Post by Tera Pyo on Aug 19, 2004 9:52:11 GMT
When samba met bhangra
(Filed: 18/08/2004)
Telegraph
Peter Culshaw reviews London Mela at Gunnersbury Park, W3
With at least one in eight Londoners having a South Asian background, a big London Mela (Sanskrit for "gathering" ) makes sense. In fact, this event could well expand to become an Asian version of the Notting Hill Carnival.
The organisers claimed a crowd of 75,000, up 20,000 from last year. Now in only its second year, the Mela's rise has coincided with the rise of bhangra into the mainstream and the post-Bombay Dreams fascination with Bollywood glitz.
Rishi Rich (who has mixed Britney Spears and Craig David hits) appeared on the main stage with a goatee-bearded Juggy D and Jay Sean singing his current hit Eyes on You, and their performances here felt like a coronation in front of a wildly partisan audience.
Raghev and Stereo Nation kept up the celebratory atmosphere. But the Mela was much more than a pop event and included classical music gurus Shri Hermant Chauhan's Gujarati devotional Bhakti music and Ustad Chand and Afzal from Delhi, singing powerful Qawwali sufi music in the Classical tent.
The Mela included everything from bouncy castles and a fun-fair to a Heritage tent that featured superb Odissi, Kathak and Bharatanatyam dancers and had a map of the world where people had their photos taken and added a sentence or two to describe how they ended up in London (mainly South Asian stories but the odd picture from Dublin or South America). A large queue formed for the British Airways installation, where you could try out the latest first-class seats.
The Cabaret tent featured a stand-up comic getting people on stage to sing their favourite Bollywood songs.
Like all good festivals, there was an element of the wild and the weird, from a group mixing samba and bhangra (not sure I'd listen to it at home, but it was enjoyable at the time) to an aerialist in a balloon, attached to ropes that enabled her to swoop down on to the audience, which kids found alternatively magical or alarming.
I came across the artistic director, Ajay Chhabra, on stilts dressed a military policeman pointing a stick at people and telling them they were illegal and asking them for their passports. My guess is that after this success, many stars he tried to book this year from Abida Parveen to Susheela Raman will realise this is a great event to support in future years.
There are still teething troubles - the beats from the main stage disturbed the calm of the Classical tent and the queues for food were boringly long - but they are wrinkles that can be ironed out. The festival's finale was a Din Shuru ("daybreak"), a wildly colourful procession of dancers and musicians in dazzling costumes that showed the Indian influence on the Trinidad Carnival (there are as many Asians as Afro-Caribbeans there). It rounded off a hugely successful and friendly event that seems sure to become an important cultural fixture of the London summer.
(Filed: 18/08/2004)
Telegraph
Peter Culshaw reviews London Mela at Gunnersbury Park, W3
With at least one in eight Londoners having a South Asian background, a big London Mela (Sanskrit for "gathering" ) makes sense. In fact, this event could well expand to become an Asian version of the Notting Hill Carnival.
The organisers claimed a crowd of 75,000, up 20,000 from last year. Now in only its second year, the Mela's rise has coincided with the rise of bhangra into the mainstream and the post-Bombay Dreams fascination with Bollywood glitz.
Rishi Rich (who has mixed Britney Spears and Craig David hits) appeared on the main stage with a goatee-bearded Juggy D and Jay Sean singing his current hit Eyes on You, and their performances here felt like a coronation in front of a wildly partisan audience.
Raghev and Stereo Nation kept up the celebratory atmosphere. But the Mela was much more than a pop event and included classical music gurus Shri Hermant Chauhan's Gujarati devotional Bhakti music and Ustad Chand and Afzal from Delhi, singing powerful Qawwali sufi music in the Classical tent.
The Mela included everything from bouncy castles and a fun-fair to a Heritage tent that featured superb Odissi, Kathak and Bharatanatyam dancers and had a map of the world where people had their photos taken and added a sentence or two to describe how they ended up in London (mainly South Asian stories but the odd picture from Dublin or South America). A large queue formed for the British Airways installation, where you could try out the latest first-class seats.
The Cabaret tent featured a stand-up comic getting people on stage to sing their favourite Bollywood songs.
Like all good festivals, there was an element of the wild and the weird, from a group mixing samba and bhangra (not sure I'd listen to it at home, but it was enjoyable at the time) to an aerialist in a balloon, attached to ropes that enabled her to swoop down on to the audience, which kids found alternatively magical or alarming.
I came across the artistic director, Ajay Chhabra, on stilts dressed a military policeman pointing a stick at people and telling them they were illegal and asking them for their passports. My guess is that after this success, many stars he tried to book this year from Abida Parveen to Susheela Raman will realise this is a great event to support in future years.
There are still teething troubles - the beats from the main stage disturbed the calm of the Classical tent and the queues for food were boringly long - but they are wrinkles that can be ironed out. The festival's finale was a Din Shuru ("daybreak"), a wildly colourful procession of dancers and musicians in dazzling costumes that showed the Indian influence on the Trinidad Carnival (there are as many Asians as Afro-Caribbeans there). It rounded off a hugely successful and friendly event that seems sure to become an important cultural fixture of the London summer.