Soon after he started performing with the Silk Road Ensemble (now Silkroad) as a founding member in 2000, tabla virtuoso Sandeep Das, who was born and educated in northeastern India, realized that “I had stopped just being a musician.”
Speaking from his long-time residence in Boston, not far from the Harvard and Berklee campuses where he once taught, Das reveals, “Now I can’t even write a piece of music unless there is a purpose, unless there is a message.”
There’s a purposeful message in the national tour that will bring Das and nine other members of Silkroad, joined by two guest artists, to Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall on March 19 and 20. It’s billed as “Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual,” a title introduced by Artistic Director and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens.
“Rhiannon is very forward-thinking,” said East Bay-based percussionist Haruka Fujii, who serves as associate artistic director of the Ensemble. “[She] started saying ‘the globe itself is going to be fine; it’s actually the people who need the healing. And [Silkroad] has the beautiful assets of how music works to heal people. We’re not going to be able to change the world or stop the war. But what we can do is inspire people to listen to each other, right?”
New this year is a program of community outreach preceding the concerts in Berkeley and focusing on neighboring Oakland. Almost all of this week’s outreach events take place in the Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD) west of Lake Merritt, which was designated a financially and technically supported California Cultural District by the California Arts Council late last year. “We’ve brainstormed how we can actually make an impact not just on the people who have the privilege of coming to a big concert hall, but the people outside the concert hall who are in need of healing through music,” said Fujii.
For a local activator of their outreach mission, Silkroad contacted Angela Wellman, an award-winning trombonist with a doctorate in education who applied both those accomplishments to founding the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music (OPC), now in its 20th anniversary year. She’s maintained the Conservatory, now housed in the BAMBD, with a mission of “providing affordable, culturally sustaining experiences for people of all ages.” Wellman had encountered Giddens while studying the banjo, back when Giddens was featured on banjo, fiddle, and vocals in the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
“Then I played my trombone with the Chocolate Drops on a four-night gig in Chicago,” recounted Wellman, “And when I came back to Oakland, I began to implement the banjo as a required instrument in OPC’s summer music academy. And Rhiannon offered several workshops with us over the years. When the Ensemble wanted to go into deeper community engagement on this year’s tour, they chose OPC because we were right in alignment with what they do.” All the community events are free.
Scheduled for Tuesday, March 17 at 4 p.m. is a Cross-Cultural Music Workshop at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center at 388 9th Street, led by Silkroad percussionists Das and Kaoru Watanabe (who also plays flute). “We have interesting stories,” said Das. “I lived in India, lived in my guru’s home for 12 years before I started playing tabla. I started playing in the U.S. in 1990, and after meeting Yo-Yo Ma [the cellist founder of Silkroad], I got exposed to Western classical music. Kaoru was born and raised in the U.S. to a Japanese family, went to music school, and learned jazz, and later went to a village [in Japan] where taiko drumming is taught, and learned that and how to attend to farming outside. So he kind of made his journey the other way round. Now when we do workshops and master classes, we just have so much fun!” For those new to either of their musics, Das assures, “You don’t need to know tabla, just the changes in the rhythm. The patterns are so catchy, and it’s actually similar to hip hop and rap.”
A screening of Giddens’s PBS series My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, featuring ensemble string player Mazz Swift, will take place on March 17 at 6 p.m. at OPC headquarters at 492 9th Street. At 7 p.m. at the Black Arts Movement (BAM) House, 1540 Broadway, there’s a Percussion Collective Community Jam and Panel, titled “Rhythm & the Word” and moderated by Wellman. Silkroad’s Fujii and Mauro Durante will be present, along with local luminaries.
A Banjo & Fiddle Gathering on Wednesday, March 18 at 4:30 p.m. at Latham Square, 1611 Telegraph Avenue in uptown Oakland, will feature Giddens with OPC faculty member Darcy Ford-James and Hannah Mayree, founder and director of Black Banjo Reclamation Project. There’ll be a String Collective Jam back at the BAM House at 5:30 p.m., with Silkroad amply represented by Niwel Tsumbu, Mehdi Nassouli, Maeve Gilchrist, Shawn Conley, and Francesco Turrisi, along with Bay Area veteran Destiny Muhammad and other locals. “As a local myself, I’m just really excited, inviting members of the community to jam with us,” said Fujii.
Alicia Reese, who’s had much to do with implementing Silkroad’s outreach in four metropolitan areas on their current tour, issued a notice that “Attendees of the free public programs in Oakland will have a chance to win a pair of complimentary tickets to the [Berkeley] performances.”
After that up-close-and-personal, Silkroad will work its familiar world music magic to engage and enlighten the couple thousand audience members at Zellerbach Hall. “There will be heavy improvisational elements in it,” promises Fujii. “There will be 12 musicians onstage, each one bringing a song, a story — very, very personal and intimate stories.
In keeping with the ensemble’s tour theme for this year, “I am bringing to the stage the concept that your guru is also your sanctuary,” said Das. “I’ve arranged a very famous prayer song to Ma Saraswati [the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, arts, speech, and wisdom], and I’ve rearranged it for the instrumentation Silkroad has.” That includes Western strings, international percussion, marimba, banjo, the plucked guembri from Sub-Saharan Africa, and Japanese flute, with many ensemble members doubling on other instruments and singing.
“I will also use Rhiannon’s vocal prowess to do the Raga Bhairavi, which is called the queen of ragas,” Das continued. “And I’m spreading it out among other colleagues. What I’m hoping is, maybe I could have different soloists taking turns on different nights, changing the flavor and keeping it fun for myself. We are all creating our own little sanctuaries where our nationalities, our traditions, our training don’t make us separate. It actually comes together, where we create our own sanctuary of trust.” The Zellerbach performances will also comprise Southern Italian tarantellas, Moroccan Gnawa music, Congolese fingerstyle guitar, and American old-timey music, of which Giddens has become a popular exponent.
For the ensemble, which has gained and lost members since its founding in 2000, there is no perceptible end in sight. “Way long after we are gone, the Silk Road that Yo-Yo Ma started will keep doing its work in whatever name, shape, or form it takes,” says Das. “But the essence of love, respect, caring, and sharing will always remain.” For Cal Performances tickets, go to the Cal Performances event page and to register for or find out more about the community events, go to the Oakland Public Conservatory events page.
