Once excavated from burial chambers and other sites in Italy and Greece, the items in the exhibit include a statue of a satyr and numerous vessels. “ The Symposium: Food for Mind, Body and Soul” features about 30 ancient artifacts rescued from illegal trafficking by Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, a special police force with its own art-recovery team. “It is interesting to us that there is more to find.”Ī cloak-and-dagger back story adds mystique to an archaeological exhibit now at the Embassy of Italy. “We have just scratched the surface as far as the similarities of our roots,” Hussain said. Hussain also said he and his bandmates discovered a Kashmiri musical form whose rhythmic flow resembles that of a jig, as well as a song or two about great Scottish heroes that sound as if they’re describing the exploits of Prince Arjuna of “Mahabharata” fame. (Shehnai music typically features a drone accompaniment that recalls the fixed-note component of bagpipe music.) The Mumbai-born musician and composer said he has long been interested in the commonalities between such instruments as the shehnai, an Indian reed instrument, and the bagpipes. The Indian and Celtic musical legacies are like “long-lost cousins meeting again,” Hussain said via e-mail from his home in the San Francisco area. Flautist Jean-Michel Veillon represents the Breton strand of Celtic culture, and John Joe Kelly is a maestro of the bodhran, the traditional Irish frame drum.
Performers on the Celtic side of the equation include fiddlers Charlie McKerron and Patsy Reid, piper-flautist Fraser Fifield and guitarist Tony Byrne. Now, although some of the individual performers have changed, the Indian-Celtic musical group headed by Hussain is touring North America under the moniker “Pulse of the World: Celtic Connections.” The band brings its globe-spanning sound to George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium on March 17.Īmong the Indian musicians is Hussain on the tabla, which is an Indian drum Rakesh Chaurasia on the bamboo flute and Ganesh Rajagopalan on the violin. On the strength of the artistic and personal momentum, the Glasgow-birthed collective kept going, even performing as part of the programming surrounding the London Olympics in 2012. “Lots of fun was had, much beer was consumed, friendships were forged, a deep respect and reverence for each other’s tradition developed,” recalls Hussain, who has collaborated with George Harrison, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark Morris and other celebrated artists. The performers hit it off, and the Celtic and Indian musical aesthetics, too, seemed an inspired match. He and several other virtuosos of Indian music had gathered with some Scottish and Irish musicians for a week-long collaboration in Glasgow, Scotland, that was commissioned by a Scottish arts organization. In 2011, that thought crossed the mind of Zakir Hussain, the renowned tabla performer and world-music icon. “Why the dickens did we not think of this earlier?”
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