Scattered Thoughts for Week 2
I returned from Kolkata a little over a week ago. There's far too much for me to mention to do justice to the sights and sounds of the city, but I will say that seeing live North Indian classical music for the first time was among the most memorable experiences of my trip. The winter is prime festival season, as I learned, which means day-long performances that sometimes stretch through the night into the early hours of the morning. For those who complain about certain classical works or improvised solos being excessively lengthy or Hour 6/10 at a classical music festival even self-indulgent, I'd advise against attending these festivals; many of the sets that I saw were an hour or longer in length, and might feature uninterrupted music for over half an hour at a time. I first realized that expectations for the audience at these performances differed from those in the US when I arrived late to the first night of a festival: the music began at 2, but I didn...