Music

Some of the more devoted readers of indiapapa know that Kaia has a real affinity for traditional Indian music and dance. Ever since we took him to multiple performances over the Chennai Music Festival season last December he has been enraptured by the whooopms and twangs of Hindustani compositions. I am anticipating the arrival of a new iPod when Kaia’s Auntie Brynne comes next week from the US and, in preparation, I’ve organized my iTunes with all of the music that we have here, which means a lot of classical Indian. Now Kaia, knowing that all the music is stored in the computer, enjoys sitting at my desk and listening to “dancing music”, of which he has his favorite songs. Keep in mind that the typical ‘song’ can last from 10 to 40 minutes, so he’ll just sit there and stare out the window or at the iTunes visualizer while enjoying the music. I find it to be a very interesting behavior and really wonder what’s going on in his head. Since Bangalore, where we saw a dance performance featuring a male master dancer accompanied by a famous tabla player (who’s CD we have), now he asks for the “man dancing music”—which he can identify after just a few seconds! In fact, he already classified all the 1,400+ songs in iTunes as “papa’s music (anything remotely rockish), mama’s music (anything Latin and in Japanese), kaia’s music (kids songs) and, of course, dancing music”. Really funny. Accompanying this post is a photo of when I caught him alone playing his wooden xylophone while singing songs out of his Japanese song book. As you can see, he’s also set up a group of Ganesha back up singers and a small audience of fruit sellers.

Why I Love this Time: Saying goodbye to go to Kids Central with Joyce—“bye-bye papa, see you later”.