Ravi & Anoushka Shankar

Anoushka played the first set alone and she was mesmerizing, swaying back and forth as her hands moved ever more quickly along the enormous fretboard. Fascinating as it was, I must admit that in my first live encounter, I found classical Indian music somewhat unaccessible. It was repetitive yet hard to follow. I got lost. I got bored. Everyone was so still. By the end of the evening, however, I was completely entranced, as the music finally began to sound familiar and the complicated rhythms began to fit together in my head.

Ravi came out for the second set assisted by one of his students, and he explained that he has to sit on a low wooden platform because he can no longer sit cross-legged on the floor after his bout with a virus that nearly killed him six months ago. In his words, he said he was "going, going," but his wife and family took such good care of him that he recovered. He is 87, and he looked so frail; his hands shook as he began playing, and many of the notes were inaccurate. As the hour went by, though, he warmed up - as if impelled by the amazing tabla player from Calcutta, with whom he had a seamless connection - and he regained much of his old vigor and virtuosity. His hands began to dance more quickly and powerfully up and down the neck of his sitar, and suddenly he was playing the most difficult runs without any sign of effort. He and Anoushka traded solos, mimicking each other and creating new conversations, calling and responding, as they built a thirty-minute raga to an unbelievable crescendo. The tabla player soloed like a madman for a good two minutes straight, and immediately upon finishing, he responded to the thunderous applause by simply pressing his hands together in prayer and touching them to his forehead. What a wonderful touch of humility - a requirement for any aspiring musician.

At the end of the show all the performers bowed to touch Ravi's feet before hugging him, and as they led him off stage, it was impossible to think that just minutes before he had been the source of all that sound! Now he was just a frail old man smiling and waving to the crowd.

Salif Keita

DeAndre and I went to see Salif Keita at Cal tonight, and it was without a doubt one of most moving, energetic, beautiful, and profound performances of live music I've ever seen. The layers of sound and rhythm from the nine musicians accompanyng him onstage were mesmerizing...kind of like Smashing Pumpkins meets Baba Maal. Yeah, that's right, Salif's music is so universal that it encompasses everything from grunge to hyphy to gospel and more. His regal, humble presence on stage, the brilliant and flowing clothing, the incredible range of his voice from guttural to operatic to flamenco, it all serves to put a spell on you.

Of course, everyone was dancing in the aisles, but the most amazing moment of the show was halfway through when the beats were heavy and the crowd was in a frenzy; all at once everyone left the stage, and Salif came back on, sat down, and began quietly playing a hollow-bodied jazz guitar. He sang two melodic, prayer-like songs, and his voice alone filled the cavernous auditorium with as much energy as when the entire band had been playing.

Then the band came back on and it was nonstop until the end. The kora player shredded like Jimi Hendrix, sliding across the stage on his back, playing upside down and behind his back to the delight of the crowd. Next several women jumped up onstage and began dancing in step with the drummers, and finally, Salif invited more people up on stage, and what transpired was a unique mix of Berkeley Rapture and African Radiance. A dreadlocked Berzerkleyian had brought his sax just for the occasion, and he got up on stage and started soloing to the band's delight. More and more women flaunted their African styles - many were African, many were RPCVs. The whole stage was filled with people dancing, and the music just kept on...

And to put the perfect touch on the experience, DeAndre was able to meet Salif after the show and get a cd signed personally!

Top Ten Movies

OK, since I did books, I gotta do movies. All lists subject to change at any time...

1. Slam
2. Crouching Tiger
3. Life is Beautiful
4. Brokeback Mountain
5. Babette's Feast
6. Fanny and Alexander
7. Some Like it Hot
8. Grapes of Wrath
9. Hable con Ella
10. El Norte

English vs. Spanish

To my surprise and delight, The Wind in the Willows was on Masterpiece Theater tonight. The actors were quite good and the story true to the original, but the truth is that nothing can compare to the book itself. The intricacies of language and the detail of the written word are among life's greatest pleasures, which is why I'm so enamored of the blog as a vehicle of expression. I've been wondering recently why I chose not to major in English, Am Lit or Brit Lit, and then I remembered...I have never really liked school!

I love learning, but the confines of classrooms and stylistic conventions, the toils of essay-writing and my penchant for procrastination always seemed to dampen my creativity. In fact, I think the only reason I'm a halfway decent teacher is because I don't like school. Getting back to the point, though, I remember deciding against English as a major because Emerson taught me to have an original relationship with everything, and from Thoreau I learned that the best books teach me, better than to read, to put them down and commence living on their hint. I reasoned that I didn't need any one to teach me how to read, interpret, reflect on, and write about books in my own language.

And so I chose Spanish, because I had "studied" it in the classroom for eight years but had minimal comprehension and fluency with the language. Ah, public school - if only my high school Spanish teacher knew what I was doing now! Anyway, Sevilla and Anette made the language come alive for me, and the rest is history. Now it's on to Swahili, but I guess my point is that I will always derive enormous comfort from reading books in English because it feels like home; I will never know another language with the intimacy that I know English.

I've always been given to hyperbole (but it's meaningful - when I say it's the best day of my life, I mean it, and every song and every riff is the greatest ever in the moment I declare it to be!) so I'll sign off tonight with a first draft of my top nine favorite books list (in no particular order). Readers, feel free to share yours...

1. Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
2. Homage to Catalunia - Orwell
3. 100 Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
4. Kavalier and Klay - Michael Chabon
5. Moby Dick - Melville
6. Sometimes A Great Notion - Kesey
7. Angry Black White Boy - Adam Mansbach
8. On The Road - Kerouac
9. Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
10. The Awakening - Kate Chopin

Burmese Days

The following excerpt from George Orwell's 1934 classic (he served with the Imperial Police in Burma before volunteering in the Spanish Civil War and writing one of my all-time favorite books, Homage to Catalunia) had me in hysterics the first time I read it...maybe it's memories of ordering ALL the Chinese food after swim practice with Julio and Hode - ¿quién sabe? Anyway, I hope you get a laugh out of it, in particular those of you who recognize a little bit of yourselves in U Po Kyin. By the way, I have never found better Chinese take out than in St. Mary's county - represent!

"In the living-room behind the curtain a table was already set out with a huge bowl of rice and dozen plates containing curries, dried prawns and sliced green mangoes. U Po Kyin waddled to the table, sat down with a grunt and at once threw himself upon the food. Ma Kin, his wife, stood behind him and served him. She was a thin woman of five and forty, with a kindly, pale brown, simian face. U Po Kyin took no notice of her while he was eating. With the bowl close to his nose he stuffed the food into himself with swift, greasy fingers, breathing fast. All his meals were swift, passionate, and enormous; they were not so much meals as orgies, debauches of curry and rice..."

First verse

Alright, we'll see what corrections Pries makes, but here are my first bars in a looooong time (maybe since Meridian)

Some call me teacher of Spanish
some people think I'm outlandish
cuz they judge me by the color of my socks

I don't mess with glocks
the only weapons I brandish
is all my love
i even give you my sandwich
cuz I'd rather be empty than full

I teach public school
what you know about me?
I'm the tall white man from suburban DC

I'm your worst enemy
take your head off the desk
I don't let you sleep
so if you came to rest
then you best be steppin'
outta my class
if you ain't here to learn
get the heck outta CAS!

Back in Berkeley

How can I possibly sum up the spirit of this town in a few short paragraphs? I haven't even lived here two years, but it has already made a deep and lasting impression. Returning to Berkeley from a week in New York was like...(insert metaphor). I had a great time seeing all my students again today, and now DeAndre and I have decided to write a song together. Vamos a ver como nos sale. Driving back from his house, I decided to go to that ninth wonder of the world, the Berkeley Bowl, to do my grocery shopping. I'm not gonna lie, I usually go to Safeway, and as I was circling and circling in the tiny overcrowded parking lot, I was reminded why I usually save the Bowl for special occasions. After a long day of work, who wants to spend twenty minutes waiting for parking? But as I contemplated getting upset at the impractically small parking lot, a wave of serenity and understanding came over me, and I realized that the Bowl simply does not bend to the will of Mainstream America, and it exhorts its customers to do the same.

"I'm going to take pride in the fact that it takes me longer to park, because I'm doing it for a cause - this is organic slow food shopping - it's as much for my soul as it is my palate."

And so my eyes feasted upon the endless rows of exotic fruits and dozens of varieties of garden vegetables, and I bought with abandon, and returned to my car happy. As I drove up Parker St., I saw a tall blonde in black shades and a designer outfit who looked like she was heading for the nearest mall, but as she whizzed by me on her skateboard, I could only chuckle to myself and shake my head because Berkeley had upended the tables again. Where else in America - where else on earth does such a mad menagerie of people flaunt their uniqueness with such style? Skaters and mohawks, tattoos and Telegraph, hoodies and dreads, art cars and graffiti, grills and geoscience! I pride myself on the fact that I'm now a part of Berkeley's underground flamenco scene, because I wouldn't be justified in calling myself a true Berzerkleyian if all I did was teach during the day and do lesson plans at night. That being said, I'm blogging again instead of working, but who can blame me? I'm just trying to represent the beauty of the Bay Area in the short time I have left here. Love to all my relations.