Verse

Author: Laura McManus

  • When Art is Just Art

    ‘I am Yeti,’ read the bold blue and yellow words adorning the high brick wall opposite the Ambassador Hotel in Lazimpat.  My heart fluttered as I scanned the words again.

    ‘I am Yeti.’

    My mind similarly began to postulate endless possibilities; who was this, where had they come from, what was their intent, when did they do it, why this wall and were they really a yeti? Yes, street art does crazy things to your mind.  The enigma, the thrill and the idea that someone, someone one will never know, is out there bringing to life works of art for the rest of the world to enjoy without anything in return; now there is a nice thought.

    ‘I am Yeti.’

    It was new and fresh. It was neither a political slogan nor an advertorial poster or a poorly worded English sign to welcome tourists. It represented a perspective, a perspective of someone without an agenda, someone who wanted to have fun and above most someone who had a talent to share. It is palpable to say that I was excited.

    Walking  a little further on Lazimpat Road, my contented grin turned into a smile of elation as I made sense of the big black letters that now covered the entire wall facing west at the main intersection.  The character painted at the end indicated it was different artist, the style and the message similarly diverging from the work of Yeti. I was to find out later that this was Mr. K.

    ‘scitilopodot.’

    I read backwards. Ah, ‘to do politics.’ Picking up the pace my eyes scanned the wall faster than my legs could carry me.

    ‘Me not,’ ‘old,’ no read again, ‘told.’

    ‘Mmy,’ ok, think. ‘Yummy?’ No. ‘Dummy?’ It could not be. Yes! ‘Mummy.’

    ‘MUMMY TOLD ME NOT TO DO POLITICS.’

    By this stage I was all but dancing in the street. Here I was thinking I would be in Nepal during one of the country’s most historic modern periods – that of the ratification of the new constitution. Instead, days after the Constituent Assembly announced yet another extension, I find myself on the cusp of the nations bourgeoning street art movement, amidst a new wave of talent that seeks not to imbue my brain with propaganda but simply and beautifully express ‘art everywhere for everyone.’

    A week later I had to play it cool as I found myself in the company of Yeti, Bruno and Chandan. Together the trio are three of the six or so main players in this rebirth of street art in Nepal. Well, the lines are a little blurred as to whether this is a revival of a lost art or an awakening of a new era of artistic expression.  In 2003 Sonik, a well known American artist, added some intricate murals to the Kathmandu cityscape. Then, a few years later when Bruno visited Nepal for the first time, he and Chandan ‘started doing a few tags around town.’ ‘I don’t know if we are the start of street art in Nepal but there are definitely more tags and murals than ever before,’ the mysterious Yeti explains.  ‘We want street art in Nepal to grow. It is more enjoyable for the artists and the public if more people become involved. ..It really can make a city fun,’ adds Bruno, a photography student and artist from New York University.

    And fun is what Kathmandu seems to need. After years of reading politically orientated slogans, being bombarded with movie posters and confronting ‘so many dirty and stained walls,’ residents are generally enthusiastic about waking to find a new mural as they begin their daily commute across the city. ‘If anything it makes the city look cleaner and more maintained,’ the quieter Chandan says as he enters the conversation.  Of course street art can easily be, and often is, mistaken for graffiti, a term that generally carries negative connotations of dissident youth out to cause strife. ‘It’s not like that at all,’ Yeti elucidates, ‘we are respectful of private property and always ask permission before hand.’

    Much of the work gracing the walls of Jamal, Lazimpat, Thamel and Pulchowk are, however, in prominent public spaces. Goods spots are those considered to be ‘smooth walls in a good location where lots of people can see it.’  Although, the group insist they are not trying to make any particular statement. ‘It’s about doing what we love and sharing it with the world,’ they collectively agree. ‘In the West, street art is a gate way to a professional art career,’ Bruno compares. ‘People take pictures, upload it to a website, gain a few advertisers, become more popular and then start selling their work for ridiculous amounts.’  Yeti extrapolates, ‘here it’s not about trying to make money. It is about passion and self satisfaction. When I put my work out there it is about sharing and hoping people like it.’

    Unlike the rest of the world, street art in Nepal is not yet considered illegal. As the street art scene is just emerging, Bruno describes how ‘there have not been enough grounds for an anti-culture to emerge to counter and challenge the work we are doing.  Most people are curious and just wonder what is going on.’  Pondering where sites of resistance may arise I suggest that in the West, at least, opposition to street art usually stems from an older, culturally traditional and politically conservative generation. Much to my surprise, Yeti chimes in that ‘old people have reacted positively when they see us paint, even offering words of encouragement.’ What about the police? ‘They don’t care either. One night they even helped us to clean a wall.’

    I can’t get my head around it. ‘People generally wonder who would pay money to paint the city’s walls with art, with something that actually looks nice,’ Yeti clarifies. She continues to elaborate that ‘street art is new, it’s contemporary and it’s Western. When one cannot recognise something or see it for the first time they have a lot of questions.’  ‘Plus it comes down to diverging definitions of public space,’ Bruno helps me understand. ‘Everything in the West is a private space. Here public is public.’

    Indeed it was curiosity from this art in distinct public spaces that had most of Kathmandu talking in early June as pockets of paintings sprang up around the city. Devoid of the convoluted and oft superfluous explanations normally found beside an artwork in a gallery, street artists’ capture their audiences’ imagination because one can interpret the work as they see it. For example, in the mural opposite the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, what I might perceive to be a social commentary of the all-consuming power of digital media, you may see, well, just a big pink monster. Street art, like life, is relative.

    And it’s quite a process too.  It begins with the planning of the location, drafting sketches and gathering the materials.  On the creative process Yeti replies that ‘before you paint, you have a central idea, but your original sketch may change according to the space available.’ On the night they go out the group clean the wall for at least two hours before they begin paint. ‘You have to remove the dirt, the posters and make sure the space is as clean as possible before you start. If you skip this step it would probably turn out really shitty.’ A typical mural, which is normally several metres long and high, can take anywhere from three to five hours, to a couple of days. ‘It depends really on the size and how detailed the artwork is,’ Bruno describes. ‘Something like ‘I am Yeti’ will take a day and a half, ‘Money Never Sleeps’ took about 5 hours and Mr. K. usually works over a couple of nights.’

    Usually an artist will have a particular character or trait that is unique to their work. This makes it possible for other artists and the public to identify who does what. But does that lead to competition? ‘It’s not a competition but if another artist is out overnight and you find it the next morning, you feel a drive,’ Yeti diplomatically responds. Bruno finishes her sentence adding that ‘it is not a drive to out-do one another, it’s a drive to improve yourself and become a better artist.’ ‘At the end of the day we like to paint and paint as much as we can,’ Yeti concludes.  ‘After completing a mural at the end of a night we are all really dirty which makes for a good group hug.’

    Group hugs, charm and talent. I think I am in love. With the art, with the movement and with the joy it can bring my day when I discover something new. Enigmatic, bold, colourful, different and fun. Yes, street art does crazy things to your mind.

  • Seeking out the Language of Rhythm

    Wanting to learn more about Nepali music, Laura McManus found herself in the presence of musical greatness front row and backstage at the concert launch of Taal Vidya.

    It was Friday night and I found myself going to a concert. A concert in Kathmandu! As much as I lovae ’90s rock covers from bands in Thamel and a good weekly dose of Upstairs Jazz, it was nice to be doing something different, which Taal Vidya, a concert by tabla master Navaraj Gurung encapsulated. Joined on stage by a host of Nepal’s finest musicians, we transcended into a captivating world where tradition met contemporary and the eclectic sounds of blues and folk seamlessly fused with jazz and rock.

    The concert, presented by the Kathmandu Music Centre, was to launch Navaraj’s forthcoming album and to ‘get together with friends’ he smiles, describing how busy schedules often keep them apart.  Family, friends, teachers, travellers and the best of Nepal’s music industry managed to cap off an audience of approximately 900. One of the most important guests was Navaraj’s father, Sri Ram Hari Gurung, himself Nepal’s most venerated tabla player and his son’s most observant critic.

    ‘I didn’t tell him what I would play, I wanted it to be a surprise,’ Navaraj explained, ‘plus I didn’t want him to tell me, change this or that.’ But all the music we hear from Navaraj is essentially the music of his father. ‘Whatever I play is from him’ Navaraj continued, nostalgically remembering how as a youngster his father introduced him to the tabla. The family’s music repertoire doesn’t end there. Fortunately, for the longevity of traditional tabla playing in Nepal, Navaraj’s nephew, Ashesh, has also taken up the instrument, similarly passed down the skills from his grandfather.

    Ashesh Rai is what I will describe as a 17 year old music prodigy. With a Bachelors in Tabla already to his name, the modest GEMS student says ‘age doesn’t matter. It is the passion and practice that makes all the difference.’ Sharing the stage with his uncle, Ashesh was the perfect accompaniment for Navaraj’s opening solo performances. Powerful, deep and delivered with passion, Navaraj brought to life the tabla in a way that I have never heard before. Wanting to ‘express the tabla not just as a rhythmical instrument but as one also capable of playing melodic lines’ his body moved naturally with the music, the emotions of the moment clear in his expressions.

    With hands and fingers moving at incredible speed, dynamically, the music became louder, quicker and more intense. Playing perfectly in sync and occasionally singing the beat to maintain momentum the uncle-nephew duo, accompanied by Santash Bhakt Shrestha on the Esraj, read the music in each other’s eyes, wowing the audience with their on-stage chemistry. When asked how they achieve such a connection, Ashesh again brings it back to practice. ‘Classical music cannot be learnt without training. After practicing for so long it becomes easier to anticipate where the music will go next.’

    So the tabla is neither hobby nor an occupation. It is a way of life.

    The entire mood changed as more musicians joined for the second half of the show. With Umesh Pandit on flute, Roshan Sharma on guitar, Nikhil Tuladhar on drums and Pravin Shrestha on bass the classics met their fate with contemporary instruments and sounds.  Nikhil, also the drummer in Nepathya, says he feels comfortable playing alongside other ethnic percussion instruments needing to only control the dynamics, allowing greater room for improvisation. Although fusion music had its origin in the blending of genres, in recent years it has gained greater popularity as a collaboration of traditional instruments with their modern successors. The movement towards modernising and popularising instruments such as the table, esraj and ektara are part of greater efforts towards cultural preservation in the face of globalisation.

    Navaraj identifies a greater funk influence in his music and enjoys performing with contemporary artists. While encouraging more collaborations of this kind, he does urge both artists and the audience to enjoy the music but also know about the instruments. Not wanting to disappoint I get Ashesh to show me his khanjira, a south Indian instrument similar to a tambourine, the face of which is made from snake skin. I similarly try to strum the ektara, a one stringed instrument used over the subcontinent. When pressed together the contours of the wooden neck change the pitch creating a uniquely distinct sound, albeit one that is impossible for an amateur to create after a few minutes of practice.

    But uniquely distinct sounds were the order of the night. Joined next on stage by Mariano Abello, the founder and director of Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory, the mood took a swing towards jazz with the introduction of the saxophone. It was evident that this was a group of musicians brought together by a passion for what they do and an appreciation of different genres and styles. ‘It’s a fantastic experience to play in a group like this,’ Mariano exalts. ‘There is such a different energy.’

    The finale, and my favourite piece of the night, was Rhythmic Motion. Milen Tandukar on the violin helped take the rhythm to its energetic climax. The dynamism that fused the sounds together made it difficult to sit still- I had to suppress the urge to dance in the aisle! The combination of the tabla, khanjira and drums created an electrifying effect. Watching each performer as they delivered their final solo, Navaraj couldn’t help but smile with Ashesh as they brought the show to a close just as they had opened it.

    From their music and explosive stage presence it is hard to imagine that the group had not been together for years. All brilliant and internationally acclaimed musicians in their own right, I was astounded to learn that rehearsals began only a week and a half before the concert day.  Sharma explains ‘we got our steps from Navaraj and then we practiced at home before bringing it all together.’ While there were some learned parts most of the performance was improvised. Yet, the trading between artists (the flute paired with the tabla and violin with guitar) and their flawless transitions were refined to perfection. In this way ‘all you have to do is create one theme then the music creates itself.’

    ‘Percussion,’ Navaraj expounds, ‘has no note or melody so when we play the music, it speaks.’  Indeed Taal Vidya – the language of rhythm- spoke to all of us in the auditorium. If, as the idiom goes, a picture tells a thousand words, then Taal Vidya conjures up thousands of images, essentially speaking a whole lot of words. Mingling with audience members after the show I wanted to know what story they heard through the music. ‘When the sax came out I felt like I was in New York swept up in the new jazz movement,’ one student of KJC reflected.  Another, a traveller from the Europe, says ‘the combination of the flute and the violin in the last song made me think I was back in Ireland.’

    Fusion was the order of the night. As Navaraj’s first concert of this magnitude, he was relieved, excited and happy it all came together. With the album, Taal Vidya, launched in spectacular fashion, the CD is now available at all music stores in Kathmandu city for only 300 Rupees.

     

  • The Darjeeling Limited

     

    Strangers on this road we are on.

    Before Eat, Pray, Love, there was The Darjeeling Limited

    Okay, not a very sound analogy. But The Darjeeling Limited (2007) seemed like one of those films you had to watch during a stay in Nepal. Just as The Beach is to Thailand I thought The Darjeeling Limited is to the subcontinent. Disheartened by Leonardo Dicaprio’s romanticised affair with a secret paradise in The Beach, I was ready for the long played out Hollywood drama of American goes East on proscribed travel book soul searching mission. The only saving grace is that The Darjeeling Limited is after all a Wes Anderson film, yes the Wes Anderson of The Royal Tenenbaums fame, so perhaps it couldn’t be all bad.

    As expected, The Darjeeling Limited follows all the conventions of your typical travel drama; three bumbling brothers, an exotic subcontinent destination and a spiritual journey of self-redemption and enlightenment.  Fortunately and unexpectedly, though, that is where the clichés end. From the opening slow motion sequence of Peter running to catch up with his brothers already waiting on the train, to the quick reunion, the absurdity of Francis’s head injuries and the awkward declarations of brotherly love, The Darjeeling Limited reminds us that it is not the destination but rather the people and the journey that define who we are and how we cope.

    Francis (Wilson), Peter (Adrian Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) capture your imagination for 107 minutes of atypical and unpredictable adventure.  Endeavouring to finally heal from the death of their father and seek answers from their Catholic missionary mother, the trio embark on bonding journey to India, limited edition Louis Vuitton luggage in tow. Representing the emotional baggage weighing each of the brothers down, a serious of mishaps see them removed from the train and left in the middle of the desert. Anderson skilfully plays upon his common motif of the privileged family with long pan shots of the suited brothers trudging in the desert. Displaying a maturity in his work, Anderson builds on the theme in this film indicating that wealth cannot indeed buy happiness, sanity or a sense of belonging.

    The recent novel and subsequent film success of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love reflects an often western idealism of soul searching in far flung locations, adopting practices and a lifestyle far different from one’s own. Again, true to his style, Anderson subtly subverts the burgeoning journey genre, the soft satire making a mockery of your usual life changing, ashram seeking hippy. Indeed the characters perchance for over the counter pain killers and Indian flu medicine reflects their disconnect from the ‘all the spiritual places and temples’ Francis has so meticulously planned that they ‘need to see’. The magic of the film lies in the quirk of each character, a melting pot of modern mental health ailments which are in the end not cured by all the medicines or the pilgrimage sites but rather the death of a young boy. This in turn forced the bereaved brothers to confront the reality of their father’s death.

    In one of the most poignant scenes, the brothers make their way to the young boy’s funeral. With the Kinks 1970’s classic ‘Strangers’ playing in the background, they emerge from a hut dressed appropriately in white. The long pan shot depicts a sense of collectiveness among the different which reminds us ‘we are not two, we are one’.

    The Darjeeling Limited makes you laugh, but not as hard as I thought, it makes you cringe when they just get culture plain wrong, it makes you cry out of raw humanity for the brothers, and it makes you reflect upon your sense of place in a world where we are all struggling to find an identity.

  • Jamarko – The Little Store that Did

    The stench of rotten garbage breeding inside a sea of black plastic rises from the murky river waters. Dogs try to lap a drink, but meekly retreat unable to satisfy their thirst. The flow from upstream becomes clogged, entangled in dams of food scraps, discarded bottles and decomposing paper mountains. Embedded in the feeble footpath that snakes along the bank, wisps of white and black catch your eye, relics of a daily shop some three years prior. A passerby looks disapprovingly at the mess below, covers their face with a scarf, scrambles by and then breathes a sigh of relief. The sigh is inherently also one of complacency, for it is their garbage too poisoning the river, it is their choices ultimately contributing to this environmental degradation.


    Across town in Jhamsikhel, a small but dedicated team is working on creating newspaper carry bags and 100% recycled paper products. The store, Jamarko, seems a world away from the inescapable pollution that saturates Kathmandu and her environs. Yet within the confines of the small wooden shop revolution is taking place. It is environmentalism and recycling at its best. Specialising in handmade recycled paper goods, it is possible to see how waste can be transformed into practical use. Notepads, journals, writing paper, envelops, stationary, lampshades, paper curtains, cards, coasters, photo frames, gift wrap and gift bags are among the main recycled paper products. The store also carries a selection of mostly handmade giftware utilising natural fibres such as hemp bags, corn husk dolls, husk stools and felt laptop bags. The product designs reflect a refined and simple elegance.

    Although established in 2001 Jamarko initially ran out of its factory site in Galkopakha. Now, after 10 years of operation, a space has emerged for this pioneering eco-business to enter the mainstream. The showroom itself is a reflection an intimate niche market of overseas visitors and environmentally conscious Nepali youth. A 2010 study by the Dept. of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at Kathmandu University reveals that, beyond being a trendy fad, recycling is also a form of income generation and employment, particularly for low income earners. Indeed Jamarko’s social entrepreneurship extends to employing disadvantaged women, the disabled and street children.  Rural communities also benefit from their work in producing Lokta paper products. The specialised and made to order Lokta paper products generates the financial stability for Jamarko to pursue more localised recycling objectives.

    The reach of Jamarko’s message is, however, beyond recycling paper and reducing plastic waste. The parable lies deep within the heart of a movement to create a sustainable, safe and more liveable environment.  It lies within the passion and commitment of a dedicated few who can see beyond today, envisioning a cleaner and greener tomorrow. It lies within their belief that every little bit counts. Looking down at the river or into a field littered with waste, it is hard to find the motivation to change entrenched practices. Ignore the masses. Do your bit. Lead by example. Jamarko, after all, is effort.

    Every one of us has the potential to put in the effort and become one of those few. It doesn’t take much; Simple decisions like refusing a plastic bag for small goods which could be easily stowed in the backpack or handbag you are carrying; Popping in a reusable shopping sack in your everyday bag so when you are at the store, even on unplanned occasions, you are prepared with an alternative to plastic; Recycling paper products such as newspapers, bygone study notes or that empty biscuit box from afternoon tea; Setting up a small recycling station at home, work or college and once a week dropping the paper of at Jamarko or a similar concept store.  Change is within everybody’s means. When will you start?