Kathmandu:

Celebration of International Music Day fete de la Musique presented by Alliance Francaise and Tuborg was a three-day long festival of different genres of music from Nepal and abroad. The festival was not only about musical concerts, but also featured various aspects of music, its promotion and progression in Nepal. The first two days of was dedicated to understanding Nepali music, instruments and its place and future in international music scenario.

Preserving true Nepali music

A workshop on traditional nepali music was held at Nepali Folk Instrument Museum on June 18.

The programme started with a group performance by artistes associated with the museum presenting the welcome dhun and the popular Asare dhun in panche baja. Ram Sharan Darnal gave a presentation on various Nepali folk instruments. Then Kharka Budha Magar explained

the various taals and bols

of a maadal and his students along with him demonstrated these. It was followed by a few musical performances.

The other presentation was done by Padam Gandharva about sarangi and Gandharva raag. Another important part of the programme was the presentation by Ram Prasad

Kadel, founder of the museum, explaining the significance of these instruments and the need to preserve them.

All about jazz

On June 18, two music workshops and a conference on Jazz were held where professional musicians shared their experience and skills with the groups present.

Jazz lecture at the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory gave the once in a life time opportunity to Jazz musicians of the Valley to understand the music and its history better from Dr Gene Aitken. Aitken has received the US top jazz education honour as 2007 Jazz Educator of the year by DownBeat magazine. This former director of Jazz studies at the University of Northern Colorado conducted the lecture with a mix of humour and wit which helped students and musicians of KJC to open up and interact throughout the programme. Mariano E Abello, Director of KJC, also shared his knowledge and information on the subject.

Discussing

copyright

The round table discussion organised at Alliance Francaise on June 19 on the situation of music in Nepal brought out the very serious discussion over the matter of copyright. Salil Subedi Kanika, multiform performing artiste and writer, Sachida Rauniyar, producer of Sac Music International, Prakash Sayami, prominent personality of audiovisual industry of Nepal, Bijaya Vaidya, sitar virtuoso and Yubakar Raj Karnikar, founder editor of Wave, were the speakers.