Napa hosts reception for returning music trainees

Group of 13 Napa students and teachers visited universities in the United States and South Korea on international scholarships

Karachi

A group of 13 students and teachers of the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) who visited the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and Seoul, South Korea on scholarships awarded by the US State Department and the National Theatre of Korea, respectively, gathered at the Napa premises on Wednesday evening to share their experiences.

They narrated the advancements in the field of music in both countries and also some difficulties experienced by them on account of the deficiencies in their training. They also narrated things they learnt about the cultural setup in the countries they visited.

Some of the students were: Arsalan Pareyal, a guitar instructor at Napa, who went to the University of Texas, where he wrote a piece called ‘Sangat’. The title of his piece means coming together and was intended to mark the coming together of two diverse cultures, two diverse art forms, and two diverse kinds of music. He said sometimes they were asked to analyse a piano sonata by Mozart, something they had not been groomed in.

A young lady, Abeer Shan, who is learning the tabla at Napa, visited Soeul under the National Theatre of Korea programme to learn the Jangu, the Korean equivalent of the table. Narrating her experiences of the culture and the country, she said that, initially, there were difficulties as nobody seemed to know English. “However, within a week we found it a wee bit easier to communicate through the jargon of music,” said Abeer, who also screened videos of traditional Korean musical instruments and cuisine.

Stephen Chaman, a piano instructor at Napa, narrated his training process at UT Austin and the salient features of human relations in the US. He recalled an incident where he was going and a girl was coming from the opposite direction. On seeing him, he said, she smiled leaving him confused as to what she was smiling about and whether she was smiling to him. While he was still confounded in this confusion, she greeted him with a simple “good morning”.

Later, Chaman added, he learnt that this was a custom in the US where you had to greet people you crossed, which he thought was a beautiful practice.

All the others narrated their experiences which had a highly overall positive content with girls figuring as much as music and local culture. Later, US Consul General Brian Heath addressed the participants and, congratulating them on the successful completion of their courses, distributed certificates among the participants.