More of the East Meets West

As part of my series of discovering India in a foreign shore, I went to this Prem Joshua concert in Munich. Prem Joshua is quite known in the fusion music scene in India but may not be very mainstream. His music would fall in the genre of Trance/World Music. I love his kind of music and therefore jumped at the opportunity to go listen to him.

The guy is quite talented. He was playing all sorts of instruments - flute, santoor, sax...It's always great to hear his kind of music.
So in this concert, I found that there was quite some interest amongst the Germans. The place was almost packed. But I am not sure if I should find it strange that I was probably the only Indian in the crowd. For the locals, it was more of a different way to spend a Friday with quite a number of people wearing Indian dresses to suit the Indian theme evening.

I wonder why no Indians really go for such events. Maybe because trance is not so big in India where we have so much other music to choose from. There was also this girl (cant be more than 16 or 17) who was dancing to Prem's music for some of the songs somewhat in a traditional Indian dance form. To me, it was clear that there was nothing great about her dancing style as I have seen much more graceful dancers in India. But of course for the locals, it was just good fun.

But then, the thing that struck me was using this as a marketing tool. If the Indian Tourism Department could conduct shows like this in some important cities and generate interest amongst the foreign community to try out India, it would be worth it. This show was organized by some small private organization and also probably because of the singer's German background. Some targetted marketing would, I am sure, reap rich dividends. The kind of clientele that come for these shows are not the college going kids who do not have money to blow on a trip to India. It is the working couples (30 or 40 somethings) who are richer and therefore probably are the best bet to think of a trip to India who come to these kind of shows.

Maybe I should go to work for the Government for sometime. It would be something different to do and who knows, I may be actually able to add value. :) But let's be realistic. I will probably be disillusioned faster than I can say 'Government' & of course the money is not good enough.....
(On a side note, I wonder if anyone would have thought like this about 20 years ago. I know working for the Govt. was such a prestigious thing to do sometime back....& now I say i should try it because I am bored of the corporate brigade...quite ironical..)