Wow! What can I say, one of the things I love about being involved with Arts Award is all the new things I experience. Recently I went with a fellow Gold participant to a show at Lakeside Arts Centre in Nottingham to see Bollywood Brass Band play, joined by a fantastic guest violinist, and it was quite an exciting experience.
First of all, I must say, Indian beatboxing – majorly cool! More about that later, first let me set the scene for you.
The Bollywood Brass Band is an Indian-style band, they bring the funky rhythms of Bollywood with them wherever they play and they have performed all over the world.
Featuring brass, saxophone, dhol drums and a colossal sousaphone, this medley of instruments and talented musicians make for a fantastic show.
The night kicked off with an energetic tune to get your blood pumping, and continued in much the same fashion. After the first couple of songs the band took a short break to make way for their guest act, a duo who treated us to a lively performance of Indian drums and Carnatic violin playing by Jyotsna Srikanth. In addition to the entertainment, the show was also informative, and in between songs Jyotsna told us about how south Indian style music is referred to as 'Carnatic', and showed us the different between this and other styles like the 1950's old style classical Indian music.
Throughout the night the songs they played us were accompanied by videos of the films that they originated from, old black and white movies played out love stories for us as the band animated jived on stage.
During the intermission we could hardly wait to get back in there to hear more, I have to mention we were especially enthralled with 'Sarah' and her super-sexy-soprano-saxophone playing, and the Indian beatboxing from one of the guest performers - try and imagine the crazy-fast paced rhythms you hear from Indian drums and then imagine those sounds coming from a human, what a talent!
Overall it was a fabulous time and by the end we certainly were up on our feet and dancing, with all those stimulating rhythms how could we not?
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