Travelling Inexpensively

I love to travel. I hate flying but I love where flying gets me. The trouble with going someplace on a plane is that it usually ends up being expensive. This weekend I saved some money but I still had that "going on a trip feeling" as I headed out towards the Ottawa airport early in the morning. I turned off the Airport Expressway before reaching the airport and onto Hunt Club where I found myself at the door of the Mushfiq Music School for an early morning performance of Indian classical music meant to be played early in the morning.

I found out about the gathering because I'm on the mailing list of one of my old students whose husband brings world class musicians to play for Ottawa's fans of Hindustani music.

Due to the early hour there were few guests in attendance. I didn't know what to expect because I hadn't been to this place before, but the email had a few details of the performance, which made me think I'd want to go. I asked a couple of people if anyone wanted to get up early and go on an adventure but the answers came back no. I quickly decided I'd just go by myself, and there I found myself, basically in the basement of this guy's house, tears streaming down my face, sunlight streaming across the coloured leaves in the back yard, as I listened to Anol Chatterjee in from Kolkata and the Hashimy brothers, originally from Afghanistan, performing world-class morning music meant for the heart. They were playing directly to me. Bliss.

Another cool thing about the concert was that it included brunch. I found out I'm not the only one who prepares pancakes for her students as I chatted with the musicians and guests in the kitchen drinking masala tea and learning about their music school. When I asked when their next performance is I found out it's this week as Mushfiq Hashimi will be a part of the Taxi Stand Jam on Thursday night at the Arts Court.

The next time an email comes across my path like that I won't hesitate for a second. The trip was short but so deep, plus I saved quite a bundle on airfare.

The first video is Anol with other musicians and the second one is the Ottawa-based musicians in a concert in Toronto a few years ago.

Music for Yoga Classes

One of the things I do when I'm at Omega every summer is I spend time in the Omega Shop listening to different CDs and collecting new music for my classes. They have such a great selection and I can round up a bunch of CDs, put them in a pile and then load them into a portable CD player with headphones and take a listen. I know, it's a fairly low-tech way to do it but it works. It usually takes me about 45 minutes, maybe because I have to do it without my daughter around and that's all the time I can get, and I wind up coming home with some new music to play in my classes.

This year I didn't find anything that I felt I HAD to have - maybe I rushed. But I also made a list and checked out the websites of the CDs I wanted before buying them and the thing that struck me the most was how much cheaper it would be for me to just download the songs from iTunes instead of buying the CD. Sorry, Jean (it's her shop). I took my very short list and downloaded them straight to my iPod Touch last night. It's still ten bucks U.S. an album, but I don't have to unwrap the CD for one thing (how do they ever figure anyone's going to get those things open), it's loaded straight to my system, and I don't have to figure out what to do with the CD and I won't break the case and lose it, etc.

When I'm shopping for music for my classes there are a lot of things I'm thinking about. How does this music make me feel? Of course I want to feel good with it on, so it just has to be a style I like. Does it have lyrics? If so, are they distracting? If the lyrics are loud and pronounced, it can distract people and make it hard to hear instructions in a class. A beginning class would have a different situation than an intermediate class too. Can I just let the music play? Some albums have a song or two that seem to stick out and I don't want to have to manage the music while I'm teaching. Is it current? There are some recordings I have for yoga classes that are decades old now but sometimes those synthesizers that were popular in the '80s just irritate me now. Also, music I've played over time collects memories and I like to play stuff that doesn't remind me of other times and places.

One album I put on my Like List this summer happens to be from a Canadian group, Eccodek, I'd never heard of. Here's their site and you can take a listen and see what you think. You could also just come to my class this morning at 9 and take a listen to Shiva Boom at Rama Lotus.