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Category: music

“Jewel in the crown of Kashmir” (final chapter, with musical bonus)

 

 

 

I took the photo at 8.54 pm on 04 May 2024.

At that time my vantage point – an entertainment barge – was loud and lively, as the preceding several posts have illustrated.

However, if one looked out across the waters of Dal Lake – and up to the ridge overlooking its southern shore – the scene appeared utterly serene, unruffled, “silent”.

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Vale Toumani Diabate

On 19 July the world lost one of its most eloquent instrumentalists..

Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate was 58; he died after a short illness.

He was not the only great kora player, but he was, unquestionably, the kora’s most prominent and most influential exponent; Toumani Diabate turned it into a “concert” instrument.

At age 22 he recorded Kaira – the world’s first absolutely solo kora album.

(oft-misdescribed as an African “harp”, the kora is in fact a harp-lute)

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Triple K “expedition” (#31 in teaser series: Karakoram mountain meadows + musical bonus & concert tour alert)

 

 

This post’s image does not at all resemble #30’s shot of a “Silk Road” remnant.

Its vantage point, however, was only a few footsteps distant from #30’s; #31’s photo was taken less than a minute later, from the same side of the Karakoram Highway, whilst en route from Gilgit to the Hunza Valley.

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Triple K “expedition” (#11 in teaser series: massive inflation in Amritsar + musical bonus)

 

 

Amritsar’s Golden Temple complex is refreshingly non-commercial; even its suitably-huge toilets are free. (and meticulously maintained)

All nearby streets are another matter, entirely; shops abound.

Rents for commercial premises are reportedly among India’s highest,

However, a lot of commercial activity does not benefit landlords – it is “informal”, “al fresco”, conducted on the actual streets.

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#14 in series, with musical bonus & Australian tour alert)

 

 

 

One of the nigh-infinite pleasures of walking in southwestern Australian forest/woodland/bush:

once “attuned”, you begin to notice that the “forest floor” – when viewed at or near ground level, up close – often looks like a multi-layered, uncommonly-colourful “forest”, in its own right.

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