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One teacher, sitting on an ornate rug, strumming his tambura to create a mesmerising drone that enveloped the room.
Fifty students, total strangers, visitors to his world, sitting close around him as he taught them their first note:
sa.
At first this was all we sang, we needed nothing more. One note on which to blend our voices with the unwavering clarity of the tambura in the resonate recital hall.
Then slowly we were taught the words, then the melody, all the while the constant buzz of the tambura strings vibrating through us around the room.
We sang.
The words were merely sounds, the style of singing still foreign and unstable in our throats, but none of that came through in our music.
The melody was beautiful, regardless of the authenticity of our singing.
We created magic.
Regardless of if that sounded cheesy, ornate, irrelevant, today I discovered a whole new direction college classes could take - and I liked this new discovery very much.
