By Mary Spicer
MEADVILLE TRIBUNE
SADSBURY TOWNSHIP —
With places as diverse as Singapore, western Canada, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Sweden, Ireland and Mexico City on his 2010 tour schedule, Sandip Burman is definitely a traveling man. Tuesday morning, however, Conneaut Lake High School served as the starting point for his latest journey.
Armed with three instruments not usually familiar to rural high school musicians, Burman was in the Lake band room to kick off his U.S.A. tour. Before his hour was done, students had been introduced to the sitar, melodium and tabla — a large stringed instrument, a small reed instrument and drums, respectively.
During four-week marathon that will follow, he’ll work with students at high schools and colleges in Maryland, Virginia, New York, Colorado, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana and Ohio, in that order. Crawford County, however, was not his only stop of his first day on the road. In fact, before the day ended, he would also work with students in DuBois, Johnstown and Mount Union.
The sound of his 20-string sitar, an instrument first reaching the ears of many Westerners when George Harrison of The Beatles teamed up with the legendary Indian musician Ravi Shankar, greeted members of Conneaut Lake’s band program from grades seven through 12 as they filed quietly into the room.
The sound of a pin dropping — if a pin had had the nerve to break the silence — could have been clearly heard as they silently took seats on the floor, forming a semicircle around Burman as he played the exotic instrument. With rapt attention, they stared as his hands moved, sometimes too rapidly for the eye to follow.
Burman is a native of Durgapur, India, a city slightly to the north and west of Kolkata (a former capital known as Calcutta until the spelling was officially changed in 2001). An accomplished musician who has traveled the world, working with both Indian and Western musicians in a variety of genres and locations, Burman spends a substantial part of each year teaching high school and college students. One of the upcoming stops on his current tour, for example, is at Cornell University.
One of his first lessons demonstrated the importance of precision. “If anyone makes a mistake, none of the notes make any sense,” he said as students focused on mastering a a rhythm sequence that had seemed deceptively simple at first.
Another lesson had to do with the combination of emotion, intelligence and hard work that come together to shape a performance. “It’s all the same 12 notes (in the musical scale),” Burman said, “but when you become an artist, you give them a different value than anyone else.”
As Burman explained it, being a musician is a continuous process.
“It’s always a learning process,” he said. “If you practice, you start to hear something different. Changes always come by practice .... Practice gives you the skills to express emotion — learning to play the instrument is never-ending.”
Junior Jessica Kornman came away from the session inspired. “He was so amazing,” she said when the session was done. “He just goes so fast...”
Ralph Egyud, Lake’s director of music, agreed wholeheartedly.
“I thought it was great,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “The kids really enjoyed it — they got a lot out of it.”
So did he. An accomplished guitar player in his own right, Egyud was Burman’s first choice when it came time for a sitar demonstration. “As an old-time Beatles fan, that was a great opportunity,” Egyud said with a grin.
For Egyud, the day’s bottom line was simple. “To be able to hear music from another culture from an artist of world stature — to hear music from anyone of his stature — is important,” he said. “Especially because of what he had to say about what it takes to get to his kind of level.”
Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com
