ATTENDING the 2008 Mela Festival, to which Edinburgh's multicultural communities flock, was like experiencing two contrasting sides of the same coin. For the first few days it felt like a big mistake that it had been lured by the corporate sponsors
hip of Ocean Terminal from the greenery of Pilrig Park to a soulless car park that seems to double as a roundabout.
By the weekend, though, the space was transformed into a vibrant bazaar filled with a kaleidoscope of stalls, the enticing smells of Asian cooking and some fine music. Cleverly laid out, there was even a grassy bank for people to sit on in front of the open stage and the number of bodies milling around showed few were deterred by the £2 entry.
Argentina's youthful Orquesta Típica Imperial, direct from Buenos Aires, were lucky enough to have local tango dancers out in force for their Big Top show (one of this year's £10 ticketed events). Sadly, while the Orquesta knows how to play a mixed dance-band set proficiently with some tight arrangements, there was little passion, as they stared at their scores as if trying to pass an exam. Lacking performance personality, the audience experience was like being an onlooker at a tango class.
The weekend's full and varied programme saw the coin flip over, notably on Saturday with Pakistan's colourful Lahore Pipe Band and the charismatic Tariq Khan and The Legacy Band who offered a great pop-Bhangra set, showing just why Khan's Sugar N Spice hit the top of the Asian charts. Followed by rousing songs from the London Community Gospel Choir, the irresistible Mela ambience was fully reinstated.
The main focus of the early evening was the world premiere of Yatra // Journey a commission from the Scottish Government Expo Fund very much in the Mela spirit, in that it involves three strikingly different Scottish musical communities. This is a bold project which has still to gel, and its real value at this stage is the collective process of dynamic exchange between an Indian singer and two tabla players; a Scottish singer-dancer, fiddle player, harpist and three pipers; and the Mugenkyo Japanese Taiko drummers.
There were some memorable moments in Yatra…'s intense sequence, involving 20 artists collaborating in various combinations, their excitement and pleasure spilling over into the crowd. The contrasting singing styles of Siobhan Miller and Prakrin Dutta and the rapid crossovers between ballads, mouth music, ghazal melodies and vocal rhythms set against tabla, flutes and pipes was engaging, with much potential.
The main challenge is that the pounding heartbeat power of the drummers and their ritualistic style of play too often threatens to eclipse the other musicians (even three pipers). Once they get that balance sorted and work out a more fluent way of linking pieces, Yatra… could mellow into something viable.
The full article contains 489 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
