Indian, Chinese musicians to perform at Buddha Fest today

Nagpur: An eight-member delegation of Chinese musicians is in the city to perform at the ongoing Buddha Festival. A joint effort of Chinese Musicians Association and Indian Musicians Federation of India, the Silk Route-Indo China Music Festival will also be held at Ahmedabad and Raipur.
Addressing media on Friday, Kishor Javade, founder secretary of Mumbai-based Musicians Federation of India, said that the six musicians in the group were high profile artists who excelled in the instruments that they played.“The various musical instruments to be played by Chinese musicians come in Indian variants too. The Chinese instrument Dizi is similar to a flute, Erhu is akin to violin, pipa, the four-stringed lute, can be described as a Chinese guitar.” A workshop of Chinese music and musical instruments has also been organized at SCZCC on Saturday between 11am and 12.30pm.
Wang Jianguo, deputy secretary general of CMA and also a percussionist, said that such a concert is being organized for the first time. “India and China have very ancient civilizations and a long and colourful history of music. There are a lot of similarities between folk music and musical instruments of the two countries. Over the years, both the countries have been able to develop some distinguished musical instruments which are not played in the west.”
Sixty-year-old Cui Junzhi, a renowned player of konghou or Chinese harp, displayed her skills by playing it for the media. “Instruments like harp and pipa have evolved from folk music and help expressing deep emotions which are close to everybody’s heart,” she said. Liu Haiyan, the soprano, will be rendering two of Lata Mangeshkar’s best known songs, ‘Lag jaa gale’ and ‘Aa jao tadapte hain armaan’, at the concert. Four Indian musicians from Nagpur and Mumbai, Sandesh Popatkar on tabla, Deepak Nahri on keyboard, Sanjay Baraputre on drums and Sunil Varma on flute will also be a part of Saturday’s concert which will be held at Deekshabhoomi grounds from 7pm onwards.