The Bollywood Masala Orchestra toured California in October, and whereas the swirl of colorful dancers and the enlivening music of the orchestra was enough reason to see the performance, the more consequential take away gave the show its ultimate value. The Bollywood Masala Orchestra is an unforgettable counterpoint to prevalent and corrosive cultural myopia.
Despite expanding globalization and increasingly more multicultural integration, you need not look far to find cultural divisiveness eroding regional peace, and not only in the epic scale of an alarming number of humanitarian crises currently plaguing the globe, but also in the familiar corners of your own neighborhood.
Case in point, a recent news article in The Telegraph tells of 44-year-old Stuart Lynn who alleged his local Indian restaurant discriminated against him for being white. His claimed the evidence is a slur on his sales receipt. After ordering a mild curry for his venison, Lynn was dismayed to see printed on the receipt, mild Curry “white ppl.” The Telegraph quotes him as interpreting the abbreviation with displeasure. “I was not happy at all – it said ‘white people’ next to my curry….It implies we can’t deal with strong curries. I do like a hot curry sometimes. I just fancied a mild one for a change. I thought it was very rude of them.” Schism and hurt defined Mr Lynn’s experience, and arguably a lack of humor, the danger of which lays in the precedence it creates, the negative habits and behaviors such hurt feelings and attitudes make possible. After all, as Mother Teresa reminds us, both “peace and war begin at home, [and] If we truly want peace in the world, let us begin by loving one another in our own families [and curry restaurants]…”
Countering these personal, divisive and myopic cultural experiences are ones such as that brought by the Bollywood Masala Orchestra. The show begins with one drummer on stage, bowing Namasté to the audience before he begins a dialogue with his drums. His hands communicate to his drum. His drum communicates to the audience. In short time, people nod to the beat. My neighbor and I tapped our feet along to the rhythms. The drum creates cohesion as people synchronize consciousness to the beat. Borders between self and surroundings diffuse.
A oneness pervades the venue and this is the delight of a well delivered cultural experience. You might go to a performance like the Bollywood Masala Orchestra to experience the other, to feel the exotic, but as you open yourself to the message of the artists, what you actually experience is sameness, is oneness. And at the Bollywood Masala Orchestra performance, it all of course begins with the gesture of Namasté, the essence of which is to acknowledge how the greatness in you and the greatness in me make us one.
“My soul recognizes your soul, I honor the light, love, beauty, truth and kindness within you because it is also within me. In sharing these things, there is no distance and no difference between us. We are the same. We are one.”
This message is reiterated when an orchestra member talks to the audience about the seemingly innumerable languages and religions of India, but he assures the venue that the one thing we can all believe in is love and music. It is a simple and beautiful counterpoint to cultural myopia that makes schism both internationally and in your own home town.
