And though instruments astound, amaze and enrapture, for my ears nothing is more integral and emotive than the human voice. I don't know, but while you're thinking about it, sink your ears into the songs of Savina. Not a fast food band, or one of those dangly things grown in the darkness, Savina robustly performs already robust music from Eastern Europe. A local women's folk choir, Savina comprises 13 singers, an accordion, a violin, a bass and a dumbek. The Gypsy ballads stick in the mind as hauntingly beautiful.
Voices weave and interweave, with full and shifting harmony.
Both foreign and familiar, the songs pull. At other times you feel the Duende, what the Balinese call Taksu, a force of expression, a power in the music that pulls us from out ourselves where the mind stutters to a still and briefly, brutally and yet most delicate, you're taken out of the loop. Such moments, and such musical traditions, are to be valued. Close, but no cheroot. That's Ali Akbar Khan.