On our way out to our respective fields, we took a little time to “sing along with Raj”. See, in India, despite the influence of television and media from the West, traditional songs and dances are still very important to Indian culture. This has amazed me elsewhere. Short of “the chicken dance”, we Americans don’t really have any distinctly cultural dances that celebrate our history, or really, any songs that tell about our mythologies or oral tradition. It’s interesting to me, then, to see what happens when we collide with a culture that does have such a rich history, and still knows its roots and traditions as they are so jealously guarded in their singing and dancing. Anyway, because of the above, it’s very important for GCC India teams to be able to do at least a modicum of singing (and dancing… oooooh, what I wouldn’t give sometimes to be Baptist and be able to play the “we’re not supposed to dance” card… but more on that later), so we practiced with Raj for a few minutes as we were en route. As it turns out, we weren’t half bad, actually, especially after having Don Reynolds coach us with his superb voice skills, and had even managed to master one “of our own” (Dan Vukmirovich actually wrote a song for us to sing that translates very easily into Tamil with minimum turbulence for our English tongues… you rock, Dan!). Ted Bryant was singled out as the best and most enthusiastic of all of us, and so was coaxed to join Raj at the front of the bus to help the rest of us with our head banging (yeah, literally… you are supposed to create a personal mosh-pit of sorts when you sing) and hand-clapping.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Sing Along with “The Raj”!
On our way out to our respective fields, we took a little time to “sing along with Raj”. See, in India, despite the influence of television and media from the West, traditional songs and dances are still very important to Indian culture. This has amazed me elsewhere. Short of “the chicken dance”, we Americans don’t really have any distinctly cultural dances that celebrate our history, or really, any songs that tell about our mythologies or oral tradition. It’s interesting to me, then, to see what happens when we collide with a culture that does have such a rich history, and still knows its roots and traditions as they are so jealously guarded in their singing and dancing. Anyway, because of the above, it’s very important for GCC India teams to be able to do at least a modicum of singing (and dancing… oooooh, what I wouldn’t give sometimes to be Baptist and be able to play the “we’re not supposed to dance” card… but more on that later), so we practiced with Raj for a few minutes as we were en route. As it turns out, we weren’t half bad, actually, especially after having Don Reynolds coach us with his superb voice skills, and had even managed to master one “of our own” (Dan Vukmirovich actually wrote a song for us to sing that translates very easily into Tamil with minimum turbulence for our English tongues… you rock, Dan!). Ted Bryant was singled out as the best and most enthusiastic of all of us, and so was coaxed to join Raj at the front of the bus to help the rest of us with our head banging (yeah, literally… you are supposed to create a personal mosh-pit of sorts when you sing) and hand-clapping.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
That is awesome. I can totally see Don and Ted living it up at your sing-along. I'll expect to hear a solo performance from Ted at GSM.
This is Don's sister in law, Patti in Florida. I've been following your trip through this blog and want to thank you for sharing. I pray that the rest of your trip continues to go well and wish you all a Happy New Year!
Post a Comment