Last weekend was celebrated in the Kalaa Utsavam festival at the Esplanade. There are an amazing variety of free performances which are worth paying for and watching.

The Saturday we looked at Prana and ogled at the amazing fusion of the Spanish guitar, sitar, tabla and the mridangam. The group even had their CDs on sale only for SGD 10 which I grabbed quickly. They were selling like hotcakes anyways!

The songs they played had parallels with pop songs as well as old bollywood songs. I realised that Stings ‘Fragile’ and ‘Tum bin jaaon Kahan’from Pyar Ka Mausam are very similar, both of which are similar to a song Prana played.

Meanwhile, we also got to see the amazing manipuri tribal dance and sword fight. The dance was quite similar to bhangra without the usual bonhomie and exuberance.

The Sunday was the Eastern Rhapsody by Vikku Vinayakaram, Selvaganesh, U. Srinivas, Taufiq Qureshi. Man, it was awesome! Vikku, Siva and Taufiq excited the audience to perform with them, which was an amazing confluence of rhythm. It was amazing to see the kind of effect a mass rhythmic expression has! Taufiq is very passionate about rhythm and explained to us how our daily life is infused with rhythm - the heart beats, the coughs (he is an amazing mimic as well!), the quarrels, the travel, etc.

Taufiq can also produce double sounds simultaneously! It was as if he was playing a set of drums with his mouth!

Chanced upon the whole Indian menagerie - Kaps, friends from uni, and Cogito (sorry for not recognising!). But surprisingly, the concert hall was not full. I wished they allowed us cheap ticket holders to move to the middle :(