I'm bunking with Mark. He says I should be happy about this because Phil snores like a demon. Little does he know that I snore as well. We wake in the morning. I turn on the TV and what's on? Baseball Tonight on ESPN! I had given up tickets to opening day at Yankee Stadium to make the flight so I watch for a while to see if the Yankees won. This is really strange. We're 11 1/2 hrs. ahead here in India so I'm watching yesterdays news today. My Yanks won the home opener. I had no idea when I'd hear about baseball again.
  It's now Friday. We left on a Tuesday. I have the strange feeling that I've been here for a while. Maybe it's the jet lag but time seems elongated. I can clearly remember the flight and all the layovers, yet it seems that everything happened days ago. I'm reduced to asking what day it is and having to digest the brain scrambling news that it is now Friday and we arrived the day before but we left on Tuesday. I can't seem to find the words to express how bizarre this feeling is.
  It's show day. There's a terrific breakfast buffet. Once again I recognize no foods by name, except they have masala omelettes which are just spicy eggs. Afterwards we rehearse for an hour(the first time I've done more than a run through of the songs). The songs are a little quirky but I shouldn't have too much problem.
  Namgyall fetches us with our driver who's name is Ramu. Phil says,"Ahhhh Ramu from Jamu!" and gets a big toothed grin from him. Off we go. The pollution is worse than ever. It's thick and acrid and burns your eyes and throat. We decide to go down to the commercial district to an internet cafe. We still don't know if and where we are playing in Amsterdam on the way back so Phil needs to check his e-mail to find out. The internet is painfully slow and Mark winds up getting his messages and not Phil's. This scene repeats itself a number of times during the trip much to the consternation of one Philip Void! He says'"Mark, come on. Do you want to play in Amsterdam or not???" Mark's reasoning is he needs to attend to his studio business back at home first and that starts another round of arguments. Mark has played with Phil the longest and I get the feeling their familiarity has them behaving like bickering brothers. I buy 2 katars, which are the long, traditional Indian shirts for 300 rupees($6.50)and then I'm followed first by several young beggars and then by a guy who wants to sell me a watch. He is relentless until I stop and say,"Look, no matter what you say or do I'm not going to buy your watch. There are many thousands of other people within our sight. You would be much better off trying any number of them because with me you are wasting your time." To that he smiles and says, "Thank you sir, I will.' and off he goes! Somehow I think this would only happen in India!
  Now it's back to the auditorium. We sound check- with Mark helping the sound man to understand our needs. I decide to play acoustic. I brought electronics but it really seemed much easier to just put a mike on my fiddle. Besides, both the guitars are totally acoustic and I would just stick out. It took a while but it wound up sounding alright.
  Lunch- more Indian buffet with names I've never heard. We hang with the other artists for a while and then head back to the hotel, jet lag once again having it's way with us. We sleep for 4 hrs. and wind up missing the opening act. When we arrive they are serving dinner so we eat and see just a little of Abdur Rehman Bayati from Bangladesh. The group is singing traditional Sufi songs. They're good I guess but I don't get much of a chance to listen because I'm being introduced by Phil to Doboom Rinpoche. Doboom is a monk and the head of Tibet House in New Delhi. Apparently he is the man here. He's a big man but when I shake his hand his grip doesn't match his physicality. In fact I get the feeling he would rather not be shaking my hand. His unsmiling gaze meets mine and I feel as if I am invisible and he's staring right through me. I think if at that very second you asked him who he was just introduced to he'd shrug his shoulders and walk away.
  We go backstage to get ready and we are informed that we have been placed second to last on the bill. It kind of makes sense as previously the act after us was to be a solo and that wouldn't have been too good after a band. I talk to the nice Indian woman who is the stage manager and she gets us all chai. Chai is basically tea. On the street there's a tea stall on every block it seems. The whole thing; water, tea and milk is all brought to boil in a big pot and then strained into a cup or glass. The good stuff also has cardamom in it. It's real strong, stronger than coffee so a couple of cups and you're up all night as our guitarist Tad found out that very night. Luckily he put the time to good use. He wrote a song in the bathroom of his hotel room, finishing it off at dawn! The next act goes on and she's awful, the one clinker. Her act consists of animal like bellowing and grunting. It's supposed to represent primordial motherhood but it sounds more like she's having sex with a gorilla. Pure unlistenable crap and now I'm worried that we'll lose the audience.
  We're up next. The house is about 5/8 full. Not bad considering the howling that went on before us. I think people stuck around because there really isn't anything remotely like us on the bill and people were curious to hear exactly what Buddha Folk Gospel was. The first song has to be stopped and started again because the sound is just not happening. So after a little check,check o.k. this mike's not on, we start again. Phil's songs are perfect for this situation. They're about Tibetan Buddhism and the plight of the Tibetans. (Those of you who don't know, the Tibetan government including it's head, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama were ousted from Tibet in the 50's. They have been living in exile in Dharmsala, India ever since.)The show goes great and is met with loud applause and even some standing clappers. It was a great feeling to have some of my solos acknowledged with applause. I felt as if I were being accepted by an international audience and I responded by playing my heart out. We are presented with a token of appreciation by Doboom Rinpoche which consists of a picture of the Buddha in a silver frame, some Tibetan incense, a pin with the World Festival of Sacred Music logo on it, a program and a traditional silk scarf or Kata which he places around each of our necks. All to much applause. It was a real thrill!
   When I walk off stage a young Indian gentleman shook my hand and said how much he enjoyed my playing. He wanted to know how I made my violin sound like an electric guitar as he noticed no wires coming from my instrument. I told him I figured out how to simulate that sound with harmonics and overtones on my acoustic instrument.
  There was a South Indian group on after us called Katha Kirtan. Overall they were o.k. but they had a phenomenal flute player. His playing was very fluid. It was thrilling to hear! Then I noticed that it was the young fellow who paid me the compliment back stage! I rushed backstage after their performance to congratulate him on his playing. I impetuously asked him if he would join us at our performance at the other auditorium the next evening. He enthusiastically agreed and I gave him the address and time to be there.
  We mill around chatting with the other artists. Apparently we were a big hit. I'm really starting to feel like part of something bigger. Phil comes over and informs us that we have been invited to a big jam session with the Bauls and the Zulus at a place about 40 kilometers out of town called the Guru Skool. We'll have an early call so we split and then Phil and I act out a scene that will be repeated each night that we are at the Atria Hotel. We go to the bar at 11:01pm only to be waved off by the bartender saying,"I'm so sorry but we are closed at 11pm." We never do make it into that bar but not for lack of trying.
  In the morning more Indian buffet for breakfast and then we wait out front for our driver to follow the jeep from the Guru Skool out to the jam session. While we're waiting, Mark pulls out his bass and starts playing the opening riff to "Money, Money, Money, Money". I pull out the fiddle and we're out in front of the hotel playing and all of a sudden the Zulu lead singer starts singing it and the other Zulu members are clapping and when it's over we're smiling and laughing and this is just the beginning.
  Off we go following the Guru Skool jeep. We cheer our new driver on (Ramu broke down so we now have Ravi) as he speeds through thick traffic to keep up and not get lost. Out of town and into the countryside. This part of India is green and red. The ground has a ruddy hue to it and it's fairly lush. The pollution fades as we get farther out of town. We turn off the main road at some point and through a very small village. The houses are mud with no windows. There's a little naked girl getting a bath in a big bowl. Here mom is pouring water over her and she's looking at us as we drive by as if we came from another planet. We might as well have. In the center of the village is a brightly painted Krishna Temple, the huge, blue Krishna staring out over the dirt road as we go by leaving a cloud of dust in our wake.
  The road abruptly comes to an end and it seems we have arrived at the Guru Skool which is really not a school (not yet.) There's a small house at the edge of the road standing guard over a piece of property that goes back about 300 yards to a river. This river doesn't seem to be full of shit like most of the other rivers I've seen in India. It's a pleasant light greenish -blue; meandering among bamboos. Halfway back there is what appears to be a cooking tent. To the side and behind the tent there's a pretty cool-looking amphitheater. It's stage is not covered and I'd hate to be on that stage on a day like today with the temperatures well into the 90's. On the bank of the river there is a large banyan tree (I think). There's colorful blankets in the cool shade of this enormous tree, it's limbs like giant arms reaching for the sky. We wander down and find the Bauls and Zulus settling in. Tad and Namgyal take turns with the still and video cameras. Sometimes shooting from up in the tree itself. Also present were South Indian percussionists and other assorted musicians. Generally the non-tabla drums are associated with the southern part of India.
  We all sit around in 2 or 3 concentric circles and the young, intense looking Baul stands up in the center of the circle and starts to play a rhythm and melody on his queeka (the drum I described in the last installment with the strings through it that are strummed and pulled on to change the tone.) He begins to sing and that voice that mesmerized me on the first night came flowing out, except this time he was 2 feet from my face! It resonated the small bones behind my ears. The other Bauls would join in answering him and then we all joined in answering him. All 4 of them had bells on their ankles that jangled precisely to the beat. We're all playing along now and the Zulus are clapping and the leader is dancing ecstatically in the middle of the circles. He's slamming the big bone pick on the strings of the queeka till I think they will surely break but they don't. All the drums are working it now as the rhythms are traded back and forth and then added upon polyrhythmically. Then in the middle of it all the Zulu girls start doing their traditional yell. It's impossible to describe but they seem to yell in a high pitch as they shake their tongues up and down. The effect is of musical hysteria. The young Baul made his way over towards me and played an alternate melody and rhythm in front of me and then pointed at me, his dark brown eyes boring a hole right into my soul. I had a euphoric feeling in my upper chest. It was a strange sensation not unlike how I would feel after snorting a line in my old cocaine days, years and years ago. Except this was a spiritual high. I mimicked him with my violin, adding a slight variation at the end. He played the line again with a little variation and pointed at me again. This time I added a little more variation to my answer. This was repeated several more times and then he once again sang, gesturing with his right hand as he did. As on the first night, I felt as if I knew what he was saying. This time he would occasionally point at the tree or the river or up at the sky and I remembered that their songs of devotion use the five elements (including time/space) as analogies. When he finished this line the Zulu lead singer stepped into the circle and sang a melody in Swahili that closely matched the melody the Baul singer had just layed on us. When he was done the Baul answered him in Hindu. This went back and forth as they danced and sang and the Zulu girls would add to the effect with their whooping tongue singing. It finally reached a fevered pitch and climaxed with a rousing percussion crescendo. We all clapped and cried and yelled! The Baul singer and the Zulu singer embraced and pressed their foreheads together as they laughed with joy. It was absolutely the most amazing musical experience of my life!