January 18th, 2025

Today we had an invite to a dinner event at a friend's place in the old part of town. These are apartment building that used to be the gold standard 30 years ago in the GCC, until monster developers like EMAAR arrived on the scene and provided ultra-modern apartments in more central areas- these tended to be occupied by more international expatriates while the older part of Dubai still was largely inhabited by South Asians. As a consequence, there were many small grocery stores and Indian cafe restaurants in the neighborhoods which made for a very convenient lifestyle that included just-in-time and inexpensive home deliver for just about anything. On the other hand, there were more posh parts of the city that beckoned to anyone who wanted to feel like they belonged to a "higher-fidelity first class travelling set". Each had it is points. In any case the rooftops of these buildings almost always had a nice sized terrace and a swimming pool and made for excellent party venues during the winter season. This was the set-up for the evening. The other highlight was that was to be a musical/talent exhibition of the invitees who were so inclined. There was a nice rectangular patch with two chairs, mike stands and a decent PA system. I was thrilled to be told that I would be starting the proceedings for the evening with two or three tunes- and then it would move on to other performers. As the announcement was made, I was slightly disappointed to note that the entire party had not arrived yet- but we had to start anyway. This was not so bad I thought. Then when I plugged my Martin acoustic into the speaker, I started to get a distortion. This bothered me a lot. I couldn't figure out what the problem was and couldn't seem to fix it so I borrowed a guitar from another performer who was kind enough to lend me his Taylor. This was the second time something didn't go quite according to plan. Around 2 years ago, on my 2nd Durga Puja participation, I played a few songs as a duet with Tilottama. Here, on my first song, "Adorer Nouko:, my guitar was massively out of tune. I couldn't do anything mid-song we went ahead with it and it was not so easy on the ear. Following the end of the song, someone asked me to check the tuning from the audience. I had no time to tune properly so quickly just ear-balled the tuning and carried on regardless. Thereafter, it sounded passable although if I had cared to listen to the recording carefully I am sure I would find the guitar not quite 100% in tune. I learnt from that first guitar performance and I now tune my guitar religiously just before going to a gig. But this time around, it wasn't the tuning, it was something else. Fortunately, the substitute guitar worked perfectly and I went ahead with my songs. I sounded better than I should have thanks to Bappa ( the guy who's guitar I borrowed) incorporating a vocal harmoniser effect into the PA system- which made my voice fatter and with a slight harmony- so sounded more lush than would otherwise be the case. No major mistakes on the first one, some slight lyric issues on the 2nd which was a new one for me, and the third was unrehearsed and in a duet with Bappa doing guitar fills by playing another guitar alongside me. That third unrehearsed one came out quite well. During the latter part of the evening, I played a few songs with Tilo using our "Standby" repertoire, and then also sang a couple with Ranajoy on the Arranger keyboard. All in all, it was probably my first real solo musical presence in any group. I occupied quite a bit of stage-time and overall did not sound too bad. I surmise therefore that in a small way it may have elevated my stature in the community as a bona-fide solo performer. This is my ambition as well, as I now know that to perform with someone else is difficult logistically, not to mention unrewarding politically. There are exceptions- if one finds a suitable collaborator that ticks a multitude of difficult boxes when it comes to collaboration, grace and self-awareness. In most communities I have ever been a part of, this has always been a low probability event. In the year 2024 I have collaborated musically with one, two, three and nine musicians in different types of genres and settings. Most were enjoyable experiences, but I came to the conclusion on the last day of the year, that the collaboration mode has got to stop in 2025. I had neither the time nor the inclination to throw out performance charity to other artists who did not have the self-awareness to know their limitations. I wasnt getting younger, so time was not on my side either. I needed to go it, whatever rest of the time I ahead, alone. I could get help on the musical arrangement front from Ranajoy potentially- but that is about it. No singing with other people and making unnecessary compromises on quality. 

Aside of a succesful evening musically, I also reflected on what an audience is looking for at such events. My solo songs worked but not so much my collaborations with Tilo. Maybe it is because we did not sound all that good without sufficient practice, but I think it is to do with the fact that song selection was sub-optimal. Tilo wanted to sing Jamaican Farewell- which to me was not the song for the occasion. People were reacting to higher energy numbers- Coldplay got some reaction. So did a slow classic by Cactus. So did a dance hit by Badshah and an up-tempo RD Burman Classic from yore. The song selection had to be a party song selection. It did not mean the songs had to de dance numbers, but they needed to have some oomph. I gathered in my head that they needed to have high notes, some vocal energy and preferably a real or implied backbeat. Otherwise very quickly the songs drift into the background as they do in a restaurant or a bar- where you have the one guitar wielding busker standing in the corner belting out tunes, pretty much "invisible". As a professional player, one must get used to this- and one can, given one is getting paid for it. But when you are not getting paid, your compensation is the active reaction of the audience-s o this must be borne in mind, and I made a mental note for tthe future. In my repertoire I needed to add more party songs that would make people stand up and take notice. There will always be the odd serious aficionado who is looking for something more dreamy, but one has to be geared here to the average. I cannot imagine why this took so long for me to realise- infact I prided myself on covering songs no one else did or had heard. This notion has changed rapidly as soon as I started fancying myself as a performer.