I'm in Palo Alto still, where I've had a whirlwind of activity Friday evening and yesterday with my friend Leyla. Friday evening we spent at Tannourine, a Lebanese restaurant in San Mateo. An excellent Middle Eastern band was playing there. Various belly dancers danced during the evening. Half of the restaurant was a large family party of Lebanese-Americans having a surprise birthday party for one of the young women. I really enjoyed the evening, except for the incident where I put my foot in my mouth.
There was a fifteen-dollar cover charge because the band was playing, but I didn't mind playing it at all because I love that style of music and rarely get an opportunity to hear it played live. and this particular band is so excellent.The singer, Khalil, is quite incredible. The oud player, a tall young Palestinian-American traded singing with Khalil. The kanun* player is a short, older guy from Azerbaijan, the lead drummer is a Lebanon-American. Leyla (my friend) played the "duf" a large drum like a tamborine without the jingles, and another American woman, Amina, played the tamborine.
Various belly dancers performed during the evening, and I liked most of them very much, and loved watching them.
The other people at my table were either dancers who would be dancing some time during the evening, or their husbands. I had fun chatting to the husband of the dancer who is pictured in the photo above. This man had come to Canada from the UK with his parents when he was very young, and he'd moved to the States after meeting his wife.
He asked me the why I "liked this music". He enjoyed watching his wife dance, but he himself was a fan of classic rock music, the kind of music that had been popular when he was young, in the late 70's and 80's.
I told him I really couldn't say why, I'd loved it from the first time I heard it, and I couldn't really give him a reason.
He said, "You mean it's kind of like 'chemistry'?" and I said that I guessed that was correct. I told him that I love many other kinds of music as well, including quite a bit of classic rock from the 60's, 70's and 80's.
One of the next few dancers, a young red-head, was not to my liking. Some of her moves were not elegant at all, in fact I would say that they played to the prurient interest (not surprisingly, some of the men present liked her style quite a bit).
The wife of the guy I was talking to sat back down at our table after her performance. After asking her if this dancer was one of her students, and finding out that she was not, I proceeded to say that I myself found the red-head quite embarrassing.
There was an icy comment in my ear from the young woman on my right, whom I'd completely forgotten about! She had been the first dancer of the evening, and had given a nice performance but not a memorable one. The red-headed dancer was her friend and she did not take kindly to my remark!
I cringed. The music was so loud that I had had to lean toward the couple on my left in order to talk to them, and I hadn't
thought that any of the others could hear me. (Lawson is always telling me that my voice is louder than I realize!)
To smooth things over, I told the dancer on my right that I was sorry, and that it was probably just that the red-headed dancer's style was different than what I was used to.
"Well, it is better that you put it like that," she said with a smile through clenched teeth.
The dancer in the following photo was one of the ones whose performance liked a great deal:
Most of the restaurant was peopled with a large Lebanese-American family who had arranged a surprise party for one of the young women in the family. There were all ages there, from grandparents to little kids running around, the little girls in party dresses. I believe they were Christian Lebanese, from the proliferation of glasses of red wine.
Several times all of the young women from this family would get up and dance in a group. It was fun to watch them enjoying themselves so much.
Yesterday was a long, fun day for us, spent at the annual "Fabulous Fall Festival" hosted by the organization Leyla is vice-president of, "BABDAMA" the Bay Area Belly Dance and Music Association. Leyla had to spend all day behind the front table; she was in charge of the volunteers and general trouble-shooting. One of her volunteers had canceled, so I volunteered to do a stint manning the door from 2 to 4:30. Other than that, I was free to roam around, do some shopping from the vendors, and watch the performers. I ended up having a good time all day and had many interesting conversations with people.
We left the house at 9:30 AM. We had to get to the large community room at the Hillview Community Center, where the festival was held, in time to set up.
All afternoon there were different dance performers. Anyone could sign up to perform, a good opportunity for hobby dancers to get performance experience.
Considering that anyone could sign up to perform if they got their e-mail in in time, it was surprising that the general quality of the performers was high. Perhaps this was because all of the audience were dancers themselves, so that performers knew that they were dancing for an audience of their peers.
The whole thing was videotaped. Individual dancers and troupes can order DVDs of their own performance, but for liability reasons, a DVD of the whole show is not sold.
Fifteen dollars was charged at the door of the festival. I did not have to pay this charge because I was a volunteer, and those who performed only paid five dollars. Once expenses are paid, the balance will be donated to the organization Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence.
At 2 PM I went to do my shift manning the door. The elderly lady who was taking the tickets seemed to get distracted a lot, so my main job seemed to me to draw her attention to the fact that a customer was standing there waiting to buy a ticket!
Only a couple of people walked past me without stopping, and I had to tap them on the shoulder and tactfully point out, "You can see that lady there to get your armband."
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| The lady in blue checks in a musician, Leyla answers questions and the elderly lady taking tickets dozes off. The blonde in the center with the dark top on is in charge of the whole shebang. |
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| Leyla, wearing her antique Palestinian dress |
Above is a photo of Leyla in her beautiful antique Palestinian dress. The dress also has beautiful embroidery on the wide sleeves and at the hemline.
I wanted a photo of myself in the dress I was wearing, a modern, polyester machine-embroidered version of the same style of dress that Leyla was wearing. I'd had nowhere to wear it since I bought it three years ago at the Arizona Arab-American festival. But I did not want to ask anyone else to take a photo of me with my camera because I feared that my cold germs were all over it.
(Although my stamina has much improved, I'm still coughing some and blowing my nose now and then.)
One of the workers at the food concession behind me saw me trying to take a "selfie" with my camera, and volunteered to take my photo. He said not to worry about the germs as he'd wash his hands.
The workers at the food counter were from El Salvador, but the Mediterranean restaurant which sent them is owned by an Afghani man. The food was really good. As I was there nine hours straight, I ate two meals there; both the falafel plate and the chicken wrap were excellent.
The photo came out pretty nice, I think:
It was fun manning the door because I ended up having different conversations with various people who were standing back in that area. I saw the dancer whom I'd offended the previous evening and told her again that I was sorry. I told her that I'd talked about the subject to Leyla, and Leyla had said that she herself thought the redhead was a good dancer, and suggested that I might like to learn to hesitate a bit and think before I spoke.
"Well, it's true that she has some moves that are a little 'raw' and I wouldn't be comfortable doing them myself," she said.
"Well, all the same, I felt bad about it," I said. It seemed like we were on a good footing again.
At 3:00 there was live music, from the band Pangea. They are all American musicians who like Middle Eastern music. I had really been looking forward to hearing them, but I was rather disappointed because the sound was more Westernized and middle-of-the-road than I like.
But as I listened, I really did start to appreciate them, and decided I'd like a couple of their CDs. I've talked with friends about choreographing a little routine for local events, and it might be useful to have some less-authentic music for times when the dancers or the audience is not accustomed to the "real thing".
Several dancers chose to dance to the live band rather than to bring their own music.
In the evening were the "showcase" dancers, hand-picked by the organizers of the festival.
At the end of the evening, all of us volunteers helped to clean up, and got the room back in order. Here, it's almost done.
One of Leyla's friends, an elderly woman named Elaine, told us a funny story from about fifty years ago, when she was about twenty years ago, and stopped a train in Germany. She was in the toilet and thought she was flushing the toilet but instead pushed the emergency button! She heard the train screech to a stop and a train employee was yelling through the door. Being young and clueless, she told the man to "please wait a minute" because she was brushing her hair!
I'll end with one of the "selfies" I tried to take with my camera.
Love, Lennie
*kanoon ( also spelled kanun or qanun), according to Wikipedia, is a "string instrument played in much of the Middle East, Central Asia, and southeastern Europe. It is a type of large zither with a narrow trapezoidal soundboard". It has many strings.
