Echoes of Drum Jatra
“Om,” the gong reverberated with a gentle touch of the mallet. Another wisp of the stick to the gong and it had a divine resonance. Slowly, the hands that made the sound moved towards singing bowls of all shapes and sizes. One by one, the singing bowls were struck with the mallet and its rotation on the rim produced a sweet vibration. This was followed by a medley of percussion that left the audience at Kantipur Temple House last week bathed in sensuous sound from Mangal Man Maharjan’s performance ‘Sound Bath’.
Read also: Drum roll, Sewa Bhattarai
This was the highlight of the Surya Nepal Drum Jatra 2019, with the pin-drop silence of the night punctured with music from the best traditional percussionists and visiting drummers in Nepal. Everyone in the audience felt every beat of the drums deep inside them.
Kathmandu Baja Puca performed with Naykhibaja (Naykhi Drum) which is rarely seen. The musical pieces are rarely performed because of the caste stigma, but here the sounds were clear and strong.
While the act put together by Rabin Lal Shrestha also entertained the audience with tabla talent, while the opening act was by the Nepali didgeridoo virtuoso Salil Subedi who also blew on the murchunga. Subedi also opened the Drum Jatra finale on Saturday, 29 June, invoking the ambience with the deep, booming sounds from down under. There also was a spontaneous performance by Sanskriti Shrestha on tabla and Andreas Wildhagen on snare drum.
Read also: Kathmandu, and all that jazz …, Sewa Bhattarai
Drum Jatra conceptualiser Navin Chhetri led a team of drummers in a piece called Brushing Life, playing four snare drums with brush sticks which did not beat the drums, but playfully brushed against them instead producing sounds like sand becoming solid. Though composed for a string quartet, it worked quite well on a snare quartet as well. With a jazzy flavour and novel techniques, this was a unique composition.
More innovation followed, with Naresh Prajapati playing more than a dozen madals at once, and entertaining the audience with traditional folk tunes. In a folksy Tamang Selo piece performed by Tamba group, four women played the damphu drums, accompanied by a man on the string tunga. The damphu is used by the Tamang community in rituals and festive occasions, was traditionally played only by men. Their use and performance by women was an example of innovations in Nepal’s folk music arena as well. The Tamba rendered a piece traditionally performed at the beginning of all rituals: invoking supernatural powers and offering greetings and blessings to everyone present.
The Drum Jatra Ensemble then got on stage with plastic bottles and proceeded to drink out of them. They then rocked the half-full bottles in sync, and also beat them with sticks to create unique music.
The event honoured Dev Rana, a senior drummer with a career spanning more than 50 years, with the Drum Jatra Lifetime Achievement Award. Rana and his band Prism are credited with starting the rock music movement in Nepal and establishing the foreign genre. “I am a very average drummer with a passion for music, and now I am so happy to see so many talented young drummers here,” said Rana, accepting the award.
The event ended with rousing Brazilian and African beats, featuring conga and djembe. Cadenza performed another jazzy piece Momo Funk. Finally with an upbeat piece from Ghana called Pacha and a cheery one from Nigeria called Lady, the drums rolled to a final stop, with a promise for another Drum Jatra next year.