech crew set up the PA system and mics.

Hanif Khan arrived with his Tablas and we were complete. During soundcheck a few pieces were repeated because Hanif couldn’t be at the two previous rehearsals and the recording setup also had to be installed and checked.

At 19h we were done with all preparation including our cameras, it was dark already and the concert started at about 19:45.

Here is a short livestream clip of Dance in the dunes with a Freestyle verse from Flowin Immo:

https://www.facebook.com/615943783/posts/10157020100003784/

The five of us had fun together, the crowd was energetic in their feedback, so after about two hours they were asking for an encore: Confusion!
Or Khanfusion?

A video will follow, but you can check the livestream on Facebook already .

Khanfusion starts at about 24 minutes:

https://www.facebook.com/raagataalaretreat/videos/546344842551740/

After the show we took everything apart and brought it to our room, when Imran introduced us to the Prince of the Fort. Nice Guy.
To start the after show celebration with a few Kingfisher Premium beers (to be sold in Radjastan only) we went to the bar which is only in service in the evening hours and the very friendly and funny Barkeeper.
We joined a group from England, Switzerland and Germany that we met the night before, sitting around a bowl of fire, and they were still reciting the lyrics of the confusion encore jam.
The Prince also joined us and he told us about the history of the fort and his family as well as the origin of the name Luni. It stems from Lun, local name for salt, because from the nearby desert a river emerges out of nowhere which also disappears into nowhere and its water is salty!
The railway station used to be an important junction on the route from Mumbai to Karachi.
He told us that the Fort was built by a Maharadja from the caste of the Bards, so it seems to make sense to perform music there.
He stated that he does not believe in afterlife and your one chance to be happy is in this reality.
He also generously invited us to drink what he was drinking: Rum with water. That ritual was repeated a few times so now the memories start to blurr…