Potpourri
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2011
19
PICS: N SHIVA KUMAR
Seeking to fill the lacuna that exists in Western music in the city, is Swissnational Joe Koster
Spreading the music
Padmini C padmini.c@postnoon.com
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ompared to other cities like Bangalore or Kolkata, Hyderabad is way behind in terms of Western music. Here, musicians just cannot make a living. There is also an acute shortage of proper teachers and instructors. A lot has to be done,” he rues, albeit with a glint of determination in his eyes. Joe Koster is already well on his way to doing just that. Along with a few others, he’s founded the Western Music Forum, Hyderabad. “I realised that while there was a lot of cultural
SWEET NOTES: Joe at the piano; (top right) with wife Ines
THOUGHT CORNER Padmini C padmini.c@postnoon.com
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number of works of drama and prose emerged in France as a result of the horrors of World War II. They believed that the human condition is essentially absurd and that the only way to accurately describe it with any authenticity can be possible only in works that were themselves absurd. It was, in a sense, a rebellion against preexisting beliefs and values of traditional culture and values which held that man was a rational creature who lived in a reasonable intelligible world. However, after the 1940s, existentialists started to propound a theory that man was an isolated entity, living in a hostile universe which has no inherent
truth, value or meaning. Describing the philosophy, Camus wrote in the Myth of Sisyphus (1942) that “In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels like a stranger. His is an irremediable exile...This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.” But incidentally, within the depths of this existentialist angst were born some of the best works in modern literature. Samuel Beckett, the most influential dramatist and writer in both drama and fiction staged Waiting for Godot (1954) and Endgame (1958) which led to a dramatic increase in interest in the Theatre of Absurd. The plays of this time were irrational, grotesquely comic, filled with meaningless dia-
spaces which showcased talent from abroad, there was a lack of home-grown talent. So the Forum is an attempt to create a platform for local musicians to learn and perform Western Music. It also aims to bring together people who love music,” explains Joe, who also happens to be a curator at La Makaan, as well as a music teacher in the International School of Hyderabad. Incidentally, the Forum happened to Joe quite by chance. His NGO was what brought Joe to Andhra Pradesh in the first place. Subsequently, Joe packed up his consultancy business and moved here from Zurich with his wife Ines, to do more substantial work in the state. It was during that time that he got involved in the city’s cultural scene. “In 2007, I joined the Festival Choristers and I met a number of interesting people. Slowly, I realised Western music here was largely limited to expats. I wanted to change that. I wanted to introduce Western music to the people here and at the same, create interesting fusion music,” says Joe, who can play the piano, trambone and trumpet with equal ease. A life-long music lover, Joe grew up playing in a number of bands including the Swiss Army Band. “I have had the privilege of playing in different kinds of bands and learn different kinds of music. It teaches you a lot of things about yourself,” he explains. Now, he conducts and
plays in a jazz band called The Deccan Voices. Joe spends a lot of his time in school outreach programmes to spread awareness and inspire children to take interest in music. “I believe music can influence a child in a very positive way. It inculcates practical intelligence. Playing in a band, for instance, will need you to develop discipline, hard work, practice, teamwork, reading and interpretation. It is very, very, challenging. There are no shortcuts,” he states. Joe is also special in that he is a Westerner who knows India more than most Indians. He has travelled extensively across the countryside, even the state and says that he now shares the joys and burdens of the aam aadmi. “A lot of foreigners have a very cliched view of India. They just see as it as an exotic place with warm and friendly people. But we’ve seen the social ills and the kind of suffering people undergo in the rural areas,”says Joe, whose collection of photographs on rural India have received rare reviews.
Literature of the Absurd The Absurdists posed a fundamental question — how can one’s work be sensible if it has to accurately describe the senselessness of man’s existence? logue and defied all conventions of conventional drama. Incidentally, the genre also lead to influencing a number of playwrights and novelists in the
next 50 decades who specialised in creating naive, inept or innocent characters set against fantastic, horrifying and nightmarish worlds. Some of them being
Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Stanley Kubrick, Harold Pinter, among others.