Salaam Shalom Peace,
Well, in Turkey now on my way to the Turkish rainbow, just had a whirl wind tour of Israel and Egypt (the Sinai peninsula). Israel was filled with going from place to place, with a group of friends from home, all over Israel drumming for a Dances of Universal Peace tour. We made it to: some Bedouin villages; west bank Palestinian towns(!); Jerusalem; Tel Aviv; a festival near Haifa; a kibbutz; the dead sea; the Sea of Gallali; and a home to a couple who teaches KabalaLove (the Kabalist KamaSutra); watching a play done by both Palistinian and Israel teenagers `1001 Arabian nights`, pretty much everywhere in Israel. Met many good people doing good things in a troubled land and was made to feel very welcome and connected.
This was a bit different than my previous travels, a detour from my main trip goals of exploring the non-western and non-home, being self directed and internally focused. Because of this, though it was good to support this mission of peace to the holy land, it was a bit mixed for me to see friends from home and to let go of my own agenda, be known, introduced, and hosted.
My biggest goal for this section of the trip was to see whether I could take my drumming to the level of being `professional` on a world stage. I have four areas of interest/skill that I imagine I might follow at the moment: back to computers; dance; drum; and bodywork (or professional monkey chant leader?). I`m only a professional at the computers, and overly specialized in that. At all the others, the creative social side, I`m semi-pro. This trip to Israel was an opportunity to play for my favorite international DUP leader, Eric Narayan Waldman, and get his take on what I could now offer after 6 months practice on DidgiFlute and the Hadjira frame drum.
He turned out to be not that helpful for advice on that topic; he was to focused on his end of things to give me much feed back. I did get from him an idea of the market for my skills in the DUP community. From his perspective drummers are a dime a dozen. There are some that have carved out some turf (as have I a bit at Canyonlands), and if one leaves there`s a vacuum that might be filled. Other than that DUP is not fertile ground for people with the skills I´m developing, Hmph.
Feedback from Susan (the organizer of the trip) was that I was very useful in keeping things together during our dance sessions (by keeping things going and energized when Eric was distracted) and that Eric was out of his element in Israel. Israel is a new delicate market for DUP, and he`s used to leading 100`s (not 5-20), and used to doing what ever he wants (Ulp, this is ISRAEL!). So she was somewhat reassuring about my contribution to the tour. She also said that DUP has lots of room for organizers (interesting). All in all, my path as a drummer was not quite clear yet (Drummer for Hire) and Israel was a pleasant but expensive detour.
SINAI
I then headed to the Sinai peninsula with Susan and Kelsey. They were turned back at the border (to much stuff, typical Americans), and I ventured on alone. This turned out to be the right decision. The Sinai peninsula is a very peaceful, beautiful, cheap, and friendly place. It used to be a popular destination for Israelis, but it was bombed a few years back, and is now a ghost cost with 10 times the infrastructure necessary for the number of visitors (and this was high season).
My dreams of becoming a professional Middle Eastern hand drummer came back to life here because early on I met a master drummer, Yair from Israel, who was happy to give me some tips (wow, just what I was looking for!). We stayed at the 7 heaven camp on the Rasa Satan (head of Satan) beach with Dandy the 28 year old sweet hearted, cast strapped Bedouin owner of the camp (worth about 1 million Egypt pounds ie $200,000). My days in Sinai became a 2 week drumming intensive (with occasional break for food, snorkeling, scuba diving(!), and sleep) with private lessons every day. At night Bedouin musicians would often appear to play.
This was all just wonderful. I didn´t want to leave/want to go back (same as almost every place I´ve visited).
I´ll send an update of what happened at the Turkey Rainbow gathering soon.
PS. Here`s a silly video w/me in it from Thailiand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRUqNDVn4lQ
