a lovely evening of Indian culture

Hi everyone, hope you're enjoying the weekend.....

On Saturday night, we went to a performance in West Palm Beach by Ravi Shankar and his daughter & protégé, Anoushka; both are classical Indian musicians. It was fabulous! Ravi has been dubbed "the Mozart of Indian music", and is a sitar guru. He is famous for writing the score of Gandhi.

Sal and I made an evening of it, starting with a delicious dinner at Punjab Indian Restaurant, in Boca Raton. We LOVE Indian food, it's so flavorful and is super vegetarian-friendly. What better way to kick off an evening of Indian music?

We had great seats in the Mezzanine, in one of those "little boxes" off to the side of the stage, with only us and another couple sitting in it. We've never sat in that section of an auditorium before, usually we sit on the Orchestra (floor) level, but we gave it a try and liked it! It was a unique vantage point, looking down onto the performers.

Listening to the sitars (pictured left) was so pleasant, mesmerizing. I felt as if I was transported to India! The sitar has a unique sound, hard to describe.....perhaps a cross between a classical guitar and a steel guitar? Ravi & Anoushka were accompanied by a musician playing the tabla (a pair of small Indian drums, shown below), and the percussion sound added an unexpected richness to the performance.

And a shout-out to my family in Philadelphia --- I saw that Ravi & Anoushka will be performing in Philly soon, on October 19, if you're interested. Check out their Tour Dates webpage for tickets & more info. If you go, please let me know what you think of it!