Travel without moving

Some years ago, while working, I was listening to some music and I had a Chieftains CD on my desk. A colleague of mine noticed it and said something like "if you like this, you have to listen to some of the stuff I have". At the time I did not know he had his own band (At-tambur), nor did I know he was the webmaster of a world music site. I just listened to his stuff, which included some bands and artists of whom I later became a fan, and started my own voyage in the world of world music.

A few months later I became an active contributor to his website, writing articles and short stories on albums I had listened to, and concerts I had seen. Some of these concerts took place in Sendim, a small village in the northeastern corner of Portugal, near the Douro river gorges, which serve as a natural border with Spain. For two years in a row I covered the annual celtic music festival that takes place there, being able to watch artists like the swedish band Hedningarna, or even talk to members of the irish band Dervish, just to name a few. The festival is a wonderful mixture of cultures, both on the stage, where artists from several countries transport us to their homelands through the sounds of their unusual instruments, and off the stage, where people from all over Europe gather together to magically transform the small village of Sendim into a traveler's meeting place.

Such is the power of music. People from all over the world have used it from the very beginning of times to express emotions and pass on knowledge from generations to generations. Through music we can learn about distant cultures, either by listening to songs in different languages, learning about faraway stories, or listening to strange and uncommon instruments. Who cannot picture a scottish glen when listening to the wail of a bagpipe ? Or imagine a majestic indian temple when listening to the strings of a sitar ?

Some people often tell me that they wish they could travel as much as I do. I don't think I travel much physically (not as much as I'd like to, that's for sure), but I'm always traveling in spirit. Sometime ago, I attended a workshop on travel photography by my friend and brilliant photographer Antonio Sa. One thing he said keeps going through my mind: "traveling is not an action, it's a state of mind". Music can play a big part in helping us reach that state of mind. And what better music genre for a traveler than world music ?