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I first became acquainted with Sonya Mazumdar as a voice at one end of a US-India Skype session about Link's licensing of "Laya Project" a dazzling musical journey around the areas devastated by the massive 2004 Tsunami. The newly formed Indian production company and record label EarthSync India had just released the film as its first endeavor. The haunting travelogue garnered honors over the intervening years, and when EarthSync launched its spinoff website IndiEarth Sonya contacted me again to see if I would allow their site to stream some of my relevant videoblogs. But of course I would!
Then, many months later (yet still rather suddenly) came an invitation from Sonya to attend the first IndiEarth XChange in Chennai. Rarely one to refuse an invitation to a new place, I found myself taking the long trip to Southeast India, to report on another maiden voyage from the young, pioneering Earthsync/IndiEarth. This time it was a meeting of international and local media, with film screenings and musical performances, along with panel discussions and networking to be held at the Park Chennai Hotel. It was an ambitious project (intended to be a prototype) requiring its own networking and funding, plus massive coordination. The aim was to lay the foundation for a network of dedicated professionals supporting independent music and cinema in India.
It was a hectic three days, and the large turnout participated in vigorous panels about the obstacles and opportunities for music and film in Southeast Asia and Oceania, as well as the remarkably varied musical fare. What made it exciting for me, was the un-Western media presence. Aside from Indian, there was a significant Australian media contingent. In particular, the magnificently feisty Kate Welsman an Australian Public Radio deejay was quick to point out that there was a noticeable shift in markets of all kinds from West to East, and music was a part of that market. It made sense. At the same time it was also made clear by both the musicians and film-makers, that the audience demographics for Southeast Asia needed to be cultivated, and weaned away from a straight diet of Bollywood, which still holds the business reins in a rigidly controlled grip.
For my part, I ran around taking as much video as I could, and focusing of course, on music. But I simply could not catch it all. So what you are seeing in my video is just a wee fraction of the music that was performed in the lobby, bar, main stage and other impromptu venues.
In all, I was very excited by the spirit of IndiEarth Exchange. The people who were gathered together were bright, creative, energetic and pro-active. I felt challenged and stimulated, as well as entertained. I believe something will come from this. It may not come immediately, but it will come.
For more information about EarthSync India, visit earthsync.com.
For the complete performance of song by Parvathy and Lakshman Das Baul, click here.
For complete song by Karthick Iyer, click here.
For more of Michal's world music videos visit inter-muse.com.
In New York City, half an earth away from the coffeelands, a room full of overcaffeinated young men (who’d probably never heard of Yirgacheffe or Atsabe) are shouting themselves hoarse bidding down the lifeblood of rural coffee farmers. In the middle of this room is the circular trading floor of the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT), known to its denizens as “The Ring.” Here, investment houses, banks, financial speculators and large coffee companies bid on the future price of coffee. For the companies, the goal is to insure a future supply at a known price – a necessary planning tool for a business based on an agricultural commodity. But for the rest of the frenzied traders the point is to make a profit on the “float” between what they pay for coffee futures and what they hope to sell them for later. For two centuries, coffee had been a dull commodity, traded on a somnambulant market. Yet somewhere in the last decade, it had morphed from a morning brew into a raging speculative commodity on the trading floor.
In this wired world, these Lords of the Ring are supplied with up-to-the-minute financial, political, meteorological and other data from an army of consultants. An early frost in Brazil? The flowers necessary for the budding coffee fruit to develop could wither and die, shrinking the coming harvest. Supply down, price up; bid two cents more for March deliveries. A rumored peace deal in Colombia? Easier deliveries in three months; hold off and let the price drop. The rumors and intelligence are translated into Buy and Sell orders, little slips of paper carried across the floor by the Runners, the traders-in-training. Their street clothes covered in tunics carrying the colors of their houses, the Runners grab the slips from the phone and computer banks owned by the Lords and race them down to their warriors in the Ring, who scream out their offers to buy for a penny more or sell for a penny less. These players make the prices rise and fall in an incestuous system unrelated to the true cost of growing and processing the crop, and with no consideration at all for the needs of the growers to feed their families and keep their kids in school. As one trader told me:
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