Reflections At City Park - Brazilian Samba Parade

I spent an enjoyable day yesterday at the Reflections event, a bringing together of local  dance artists, musicians and street theatre performers at City Park in the centre of Bradford.  I am really starting the wrong way around here as this is a picture of the final outdoor event of the day, a Samba Parade from City Park to St. George's Hall (where the entertainment continued indoors with a world dance and music extravaganza to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kala Sangam, the Bradford based South Asian arts group).
As you can probably see from the picture it was raining quite heavily at the time, the heavens opened during the final ten minutes of the day's performances.  I managed to see things through to the end though and went off to catch my bus thoroughly wet through (that's when I found out how abysmal my bus service is after 6PM, but that's another story really)!

Bradford Mela - Taal Tarang

I'm not really familiar with Indian music or traditional Indian musical instruments but I was really impressed with the performance by Taal Tarang at the Mela. The musicians were R N Prakash on the Mridangam (on the left), RR Prathap on the Ghatam (centre), Sithambaranatham on the Jewish Harp (right) and Bernhard Taalis on a western drum kit (out of shot). The music was a mix of Indian and western percussion and not something I would normally listen to, but I did listen, for the best part of an hour, and in the pouring rain, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.