In a world where music is confined to commercial tunes and digital beats, city-based musician Siddharth Venkat is on a refreshing mission to bring back an almost-forgotten musical instrument into the limelight – asalato. Of West African origin, the dried gourd percussion instrument is also known as cas cas or kashaka, and hails from countries, including Ghana, Senegal and the Ivory Coast.
Once completely invested in his rock band in college, Venkat has always held music dear. For the past couple of years, he has been committed to the revival of asalato and giving it the right amount of limelight. “The last five years, I have spent reviving this simple, glorious instrument. Although from West Africa, it is a very basic, intuitive musical tool,” says Venkat, adding, “It is not just about the music or rhythms, but also the beautiful, introspective and therapeutic spaces in the mind that it can take you.”
Giving utmost importance to the auditory sense of the participant, Venkat’s workshop, which he hosts in corporate establishments, communities, schools, and related spaces, takes an alternative approach. “We all have ears and the audio experience is greatly underrated and over-stimulated in today’s world, so it firstly sensitises people how to truly and deeply listen… to ourselves, to the sounds around us, to each other,” says Venkat.
An interesting aspect of Venkat’s work is his vision to foster a connection between India and West Africa. “The subtleties of this percussion go so deep into the mind that it is not merely just musical, but a cultural bridge,” he says. In the past three decades, the instrument has witnessed widespread popularity in Southeast Asian countries, especially Japan. “While it is a largely forgotten and dying art in West Africa, Japanese people on the other hand, have embraced it like wildfire. I have even participated in online asalato battles and compilation videos, almost always organised by people from Southeast Asia,” he adds.
Making an asalato
Originally made from a dried West African gourd, spinosa oncoba, or the ‘fried egg tree’ (the flowers look like half-boiled eggs) the asalato-making process is interestingly unique and close to mother nature. The gourd is plucked, dried, and boiled, and then ants are allowed to eat the insides. Balls are made of the gourd, and rosary seeds (abrus precatorius) are filled inside, with a string attached. With the two gourd balls filled with seeds and connected by a single string, one can use unique centrifugal movements to finally create complex percussion out of it.
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