Tuesday 26 January 2010

Dover Lane Certainties

Some people will sleep through most of the concert; some will attend all four nights and listen to every single minute of music, from evening till daybreak. Some people who didn’t go will later claim that they did, just to earn culture points; some who did go will blog about it, for much the same reason.

The coffee will be weak and overpriced but people will still queue up, because coffee is indispensable at an all-night concert. The performers will make lame jokes but people will still laugh, because classical musicians are allowed to make lame jokes. It will be cold. Around 2 am, the auditorium’s resident cat will stroll up on stage; pointedly ignoring both performers and audience, it will meticulously clean itself, and stroll out again.

In the forty-odd hours of music spread over four nights, Hariprasad Chaurasia will transport listeners with a bamboo flute; Rashid Khan will do impossible things with his voice; Shahid Parvez, eschewing all forms of showmanship, will get his head down and unleash fireworks on the fretboard. There will be unforgettable moments, transcendental magic, encores and great applause. And at the end of the fourth day, in the first light of dawn, Amjad Ali Khan, that sly show-stealer, that… that rockstar – Amjad will close the Dover Lane Music Conference with a radiant smile and a bhairavi that is not of this world.

6 comments:

Shrabasti Banerjee said...

Sigh. :)

EvolutioN said...

If Ustad Sahib Amjad Ali Khan is a rockstar, does that make Amaan and Ayaan rockstar-ke-bacche?

Random question. You don't need to answer that.

Evo

kro said...

oh you sick sick evil basterd

Pratiti said...

:(
I HAVE to go someday!!

new age scheherazade said...

Do you mean people will sleep through it at home or in the auditorium itself? Because I've done both.
This made me want to come home so badly I feel all nauseous.

Sroyon said...

@scheherazade: I was alluding to people who sleep in the auditorium (not that I have anything against them; I've been guilty of an occasional nap myself). But of course, people sleep through it at home also.
And this is probably my last year at Dover Lane too, for a long, long time. :(