The Melodies of Madagascar ....

As I seated myself rather uncomfortably in one of the forward rows facing the stage inside the lounge cum auditorium of Princeton Club, Kolkata I observed that although the evening’s event had been advertised in The Telegraph and was therefore presumably open for anyone, the crowd inside, which mainly comprised of Indian and French members of the French Consulate, were tight and pretty cold to unknown faces. But then again, I’d traveled all this distance, literally argued with staff members of the club who wouldn’t allow non-members in on a Monday evening and battled my apprehension of unknown faces and places just to watch the concert, I wasn’t gonna give in easy. Later on it was discovered they weren’t ‘informed’ that the show was free, their saccharine sweetness surfacing after the little discovery, one security guard quite gracefully lead me into the auditorium himself.
Not many of us would be familiar with the existence of the fourth largest island in the world, located in the Indian Ocean called Madagascar, leave alone its culture and musical heritage. Neither was I, but last evening’s show featuring Regis Gizavo, a brilliant, Accordionist, composer and singer and David Mirandon, a long time associate of Gizavo, a brilliant drummer/ percussionist, was a mellifluous introduction to the island nation and it’s music. Gizavo sang his own compositions in Malagasy language playing the Accordion, an instrument I’d usually seen on television and once played live by street musicians in Hanover, Germany.
The Accordion has an almost incredible ability to soothe and put the listener in a trance and at the same time tempt one to break into a dance. Gizavo, who earlier in the evening reprimanded a noisy crowd in the background for their disrespect and lack of courtesy(mostly guzzling old expatriates from France) showed an absolute mastery over the instrument, deftly using the fingers on his left hand to manage the base patterns and those on his right hand to play the notes of the song. David Mirandon, on the other hand appeared to be the subtlest percussionist ever, placing two congas on either side of his base drum, behind the toms, Mirandon mostly used brushes, hot-rods, felt beaters and very often his bare hands to provide rhythmic assistance to Gizavo and what a perfectly amazing job he did! Every time the duo reached a musical crescendo it would arouse loud hoots and cheers from the crowd, which had considerably thickened by the time the duo were through with their third or fourth composition.
As I was strolled towards the club gates I was reminded of a recent A.R Rahman concert somewhere in the Middle East that I was closely following on TV the other day, an enormous crowd of some 20-30 thousand, what glitz, what glamour, women romping around everywhere, almost a tiny city of musicians on stage, every single famous singer appearing on stage and goofing up songs one after the other, the glitterati, special guests, confetti and what not….but where was the music? What happened to the music?
Bloody over-commercialization!! I couldn’t help wondering how fame and making it to the ‘big-league’ murders the musicianship in an artist, why Shivamani being such an able percussionist, having set up his entire cornucopia, his gamut of drums on stage shook shakers and tambourines throughout the AR Rahman concert making a complete idiot of himself, why do people have to rely on big shows to sell music, why do they have to lip sync, why do people judge music by the videos they show on MTV, why ?
As I exited Princeton, I sent up a little prayer to The Lord asking him to keep the two dazzling musicians I’d just heard from getting devoured by this unfortunate consequentiality called 'fame'.

DISCLAIMER(for oversensitive readers); I did not intend to insult any musician in the above essay(even if I sounded like I did....du-uh!!) and all opinions expressed above are based on my observations so shut up n read....