The Gilded Serpent presents
Our adventure brings us to a rare treasure! Yair Dalal in Concert
in Marin County, California

report by Lynette

I received an email yesterday morning (with thanks to Maureen Garrett) forwarded from Janine Ryle's list. It described a last minute concert in West Marin that was going to be outside at night, and you had to take a shuttle to get there! I had been unable to make it up to Santa Rosa to see the Hamza El Din concert like I planned, so I shifted gears. I called a couple of friends and was able to get Kayla to come across the San Francisco bay and come along with me. Kayla is always a good sport and ready to go on adventures at the last minute. She is planning to return to her home to Istanbul in a couple weeks. Here was our chance to fit in another event before she goes.

We followed the directions in the email and parked in the school lot in West Marin along with a few other locals. We were quickly picked up by a nondescript white van. All the other riders, and the driver, wearing his knitted jester hat, told jokes. They easily dropped their social armor, as we took the wild ride to the site!

Hippie communes still exist! They didn't want me describing where their communal household is, sorry! I found out that they have regularly scheduled programs there and maintain a mailing list. They have a "sweat lodge" and their house seemed to be occupied by young adults that couldn't have been old enough to be around in the 1960s. A young woman was wearing one of those huge hand knitted ponchos with the long fringe. Good-looking longhaired boys abounded. They were just like the type of boys I loved in my teens and twenties. It tweaked my head a bit to realize: I could be these guys' mom!

Buddha seemed to be the dominant diety of the household. A splendid altar behind the stage area showed a delicately painted sculpture of Buddha with a dark woman on his lap (Excuse my ignorance. I know these are famous gods that have to do with Tantric, but that is it for my knowledge base)... On with the concert!

We left our shoes with about 50 other pairs at the door and proceeded to the living room, where several people were meditating while the musicians warmed up. The great acoustics of the room allowed the appreciation of the contrasting textures of the different instruments.

On saroud, playing with Yair Dalal, was Ken Zuckerman, who normally lives in Basle, Switzerland, but was here spending his summer, in Marin, to study with his teacher Ali Akbar. Jim Santi Owen played tablas. The chemistry among the trio was very good and they seemed to enjoy and support each other very much. Yair not only played violin and oud but also sang. One song that he sang a capella, seemed to tell a sweet story that I wished I understood. He also told a comical story about a man selling his beloved camel to an Iraqi Jew.

With my limited knowledge of ethnic music, I could still tell that the songs they played came from a wide span of geographical territory. One of my favorites was a Pakistani song that I believe they called, “Shivarengini." I have a video/sound clip of this, but I ruined it by humming off tune in the background! Here is another clip from a different song; it may be a large file and the picture portion of it is too dark to see, but the music is there. I hope your computer decides it likes this file format.
video/sound clip of Yalia, Jim and Ken. 989 kb, and aproximately 45 second .mpg file

Yes, I loved the music! It was lovely and grounded and not so esoteric that I couldn’t relate to it. The melody lines told a tale and delivered you home to accents that a dancer could find and carry through her body. There will be another chance to hear Yair and his friends tonight (8-15-03) at 7th Heaven Yoga Studio in Berkeley on 7th street off Ashby Avenue, next to the Schaffenburger Chocolate factory!

Yair will be teaching Bedouin singing at the Middle Eastern Music and Dance Camp in Mendocino this week. They have day rates and rates for children. See their site at www.middleeastcamp.com

Here’s the biographical blurb that came with the email: "World renown Yair Dalal, composer, violinist and oud player, is probably the most prolific Israeli ethnic musician today. His music is a rare mix of traditional and modern, Jewish and Arab, Oriental and Western influences. Living is such a rare multicultural society, such as Israel, has imbued his art with the musical treasures of numerous cultural heritages. Experiencing Yair's music is like taking a magical journey through a painted desert landscape"

I found more information on other topics that night. For instance: Athena, present at the concert, reported that she will be producing another musical event soon. It will be somewhat different from her previous event, Building Bridges.This event will be in support of "Women for Women International." Their goal will be to recruit 100 American women to directly sponsor 100 Iraqi women at $25 a month! The event should be in October. The final details to come soon.

Kimberley Fitzsimmons, a friend of Yair, was at this event with her mother Carol. I found out that Kimberley will be performing in a concert this Fall. You may remember her dancing at several clubs in the San Francsico Bay Area and with Suhaila's troupe. The first night of four concerts will be October 31, will be held in Kentfield, by the College of Marin Dance Department. Kimberley will be a guest performer among others in their fall performance. Kimberley hasn't really gone back to Middle Eastern dance since her tragic accident when she broke her neck diving into shallow water in Hawaii in 1999(?). She has primarily concentrated on ballet and jazz as she did as a child. This performance will be a rare chance to see her perform Belly Dance again. She now works at the Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, where she spent so much of her recovery time. She is working in the Dance Medicine Clinic using Pilates therapy for rehabilitation and conditioning.

Jim Santi Owen's site