Bombay (Mumbai) was the last stop on my year of travelling around the world. The enormous size of this city became clear to me when my bus to Bombay took it’s job literally and dropped me next to the ‘welcome in Bombay’ sign at 4 o’clock at night. Judging from the slum-like surroundings, I figured this was not the area of the Taj Mahal hotel where Bombay’s salvation army manages a budget-hostel. I was lucky to find a capdriver who explained that a drive to my destination would take another hour and cost 6 times the bus fair I just payed my nightbusdriver. Fortunately he could take me to the metro for a considerable lower fare and so, with the sun rising over Bombay, I took the first commuter-packed metro-ride into town.

These last days I spent exploring this city of extremes in search of the 52nd creative talent to feature on the Global Talent Project, while simultaneously reflecting on this last year of digitally promoting creative entrepreneurs. Aside from the general travel-experiences, each encounter with a GTP-talent was filled with small cultural and ethnic extraordinaries that gave me a small insight in their totally unique and different world. At the same time, despite their apparent dissimilarities, they consistently had a few things in common: they all love what they are doing, they are ambitiouse to improve their skills and their life, they are full of energy, they dare to take matters in their own hands and change their ways and are not afraid to experiment with new concepts. Above all, they seem happy with their life.

The last creative entrepreneur of the GTP fits this description perfectly. Apet Pramod not only drew my attention to his beautiful paintings, but I could also relate to the title of his exposition. As my plane was scheduled for the next day to take me back home after a year of travelling, I could only agree: it’s a ‘little world’!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music by The Malangi’s from Amritsar. Full clip of the song here!

Contact Apet Pramod directly via his website: www.apetpramod.com

That’s it! One year of travelling to discover talent has resulted in a lifetime experience and 52 artists and musicians from various cultural backgrounds all in one place on the internet. I’m working on a plan to continue the GTP in some form or the other, but first my priorities must be with earning a living. Feel free to contact me with ideas or suggestions for the GTP, or follow me in my own quest to earn a living as a creative entrepreneur with flaks.nl.

Diwali is the festival of lights, India’s most important holiday. Like any other festival, when the Indians celebrate, they mean business. Not only literally (on the first day of Diwali all businesses start their financial year), but mainly just by taking it into the extreme. Imagine a combination between Christmass and new years, multiply it by three and add India in the equation and you get what I found in Udaipur, the last city I visited in Rajasthan. Lighted plastick palmtrees, beard competitions, foodstalls, sweets and a lot of fireworks, all under a roof of glittering and gleaming decorations, makes the scene of Indian families visiting their relatives. Since I had no relatives in Udaipur, I decided to start searching for talent. As Udaipur is also known as one of the most romantic cities in India, my quest was aimed for creative expression with love as inspiration.

Meet Sharmila Rathore. There are a few galleries in Udaipur with nice art, but most of them sell more or less copies of the traditional miniature-paintings that you can find anywhere in Rajasthan. Sharmila’s ‘Art Issue’ drew my attention because she makes a fusion between contemporary and traditional art. Next to that, she also has a noticeable style that seems to speak directly from the hart. Her paintings are inspirational, spiritual and what’s more: the subject of many of her paintings… is love!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music by Shariq Parvez, full version here.

It was the first day of Diwali when I took this video, but fortunately the firecracker war outside had reached some kind of temporary truce. Shariq Parvez, the musician in this video, finds that a temporary truce is sometimes difficult to negotiate when you have two young kids roaming the house. ‘And I do meditations!’. Fortunately we could make this recording in an unguarded moment at his home in Udaipur. Shariq gives meditation classes with his own made Meditation Guitar, a fusion between the slide guitar and the traditional Indian Sarod. Visit www.meditationguitar.in for more information. Contact the GTP to get in touch with Sharmila!

Coincidence is the engine of each adventure. Helmut, an Austrian adventurer I met in Jaisalmer, knows this as no other. At one point in his life, he decided that it was a good idea to take the oldest and cheapest car he could find (8 horsepower) and drive it from Sri Lanka back to Austria. Naturally, he had to dodge any hill that had a slope of more than 5%. This is how he one day found himself in Jaisalmer where coincidence and the desert’s sand made his car brake down right in the middle of some local musicians. Although they most likely didn’t have a song for this particular occasion, they seemed knowledgeable and helped Helmut to find a mechanic. By the time his car was fixed, Helmut’s love for the region and the people had set in motion the events that would change his life. When he got back in Austria, he sold his house and travelled straight back to his friends in Jaisalmer, where he started Artist Hotel. A place to benefit the nomadic musicians who settled here after modernity caught up with their life-style.

The golden city in Rajasthan, Jaisalmer, gets its name from the yellow sandstone by which its giant fort stands out from the desert surrounding it. Highlight in this outpost of the Thar desert is a camel ride through the sand dunes and harsh surroundings that make up the dry border-area of India and Pakistan. When I decided to take a trip for a few days on a camel called Papaya, I realized that traveling through this harsh surroundings (these days filled with windmills) must have been no regular picnic. The troubadours of the desert had the important task of spreading the knowledge which would give people the best chances of survival. While entertaining the people, they educated. By passing it on within their cast, they became a living library of ancient knowledge. Now this cultural heritage is slowly diminishing, if not for the efforts of people like Helmut with places like ‘Artist Hotel’.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The song sang in the video is about how a peacock can predict that you are about to get soaking wet. Just so you know! Contact the Artist Hotel via their website. Lonely Planet review here. Profits go to local educational projects, ad hoc caretaking (e.g. blankets in the winter) and giving the musicians a stage to perform.

How do you find the talents? It’s one of the most asked questions people ask me about the project. It’s always different and that’s what makes it so interesting. My time in Kashmir was definitely different… I arrived in the middle of Ramadan and celebrated AID (the end of it) with the local sufi-muslims. It turned out to be a very welcoming and open atmosphere in one of the most disputed areas of the world. Since I had seen Kashmir-shops all over India, I was anxious to see where these products came from. Especially the Kashmir shawls drew my attention. Since everybody I talked to seemed to be of the male-gender, I decided to search for a women’s group. Surely this wouldn’t be too hard?

A full week I stayed in Shrinagar, asking anyone that would listen where I could find a group of independent women that make Kashmir shawls. Nobody knew. Or if they knew and enthusiastically told me ‘sure, no problem!’, the shrewd Kashmiri businessmen would follow that sentence with a ‘so what will you pay me for that information?’. Youssef, owner of my regular restaurant, shook his head sympathetically each time he saw me coming back empty handed. Eventually one day he came up to me and told me for Allah’s sake to go to the local television studio. ‘They are educated people, there they will help you.’ Figuring I didn’t really have any alternatives, I decided to follow his advice.

My first attempt to get in failed miserably (‘no sir, security problem sir’). Being Kashmir’s voice to the world, the television station (Durdarshan), is one of the most guarded and well-defended buildings in India. The next day however, I met a more willing attendant and after some phone calls, some questions and a lot of waiting I could go through the multiple military check posts to visit the head of operations personally. I was pleased to see that the Durdarshan director turned out to be a woman. She immediately decided to help me and pulled some strings to find me my women’s group. In fact, she liked the idea so much, that she decided to make an item of it herself and consequently sent a whole television crew with me! Deep into the Kashmiri valley of paradise I eventually found what I was looking for: an independent women’s group making Kashmir shawls: Wani’s self-help group!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Sufyana music performed in the video was done by Mohammed Yaqoob Sheikh & Party. Their group is a well known performer of Sufyana music and is one of the only professional groups in Kashmir that consists mostly of women (albeit, being led by a man). Like with the women’s self help group, the Durdarshan director also assisted in arranging this music-performance in her studio.

To get in contact with Wani might be challenging. None in her group speaks English. If interested however, the contact details of the government official that helped funding their group are available by contacting the GTP. The same goes for Mohammed Yaqoob!

The Punjab always had a mysterious ring to it and when I went there to visit its most mystical attraction in Amritsar I was not disappointed. This is the land predominated by the Sikh, just as mystical to me as any other planet in Star Wars. My first encounter with a particularly large Sikh had been in the hills around Dharamsala. I had just dodged two evil-looking monkeys and must have smiled a little too happy, because for some reason the passing Sikh decided to embrace me in a deadlock, lifting me of the ground like I was a kids’ doll and swirled me around until he had me screaming for mercy. ‘WELCOME TO INDIAHHHHH!!’ He exclaimed and nearly floored me when he affectionately patted me on the back. I said it was nice to meet him and would subsequently dodge any turban in the area for the next week. It turned out the greeting of my new-made friend in Dharamsala had been exceptionally firm and the equally friendly people in Amritsar would limit their sign of affections to a mere handshake.

During my visit, Kps Gill explained to me that he believes all people are the same. Visiting the open-to-everybody golden temple I got the feeling that this welcoming attitude is shared throughout the Punjab. Still, one could say that Kps Gill is different from the people around him. He is successful in his job as a team leader in retail at the biggest ‘hypercity’ mall in Amritsar, but after practicing his painting-hobby for 10 years, he decided to give ‘talent’ a shot. And, judging from his paintings he already had made, why not? His first exhibition starts today (25 October 2011) in the S. G. Thakar Singh art gallery in Amritsar!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The song played by The Malangi’s is a typical Punjabi Jugni. Full version here!

The music is from The Malangi’s. A band that combines the traditional lyrics with a more Western tune. They are now still studying software engenering, but with multiple new songs and invitations to start recording a CD, it seems just a matter of time before they brake out of the Punjab in the land of fame and fortune. The recordings I made when I spent an afternoon with them on the country side will follow shortly!

It wasn’t easy getting into Ladakh in the North of India. First I tried my luck on the infamous Manali-Leh road. But crossing the himalaya’s in the rain, dodging landslides, didn’t really seem appealing. Especially when in the days that I tried one bus and two shuttles went down causing 24 deaths. It took me almost a month to finally get there via the alternative Kashmir-Ladakh road, but the reward was astaunishing. I arrived in Leh right in the middle of its annual festival and was pleasantly surprised by its grandeur. Ladakh is as close to Tibet (culturally, spiritually and physically) as it gets and driving through the area, one does not have to think hard to determine its dominant religion. My guidebook told me about Ladakh’s history of women emancipation, so I figured it would not be too challenging to find talent of the female gender…

Dechen Dolma is a very special talent. Not only is she very gifted in making clay-sculptures, she chose to do it in spite of misgivings from her surroundings. Her world-famous teacher, master Nawang Tsering, created the Maitreya Buddha, amongst many others and considers Dechen one of his most talented students.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The song played in the video is roughly translated in ‘the talent-song’. The full version can be found here.

Unfortunately, the magnificence of Ladakh is not visible for everybody. Searching for talented musicians, I stumbled upon Thukjey Dolma (not related to Dechen). Thukjey was born blind in one of the most beautiful places on earth. She is a very bright spirit nonetheless and her positive energy brought me to visit a very interesting school, Secmol, on which she teaches music. After she sang on the local radio, her star rose in Leh and when I met her in a local restaurant, the Indian phone-camera’s for once where not pointed at me, but at my blind companion! Rohan Dhar, a volunteer at the Secmol school, kindly accompanied Dechen in this performance.

Both Dechen as Thukjey can be contacted when you find yourself in Leh.

As I could not get into Tibet due to China’s celebration of the ‘liberation’ of the region, I decided to visit the Tibetan government in exile instead. Mc Leod Ganj is a small village near Dharamsala in India where Tibetan refugees have made a home away from home. The place was covered in mist and apart from some monkeys and a dog that attacked me, I liked the mysticism of it. When I went looking for talent I naturally got lost three times before by coincidence I met a girl that was on her way to the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. It turned out she was a performer in the Tibetan opera. I immediately assumed her voice could probably brake mirrors and that she most likely performed with bearded men having extraordinary jaw dropping mouth-capacities. When I visited for the practice session however, it turned out that this is a whole kind of different opera! No beards, no braking mirrors, but a ferocious attack of goose bumps out of nowhere. This is something you need to hear!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video was made during a practice session and contains just a small selection of different clippings. For the real deal, TIPA welcomes you to drop by!

The diversity of different cultures in the world for me is one of the most interesting features of traveling. The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) is an organisation that tries to preserve and promote this kind of culture. More about this institute and how to get their music can be found on http://www.tibetanarts.org/

To put it in the words of the Dalai Lama: “Protecting an ancient culture like this is the responsibility not only of the concerned nation, but also of the world community as a whole.”

The GTP has been dangling on a very thin rope this last month. Or maybe not the project as such, but more the technical expression of it. It’s not that surprising, considdering that I myself almost got a system overload going through some of the beautiful, mindblowing areas of this country. But where my brain only just could process the information, my laptop wouldn’t take it anymore and decided to block the Indian world and me out from its most inner files. Fortunately, a local geek was able to breath life in my heavy companion once more and I could refresh most of its memmory. A memmory that was already full of what one could call ‘the beat of India’. Being in this country has not given me a single boring day. On the contrary. With millions of people, it is sometimes difficult to find the time and the place to be with your own thoughts. India seems to be the stage for a never ending play. One scetch even more bisar than the last.

The first talent to turn the spotlight on, not surprisingly, is therefore not the usual GTP-suspect, but a creative talent nonetheless. Meet stage director Rudradeep and let his words and his world inspire you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music by Ustad Hanif and two of his students from the ‘Delhi Music Emprium’ in Changspa, Delhi. Their video can be found here.

Although Rudradeep is a gifted ‘scatcher’, which he does sometimes to prepare for his plays, he has learned to trust on his instincts and let his plays form while he works on them. Therefore, none of his creative work can be purchased. He is a talented upcoming stage-directer nonetheless and for any kind of information on Indian performing arts, Rudradeep is the guy to talk to and learn from. Contact the GTP to get in contact with Rudradeep!

The search for artists in Nepal could have been a short one. In Kathmandu there is plenty of choice in beautiful realistic and semi-abstract Nepalese sceneries of Himalayan mountains, rise-paddies, people working the land and Buddha’s. The problem is that you see this kind of art on every corner and it’s hard to find an artist that stands out from the crowd. It was not before I went to bhaktapur, a little town in the Kathmandu valley, and visited a little gallery on ‘Peacock square’ that I found art that was different. Prabin Karki is a self-taught artist who is inspired by his extensive travelling in the region. For Prabin, art is a representation of culture. His work is based upon the many religious expressions found in the region, from which he tries to distil the best features. In some of his paintings he represents the two faces of humans: Good and evil.

Experimenting is part of Prabin’s passion and so his works will never be the same. By experimenting he also came across his special way of creating relief and a mystical feeling that draws the viewer straight into the Nepalese culture. Prabin is a true ambassador for Nepal.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music by Shyam Nepali, a very talented Sarangi player from Nepal. A full version of the song in the video can be found here.

Interested in Prabin’s art? Visit the gallery on Peacock square in Bakhtapur whenever you are in Nepal, or contact the GTP to get in touch with Prabin! More pictures here.

‘It takes a crane to build a crane’… (Jason Mraz in his song: ‘Life is wonderful’) Life certainly is wonderful in Nepal, or at least: if you know where to look! Madan Shrestha knows this very well and has both a talented eye as a talented hand when it comes to painting the moments of life that make Nepal such a unique country. Being only 22 (1989), Madan is a remarkable talent. He is part of a group of upcoming artists, schooled in the school of arts in Kathmandu. In Madan Shrestha’s case, it takes an artist to make an artist. Not only did he become passionate about art because of his teacher when he was a little boy, he now also shares this passion with the vast amount of children that he teaches in school.

When I met Madan, he had just finished a very successful first solo-exhibition in Kathmandu called ‘moment of life’. I couldn’t wish for a better moment to help Madan with more digital promotion. It should be noted that Madan considers himself to be in the experimental faze of his painting-career and that he will experiment further with different styles and materials. One thing is very clear however. Madan is very much inspired by everyday life in Nepal and how it relates to Nepalese natural beauty. I, for one, am very interested in where his creative career will lead him. For the Global Talent Project (and because my knowledge of the Nepales language is limited to ‘namaste’), Madan bravely talked with me in English.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music by Kutumba, a very popular Nepalese band, that I had the fortune to visit when they where practising. The full version of the music in this video can be found here.

Madan’s art has mostly been sold, so this time it will not be possible to buy his art via the GTP. If you are interested in contacting him however, you can contact the GTP for his details. More photo’s of his work here.