Tour de El Camino Stage 3: Ragas to Rock to Bach

Last weekend I returned to the section of University Ave. in Berkeley where there is a concentration of South Asian shops and restaurants. This time I brought my wife with me. This eased entrance to the Sari Palace. This place was fantastic. The downstairs area was dedicated to the finest and most formal saris, but upstairs was the section for practical clothes, including a decent sized section for men. The colors were bright and rich, and there was an entire wall dedicated to scarves of every shade - it looked a lot like the 64-crayon Crayola box.

While we were browsing (and this was the first time I felt really comfortable browsing), we ran into another couple who were trying on formal India-style suits for the husband. It turns out he is an orchestra conductor who travels overseas often. Even better, the wife spoke German and had lived in Germany for several years. Contrary to all understanding of gender stereotypes, the women stood to the side chatting while their husbands shopped for clothes, and as we would occasionally appear before them wearing our proposed purchases, they would cast approving or disapproving nods in our direction.

We left the Sari Palace for a market across the street. I approached the shopkeeper right away with a request for any videos of the Ramayana, in English for kids. Because I clearly knew what I wanted and looked ready to buy, he was very helpful and friendly. He set us up with a Ramayana video done in Manga style in partnership with a Japanese art company. With disk in hand, we then browsed in peace and good conscience the rest of the store, which was full of exotic spices and snacks. Back at the checkout counter, we shot the breeze for a while, and among other things he told us one use for saffron, as a flavoring mixed into steamed milk.

Our last stop that morning was at the record store next door. There we were helped by a young kid from Nepal, whose English was heavily accented but whose love and knowledge of music was in perfect tune. He took me to the Ragas section, and I found a CD where the music was played on a 12-string touch-style fretboard instead of a sitar or guitar. A fretboard is like an electronic guitar, except that you make the tones by tapping the strings against the fretboard instead of plucking or strumming the strings. Its shaped like a guitar, but functions more like a piano where your fingers are the hammers. The artist on the disk I bought is Teed Rockwell, but I first heard tapping (hammering) on old Van Halen albums, and recently seen Bach tapped on a doubleneck guitar by a Polish kid named Adam Fulara. Bob Culbertson has an acoustic guitar designed especially for tapping, and he might be playing it this weekend at the Half Moon Bay Art And Pumpkin Festival.