Trip Overview

This visit to Kolkata has been a hugely different and in many ways rewarding first trip to India.  The sights and sounds of this stunning city are ones of beauty as well as despair.  The Panjazz tour itself has had its ups and downs, as to be expected with any venture to a new country but a successful one none the less for the charity.  We have fit in a huge amount of recording time with collaborations between south african, indian and UK based musicians ranging through a huge amount of styles and standards.  this in itself has been very enjoyable to see and participate in and no doubt the results will be fully worth while.  The performing side of the tour has not gone quite as to plan due to the complications of playing in India but the group has done their best to overcome this and get the best out of it as possible and to stay in high spirits, keeping the charity's cause at the top of the agenda, giving Panjazz International's future connection with India a huge boost for the future.  

Posted by Tim

Hogg Market

We were lucky enough to visit Kolkata's oldest market, we arrived in the afternoon to a bustling marketplace ready to spend our rupees. As soon as we were off the coach street sellers we trying to get us to buy various bits and bob's, some of which appealed and some definitely didn't! We were escorted to the centre of this massive indoor market and were told where our central meeting point was then we were off to shop! The group stayed together for a large part of the outing and went to a shop selling all sorts of things from tabla, scarves, sari's, shisha's and brass and stone statues to name a few! 

We were told that you had to haggle to get the best deals and that whatever price they start at you should start at 10% of that cost! It was hilarious watching everyone trying to get the prices down! We met a young girl from the slums selling hair clips and bits, at 10 years old she can speak 10 languages fluently, incredible. She has to sell at the market to pay for her schooling but what an amazing young lady. She came all the way back to the coach with us. We really wanted to take her with us.

Posted by Dan

Our Performances

We have now played three performances, two were street gigs when the Indian children played along with us. These gigs were very special to us because that's what we have come out here to do, to give the children these opportunities. The audiences are always very intrigued and don't know quite what to make of the instruments, but I think we have been well recieved.  We also played at the Taj Bengal 5* hotel last night, which was very different to anything else we have seen on this trip. It was definitely a case of 'how the other half live'. There were many professional musicians at this event and they too were taken back by the sound of the steel band. 

All in all I think everyone has taken a lot from this trip (most of us a dress size lighter too!) and amongst all the stress, lack of sleep and organisational problems, Calcutta and the people here will stay in our memories for a long time. 

Posted by Hannah

20 Hour Studio Marathon!

9.00 Wednesday morning and we arrive at HMV studio's fairly impressive compound in the bright sunshine. After being left to run the schedule I was fully aware of the massive amount of work we needed to do and the breadth of task in front of us. 

Seeing as the Pans had been the focus of the first two days of recording it was Panjazz and the Bollywood project that was more urgent to start with. We were joined by Sanju Sahai on Tabla and Pratik Shrivistava on Sirod. These are some of the most accomplished performers on their respective instruments and we are hugely privileged to be playing with them. As the day wore on fairly slowly, and with members of the group starting to drop off as sickness is starting to ravage the group, it was becoming a tense affair. All members of the group though were firm on their goal and and I've been impressed by all of them with their ability to concentrate and focus, even those who had been playing and recording for 10 hours straight. Included in this bunch was the youngest of our group, Finli, 11,  who would put most of the professional musicians I have ever worked with to shame for his boundless enthusiasm and talent.

Apart from obvious difficulties we managed to complete the majority of the schedule, with only the Bollywood and overdubbing to be completed at a different (and much smaller) studio. As you can tell from the lateness of the posting of this blog, the recording session lasted 20 hours. Huge thanks have to go to our wonderful Indian tech men out here especially Obi (insert Star Wars joke here) who's amazing ability to keep smiling no matter what we threw at him meant that he still looked as fresh as a daisy when we had finally finished at 4.30am. As we all sloped off to collapse they were preparing the studio for the next clients due in at 8am. Overall an amazing, stressful, fulfilling, crazy experience that no one on the trip will forget in any great hurry!

POSTED BY OUR FANTASTIC SINGER 'FOXY' KATE

HMV Studio Recording

Good evening Panjazz blog followers! Andy here, on the coach just after our first recording session, we just had our first taste of western food in the form of Dominoes Pizza and enjoying the crazy Indian traffic with the guys at the back of the coach currently suffering from the dodgy traffic calming bumps. I've been told to keep this short! Our first session at the HMV studios lasted a few hours. We took a while to get the headphones and mics set up and sounding good. Our brilliant and patient Indian sound engineers could soon see the importance and quality of the PU (Percussion Union) - me, Fin and Stef - and gave us separate pods in the corner of the studio. We laid down our first track, 'Footsteps' in three attempts having got used to playing to a metronome click - a very interesting exercise for pan players and percussionists alike, and something we should probably try more in the panyard [massive road hump - passengers airborne]. We then got 'Never Too Much' done in one...accept at the end yours truly did a PU classic schoolboy error of giving Stef some quality advice through the mic...before looking around to see the on the look on the pannists' faces that the recording was still going on and we waiting for the pan ringing sound to fade. Oops. Was good advice though. Anyway, got it second time round and then went on to Nah Goin Home; a band favourite but difficult to record as a band to the click track given its pace and rhythms. So after a few attempts we called it a day. While this is challenging in some ways a quick listen back to the first two tracks sounds like we could be on to recording something special to sell to audiences. Then we moved on to our second studio set up at our friend Rajeeb's house, he has 2 small studios. In 1 the arrangers were busy sorting out new pieces for the project to play at our performances in a few days time, in the other the Panjazz ensemble were rehearsing for our next studio session tomorrow!....Thats all for now, check back tomorrow evening for the next installment!

First Day's Rehearsals

Hi there, we were up first thing on the morning of day 2 for some more fantastic food and our first rehearsals! We were met by the coach really early and went off to St James school. We had another eventful journey, I don't think we will ever get used to the roads here, its madness, our bus attempted a 3 point turn on a major road blocking both sides of the street!
We arrived at the school and got the pans out to find most were perfect but some have been knocked in the freight, but nothing that we cant work with, so we set the band up and started rehearsals. Firstly we played all the tunes with our Indian partners, the look on their face when they heard the steel orchestra for the first time was very special!
Now were off to the recording studio for the bands first day recording!

After a long journey we arrived safely in Kolkata!

We arrived early yesterday morning jet lagged but still excited. Our first thoughts on Kolkata. "What a crazy but wonderful place!!!" The driving is Insane with no one sticking to road laws if there are any!! With non stop horns and cyclists on the motor way the driving experience is crazy!

We went to St. James school and saw the Panjazz India Steel band and Junk Percussion band which was good for everyone to see. We're being looked after well, being well fed and everyone is lovely and really friendly towards us. That's enough for now, we're off to practice..

Brandon Draper (14) and Finli Draper (11)