The Music of Hindostan c5.31

c5.31

“By five o’clock they are all there, a score of them, seated on the carpet in the growing twilight while the punkah swings languidly overhead. And now the monster at the end of each guitar has reared its head and the concert is going to begin. What devastating sounds will issue, doubtless, from instruments of such a build, and what a din from the drums! I wait, nerving myself for much noise. Behind the players is an archway standing out against a white porch through which a group of the Maharajah’s soldiers are seen standing in the rays of the setting sun, their turbans glowing in the red light to a deeper red, while the musicians form a dim cluster in deep shadow. The sight of their serious faces, and the fixed look with which they regard each other rather than any actual sound, tells you that the concert has begun.