Tibet is Not Far
Went to the Tibet Day Festival with Canadian Dave yesterday at the Ft Mason center (which is basically a glorified warehouse space). That made a lot of sense because the festival itself was basically a glorified get together for the Bay Area Tibet Society. It was a fairly amateur affair with long winded, unnecessary speeches by overly earnest people (including a white guy who looked like he'd dressed up as Obi-wan Kenobi to stand in line for the next Star Wars film).Despite all this I tried to be open minded, which was good because there were some real cultural gems to be discovered.
I'm secretly envious/proud of kids who go to great lengths to learn the songs and dances of their native lands when abroad. Listening to the earnest young quartet on stage, I had the sudden realization thatTibetan traditional music sounds a lot like Sudanese traditional music. The two singers were a comedic dream pair - the boy thin and bespectacled and serious, the girl large and boisterous and open. The two musicians accompanying them played lute-like stringed instruments, playing pressed together near an open microphone like George Harrison and John Lennon (alternately they also looked like the two guitarists for 80's power balladeers Heart)
The strange familiarity was increased when I went out back to eat momos (beef and veggie dumplings, delicious!) and drink milk tea. The tea was more milk than tea and hot with a spicy aroma to it. It reminded me of the tea one gets at the bus stops and early markets of Khartoum. My mind was cast back so far I nearly got whiplash. It was odd in juxtaposition to the rosy-cheeked, burnished bronze children running around.
Fortunately I wasn't the most out of place person there that day.There was a Benedictine monk sitting two seats to the left of a Tibetan Buddhist monk in front of me. Black robe (left) - saffron robe (right) it was a bizarre sort of comparison. Surreal.