FUSION

well, you might have guessed, we have skipped yoga for the past few days... ;) it is hard to wake up that early. the yoga place we signed up for is about a 20 minute drive away so that makes us not only have to get up early but also pay for the ride to and from the school. both of us were disappointed that the yoga they do there is not focused on physical stretches - many of the ladies come to yoga in sarees or dresses. so we may go back or we may try to find a different place that is walking distance.
jesse had another corporate gig last night. it was also at the hyatt but the musicians were a bit different. the woman who is organizing these gigs is merlin. she's a keyboard player. she is great fun! she seems to be in the know about everything in bombay especially the music scene so she's taking jesse on all her gigs and introducing us to many different musicians. the other players last night were a tabla player (didn't catch his name) and a sitarist, ravi chary, great funny guy. also hip. merlin also put together the music for some katak dancers to perform to. they did traditional indian dancing to some crazy variation of Take 5! it was really nice. the music is fusion of indian classical and western jazzy kind of thing. it's definitely different than de la buena and the chicken! (those are jesse's latin and funk bands in milwaukee) they opened with a shakti tune, a VERY difficult one called luki. then originals... i love the indian influences, it really opens the music melodically and rythmically to allow infinite possibilites...(you just have to watch out for the cheeze which slips in there sometimes.) the whole thing lasted about minutes. then we got to EAT!!! the food there is worth waiting around 4 hours for, believe me. and again, jesse made some great moolah.
i got some pics of this, i'll try to get them up. i also made friends with chary's student, a 26 yr old woman who has been studying sitar for only 1 year. i asked her to take me shopping...
today jesse finally has another lesson with nayan ji, the guru, and hopefully i will have a teacher within a few days. in anycase, we are continuing my guitar lessons and i'm learning how to read jazz charts. :)
we've got a bunch of fun things lined up for this week - but i'll keep you in suspense...