It’s safe to say that Abhiman Kaushal was obsessed with
mastering the tabla, an Indian drum.
“I gave up everything and learned tabla; I gave up
education. … I totally focused on tabla,” said Kaushal, an
assistant adjunct professor in the ethnomusicology department.
As the department’s tabla instructor, Kaushal
doesn’t believe in forcing students to take the same extreme
measures as he did when learning how to play the tabla. Instead, he
embraces their diverse interests.
“(UCLA) is an academic institution, (students) have
different subjects and challenges. … (But) if you are dedicated
enough to practice, you can perform very well,” said
Kaushal.
This weekend, students in Kaushal’s ensemble will showcase
one of their many diverse interests by kicking off the first ever
“Whirled Music and Dance: A Festival from Around the
Globe” at Schoenberg Hall. The festival will also feature
Afro-Cuban, West African, Korean, Bali, Brazilian and Mexican
music, as well as Greek and Indian dance.
Presented by the Student Committee for the Arts, the festival
will feature music ensembles from the ethnomusicology department
and dance groups from the UCLA Department of World Arts and
Cultures and other school organizations. Each performance will open
with a pre-performance discussion with artists and professors.
In years past, the ethnomusicology department hosted a spring
concert, but this is the first year they will share the stage with
dance organizations.
Tim Rice, the chair of the ethnomusicology department approached
the SCA, and asked the organization if it would be interested in
collaborating on the festival.
“This year (ethnomusicology) students were not going to
have the opportunity to (perform) because of budget cuts, and so
the SCA decided that what would be interesting would be to work
with the ethnomusicology department and bring more dance into the
program,” said SCA producer Jessica Teague, a fourth-year
American literature and culture student.
Teague and the SCA’s refusal to allow budget cuts to
hamper the students’ opportunity to perform resulted in the
ambitious four-night event.
The festival, according to Rice, also offers students the chance
to learn and perform with artists like Kaushal, whose dedication to
their craft led them to become some of the finest musicians in
their fields.
“One of the reasons we are able to have this program here
is because we are in Los Angeles, and so many great artists want to
come here,” said Rice. “It would be like in classical
music, if some student walked in and got to take beginning violin
lessons with Itzhak Pearlman.”
For many of the students, this is the first time they will be
performing in front of such a large audience with instruments that
were unfamiliar to them at the beginning of the school year.
Likewise, for many dance groups, this is their first chance to
perform in a professional performance space and share aspects of
their culture that may often be over looked.
“A lot of people are not really aware of how diverse each
culture is within itself. There are a lot of different stories and
a lot of different cultures behind each dance,” said Erin
Wong, third-year international development studies student and
external vice president of the Chinese Cultural Dance Club, which
performs Friday.
The idea of sharing culture has been a hot topic at UCLA
recently with the developing of a diversity requirement.
“(The festival) actually has a whole interest with the
diversity requirement,” said Teague. “Maybe someone who
comes on Sunday to see Mexican music will see Indian dance,
something they wouldn’t have seen before, and the discussion
will add an interesting element to it.”
Tina Myonlas, a fourth-year Spanish and international economics
student, who dances with the Hellenic-American Student
Organization, agrees.
“It’s a way in which people can compare and contrast
the different regions,” she said. “It’s like
comparing cultural foods. Instead of going to a food fest,
it’s going to a cultural fest.”