Jan 08

Birthday Bash

Of the reasons to celebrate at the Surf Club last night, my birthday ranked, at best, a distant third behind (1) Russian Orthadox Christmas and (2) The fact it was Friday (a rare night of the week when live music is allowed on our part of the beach).

I had only known my escorts Safah and Riannon (from the Teacher Training program) for 2 days and 6 hours, respectively, but I remembered the band, Kundalini Airport, from my last visit to Goa in 2009.

We were primed by a traditional Goan dinner as the sun set over the Indian Ocean. I don’t remember the names of the dishes (and couldn’t spell them regardless). After dinner, Vinod, the restaurant owner, sat for a round of drinks with us, but again my birthday was low on his list of motives.

After dinner, we wandered over to the Surf Club for the music. The open-air club is not very big, and it wasn’t very crowded when we situated ourselves conveniently at the bar near the stage. As the music brought in the people, the vibe started to flow. Observing the crowd was a big part of the experience (let’s just say anything goes in Goa).

At the front of the stage was a traditional tablas (drums) player with magic fingers and the vocalist with a less traditional electronic sitar that was later excanged for a lute. behind them were a bass player and a “western” drummer. Off to one side was a digiery doo (sp?) and on the other side a guy with distant eyes on a mixer/synthesizer/keyboard thing. None of these details remained from my initial viewing of the band two years earlier because they were at the far side of a large open space in the middle of the Night Market. But the funky rhythmic world/dub beats were as soul rockin’ as I remember and more so.

When the show ended, I bought the four CDs of their that I didn’t already own and got their contact info. Who knows, Kundalini Airport just might end up as background music for a series of yoga CDs/podcasts by some yoga teacher you know.

For those of you wondering, the clubbing boozy nightlife is NOT part of the yoga training. The “work” starts tomorrow.