From his home in New Delhi, Indian tabla player Sandeep Das shared thoughts on performing with the Silk Road Ensemble and preparing to be a Silk Road Connect teaching artist in New York City public schools this October. Sandeep has performed with the Ensemble since 2001. He began composing for the group on the occasion of the Silk Road Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Washington Mall in 2002. His all-percussion piece Shristi was most recently performed during the U.S. music festivals tour in August 2010.
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| | | Sandeep Das
| © TODD ROSENBERG/SONY BMG MASTERWORKS
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SRP: What is your process as a composer? SD: Composing is a lot about thinking rather than sitting down and writing music. Any idea which strikes me as something interesting starts haunting me and bothering me. Soon enough I cannot sleep properly and that is when I am forced to take notice and slowly it all falls into place.
SRP: How is a Silk Road Ensemble performance different for you from other performances?
SD: The beauty of performing with the Silk Road Ensemble is a two-way process. You are not only presenting some kind of music to the audience or to one another but learning at the same time. You bring or hear one music and then slowly as other musicians join in it starts to live a completely different life or sometimes seems magically living on its own without anyone playing. We seem to transcend being performers to just transmit something that is coming from within. That I feel is the most ethereal of experiences I have had with the Ensemble. And this sets us apart from other performances right away!
SRP: Since you don't read Western notation, do you memorize everything?
SD: No, it is not possible to memorize everything. I like to think of it as making a sketch from what you have seen. Then you put in your markers and lastly you fill it with the color of your musical instrument! SRP: What is behind the friendly rivalry the percussionists have with the string players?
SD: The rivalry is really superficial! We feed off one another's playing so many times that we cannot do without the other. Take away the rhythm from a piece and you have taken the pulsating heart...take away the melody of the strings and you have taken the soul away.
SRP: How have you been preparing to go into New York City classrooms as a teaching artist for Silk Road Connect? SD: I have two daughters aged seven and 12. I have been watching them closely more so for this specific project! I am trying to see what they say about their day at school, what they like or dislike about their teachers or school or study. I am trying to think like them and look at the world from their point of view! HUM Ensemble
A question that haunted Sandeep for more than three years was how he could further the vision that animates the Silk Road Ensemble. Taking a seed from the Silk Road Project's tree and planting it in India, he has grown his own organization, HUM. With two successful concerts with five young Indian musicians and friends from the Silk Road Ensemble under its belt, the group is helping visually impaired children learn music from established performers and working toward a National Scholarship for the Differently Abled and health insurance for aging artists. HUM will present a four-city tour in India in 2011. |