The legend with a baby face

 Rahat Fateh Ali Khan brings in so much energy and heart into his songs. Brings a lot of joy to the audience, and when the audience claps and cheers, he knows and then he smiles, like a child. Every single song had this pattern pretty much. Some songs he would feel has not landed deep enough, and he follows with high octave high speed gymnastics of notes, and bring the song up with the rest of the songs. 

Oakland Arena acoustics beat the little two JBL speaker setup I have at home by a windfall. Till yesterday, I would have vouched for my system.

The energy of the songs can look hard core rock in the eye. May be not beat that energy, but pretty high up. 

With recent introduction to Sajjad Ali's "Har Zulm", and other instagram posts about how Pakistan has got the music scene right and way better than India, this experience landed in my lap out of the blue. Raviyettan from MIF had posted two tickets in the whatsapp group with fastest finger first offer, and just at that minute, I had looked into that group, and had responded to him within a minute. 

While Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is a living legend, I got the feeling that I should try out music from other smaller regions. There must be amazing music around the globe which just do not surface enough purely because the populace is small, and if they get brought here to US, the chances are they are good. 

Also, for next time, I would not mind spending on tickets like this for the experience that it gives. 

The show had started with an instrumental piece which was awesome, and then Shahzaman Ali Khan rendered many high energy numbers. Shahzaman Ali Khan is Rahat's son. His performances were really good. But once Rahat came in, all the work done before that got washed out from my experience. 

I tried to think of one Indian singer in any language who would come close to the performance that I am witnessing, and I could not think of one. Honestly, I don't think Yesudas could have matched Rahat in the energy he was bringing. 

There is definitely god level dedication that is going behind this. The energy does sometimes feel too high, but the sharpness of the talent is astounding. Shahzaman who had seemed pretty good when he was singing got totally overshadowed by his father, even when it was back to back and with all the same technical support.

Rahat has a very innocent and endearing manner around him. The humility with which he thanked the audience, and his overall attitude towards the audience was really nice. He said "Bay area I love you.. ". May be it is just his charms, but it was really nice. 

On the way back, I played the playlist of the same songs, and they were not nearly as impressive.  Live performance has a vibe to it that cannot be matched by recordings. Studio can go only so far. Live performance is something else. 

The amount of physical effort behind the singing is remarkable. Each of the song pieces is no less than a gym workout, and you find both the son and the father routinely rubbing perspiration off their face with napkins and putting them in the trash can set right in the middle of the stage. Some of it is also the lights glaring to the face. 

All in all, it was a wonderful experience, thanks again to Raviyettan for the tickets!