This weekend is a social whirl and as I write, I’m hoping the weather’s going to be kind enough for me to wear my blue Mumbai kurta and white churidar to our neighbours drinks party this lunchtime.
It wouldn’t have looked out of place on Friday night in Birmingham, actually, when we took our regular seats in Symphony Hall for “Burman in Bollywood”. What a fun evening! We’ve always loved Bollywood films and find them to be the perfect escapism for when we want to watch a feelgood film, though we’d be the first to admit, we don’t really know much about the genre.
The concert was a tribute to RD Burman and the music of the evening began with a song in what we thought of as typical Bollywood style: Dum Maro Dum, sung by Sanchita Pal accompanied by the full CBSO. Even though they had got out what seemed like every percussion instrument they possessed, Shahbaz Hussain’s tabla playing was an essential part of the evening and I loved the range of rhythms and sounds he created with what looks like the simplest of instruments (but clearly wasn’t!)
That got everyone’s toes tapping and with such an enthusiastic audience it was hard not to be carried along with the mood! Mind you, we had difficulties singing along…
Sanchita shared the stage with Bhangra star Shin DCS who sang O hansini so beautifully and who made us smile with his super cool moves! He and Rashid Ali were having a great time and when Rashid and Sanchita sang Kya Hua Tera Wada we were well into the groove!
We’ve now got a long list of Bollywood movies we want to watch, including 1942 A Love Story, from where another favourite song came
The whole evening was a great success and we’ll look out for the next such interesting feature on the CBSO’s programme without a doubt.
In perfect contrast to Friday evening, we spent much of Saturday in Cardiff with friends Arthur and Barbara, who’d invited us to Tristan and Isolde. I think that deserves a whole post to itself, so more about that later.
A weekend of Bollywood and Wagner? Wow!
