The Fun Never Stops
Two weeks ago, I performed at Town Hall. A musician's collective I belong to was hired to provide music for an event featuring Dada Vaswani (http://www.sadhuvaswani.org/).
The event schedule was very tight; I was scheduled to be the first performer, and was given the 6 - 6:27 pm spot.
I took the stage at precisely 6:00pm, and played a solo sitar piece; Rag Desh. It was quite an interesting experience playing solo in front of 1000 people at one of NYC's most prestigous venue.
And the audience enjoyed my performance.
Last night I had another milestone. I played at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
I was asked to be one of three opening acts for a concert of African headliners. The schedule was: a hip hop artist, me, a hip hop group whom I was playing guitar with, a dance troupe, and then the headlining groups. All went well at the soundcheck; and I must say that the Apollo's stage and sound crew were the best! They operated like a well oiled machine.
Since I couldn't afford to bring a band, and there was a number of hip hop groups on the bill, and I knew that the Apollo audience needed to have a rhythmic thing happening, I decided to perform with backing tracks. I set everything up on my laptop, and took great pains to test everything. No problems; it worked. And sound check went smooth.
I went on and began my set. I addressed the audience with "Asalaam alaikum". I heard a murmer of a response. I said "Oh no. We can't begin like this. ASALAAM ALAIKUM!" They responded louder. I said "Much better! Let's do this, shall we?" So I began to play. All was going well, until near the end of the first song, my laptop glitched on me!! Ouch! Well, I had to think fast. I ended the song as gracefully as I could. Then I spoke to the audience for a moment, and asked them if they liked John Coltrane. I knew I had to get a response from them and that did it. So, I played A Love Supreme. It went well, and people liked what I did. Then, becuase I was quite conscious of time constraints (the show was already running late), I did one last song. I introduced it as a 700 year old love song fron India (which it was, of course). This sparked people's interest. I played it as beautfully as I could; then I thanked the Apollo, and left the stage.
The group that followed, led by a hip hop artist named Iceberg Slim, asked me to play guitar with them on a few songs. This was good; I'd planned on playing guitar on something in my set; but my laptop had other ideas. They were a pretty good group, and even had a sax player and a guy on talking drum. I stuck to playing grooves and jazzy chords. But at one point, they had the individuals in the group come up to the front of the stage and do a solo dance. Now, it had not occured to me that they would even ask me - but they did! So, with a flick of a switch I cranked up the distortion, and rather than dance, I played a guitar solo; and ended it by playing with my teeth! This is always a crowd pleaser.
The thing I can't help but shake my head in amazement over is that I had so many strikes against me! Consider: 1. at the last minute my set was shortened by almost half, 2. I had some technical glitches that could have proven disasterous, and almost did had I not the capacity to improvise, 3 at the last minute I was asked to perform with a group with no rehearsal, no idea what the group was going to do, and really never played Nigerian Hip Hop before, 4. my occasional bout of insomnia flared up, and I walked onstage having been awake for over 55 hours, and 5. I was on a bill with all African musicians, traditional and hip hop; and I was the ONLY white man there, playing a jazz / world fussion on a modified Indian instrument. It could have been a disaster. But, Allah was merciful: I walked away having done well.
Well. Now I have Town Hall and the Apollo under my belt.