Magul Bera and Chai: Pairing Ceylon Teas with Kandyan Drums, with Ravibandu

This transcript was created automatically from the audio and checked for names. Minor errors may remain.

That was a traditional and auspicious start to this tea tasting. As with everything in our culture, there is a story behind it. There's an amazing story behind these teas and there is an equally amazing story that our master Ravibandu is going to share with us on why he played those drums at the beginning of this tea testing session. Well what I just played on the Geta Bera or the Kandyan drum as it is called was Magul Bera, the ceremonial drums that we play traditionally in the beginning of any auspicious occasion. The interesting part there is that the syllabic combinations that I applied to play the ceremonial drums are believed to be, are said to be, this is what we've heard from the past masters that they are, these combinations are composed with drum syllables that cast good spells. So naturally at any occasion begins with that kind of blessing, blissful drumming and then like when you can make your own tea, can't you?

Absolutely. Like I mean you were served with tea, water, sugar, milk, preferably not sugar, preferably also not milk unless you live in New Zealand but in Sri Lanka herbs, spices, so many things. Yeah so many things. So you make your own tea, you put water and you make it either strong or light or add a little milk, add a little sugar if you like or if there are any like mint leaves, cinnamon, whatever. You can make your own tea and enjoy it. Likewise the traditional drummer, he fashioned his own drum. He chose the wood that is for it. We have of course traditionally different types of woods that are chosen that are used for drums.

He selects the wood, he carves it and he gets all these natural skins and you see the length and breadth of this drum is also according to his, the measurements are taken from his own limbs. For example the length of a candy and drum is three spans and three fingers from the drummer's hand and the width, the diameter of the face is that much. So we say Tun Vyat Tun Angulai, three spans and three fingers and Viggutsak. So those are the traditional measurements applied to create a drum. That's incredible Ravi. I never knew that but it's that that brings the drums to life rather than simply hearing the sound. You hear heritage and you feel the soul of what you're doing. That's a beautiful art and I congratulate you and of course I thank you that you share this historic knowledge with us. Thank you. So now I want to share with you a little bit more of my passion and my art. The most popular tea in the world

is English breakfast but there is nothing English about tea. Tea is grown in these beautiful hills and this is where English breakfast originated. It was originally the Scottish planters and Ravi back then as we experienced when we woke up at five o'clock in the morning today it was cold in the morning. But then those planters would wake up for master at 4 a.m. which means it's a lot colder than what we experienced at 5. And so at that time they needed something strong and bracing to warm them up and to prepare them for the day. So they prepared a strong brew of fine Ceylon tea and that was Scottish breakfast which became English breakfast. But then we also said there's nothing English about tea. And so what we did was we produced something that we call tropical breakfast. And what we have in a tropical breakfast tea is a combination of tea from this region from around 4,000 feet above sea level. So it's bright, it's oaky, little woody, little intense, strong, it has nice strength, flavor

and texture. Typical of a beautiful Ceylon tea from this region. But then we added some critical ingredients. You know our history, our heritage is a lot about wellness. It's about Ayurveda. We knew our ancestors didn't know medication in the conventional sense. So their medication was our herbs, spices and roots. And so what you have in here are turmeric, coconut, fresh coconut, desiccated of course for shelf stability. But beyond that eramisu and a different, a whole combination of different ingredients including natural vanilla. And what it produces is there's a combination of strength, of woodiness. So there is some intensity but from the eramisu you have the sweetness. You have from the coconut, you have that beautiful nutty character. It's tropical. So we call it tropical breakfast because it is truly tropical. But then from the turmeric and a little bit of the pepper, you have the spice. Now what do you think of that?

Well that reminds me of the early morning temple drums that we play around six o'clock. Actually exactly at six. This is also a form of communication that when at six, the drum is played from the temple. People know it's six o'clock and they have to start work. The Tammat Tama, this traditional drum is usually played with another drum called Daula. But one can see this always in the famous Kandy Pirahara, played in large groups. So the Tammat Tama gives that kind of a warm, you know, kind of sound and may sound a little you know like tough. That gives the stimulation to anybody. Navi, you have captured it in your words. You have captured exactly what this tea is about because it's about warmth, it's about energy, it's about vitality. So now I like to hear it expressed in your art. This particular rhythm pattern called Aluyan Durya that we play every morning. Go on like that, it goes on for some time but I just

played. Beautiful, you captured it spectacularly. Now I have a challenge for you. Now that was warm, it was intense but our next tea is a chai. You know a chai, its origins are in how our ancient kings and royalty would want to take their medication. They would of course, they enjoyed their teas, they enjoyed their herbs, their concoctions but in Ayurveda each herb whether it is cardamom or clove or whichever type of herb has a specific medicinal property and so they would combine these and then they would put it together into a chai which they would drink and so it was a delivery mechanism for medication, for natural healing, different health and wellness herbs and so in here you have ginger, you have cinnamon, you have cardamom, clove and a beautiful combination that expressed. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to digress for a moment. You know why we slurp and be tasty? You always slurp, no? When you taste it? You taste?

Just drink it but you don't drink it. Because when you sip, as most people do, you taste with the tongue. So the tongue has five senses but when you really want to taste, you have to taste with the brain. The brain has in, it has a part called the olfactory bulb. So when you slurp, it aerates the olfactory bulb and you have a true dimension. You have a accurate perspective of the aromas, the flavors and so on. No, it's like when you taste something, when you have a cold, the olfactory bulb is closed. You don't have a lot of taste. So why I tell you that is that because this tea has ginger, I can't slurp it too much because if I slurp, I'll be heading out of the window with the power of this fine Sri Lankan ginger. So I'm going to be a little more gentle and it's beautiful. It's complex. It is savory. It is a little sweet from the clove. It is spicy and it's balanced. Yet it's gentle. So it has

a beautiful personality. It is like a bright and beautiful morning. So what do you think? Well, the name Chai, if I may say that it's an Indian word and it's from Hindi. They say Chai for tea and here we have a few Indian drums. So the name simply connects it to the Indian drums. Here is a South Indian drum called Gaddam made out of clay and the mixture is clay, copper dust, silver dust and stone dust. All that combines to make this ringing tone of the Gaddam which means pot and then of course here is the very famous Tabla. So let's try and make a sound that gives a chai feeling. I'll combine it later but I'll start with the Tabla. Ravi, that's beautiful harmony. Spectacular. How did you make the noise on the top? Did you create a vacuum? You know, on the top of the pot.

Yeah, I chose a vacuum. Yeah, so beautiful. Such a complex noise. Indeed and it gives you some kind of you know something. A different feeling coming up from your soul. Exactly. Beautiful. I love this. This is incredible. You know, I think this is truly bringing us a new dimension of harmony. So now I'm going to challenge you again but you know you knew that you were here for a little bit of a challenge. Now this is a semi-fermented tea. It's called a springtime oolong. So what it is is at a certain moment you have a light oolong that is made in a way that brings up the aromatics and so you have almost an orchid note coming up and we have combined it here with a little bit of natural ginger because you know sometimes you have softness. Too much softness is not also good because in everything on the palate you should stimulate. So when you have softness you lead the palate into that softness. You bring, you almost lull it

and then you give it a little bit of a hint of ginger and you have that spark that just brings vitality. So it's beautifully complex and so I would like to see if you have a combination of drums or rhythm that can capture the gentle beginning. It's like the, again it's like the dawn. It's like when the mist rolls in and suddenly the sun comes, it burns it away and there comes that spark of ginger and the sunshine and completely different. Well frankly speaking Dilhan is that all these drums, any drum, that drum that may make a loud big sound or a drum that may make a very soft sound like the udakya. In all these drums you can play the softest sound and the loudest sound. So it actually it depends on how you present, how you express yourself through the drum according to the mood, mood that you are in at that moment of playing those very syllables. For example this udakya is a traditional drum that was

traditionally made to accompany the singers of the kandian chamber of versifiers. So they sang panegyrics to the king. So a few people would sit in the round and they while singing they played this very softly but then later on it was used for dance and when it came to the dance, the dancers while dancing started playing it loud. So if I give you an example of how it is used with singing the panegyric songs and then... Beautiful you captured the contrast spectacularly. I love this combination of the arts and traditions and nature it's truly inspiring. Because all arts are emanating from nature. So from the morning the breakfast tea our tropical breakfast in the inspirations line we have moved to Ceylon Spice Chai. We have gone on to an oolong which is soft gentle with a twist at the end and now we're coming to something altogether different and so far. Ravi's consideration. I have a soft aromatic tea. This is a green tea using a tradition that is around 3,000 years old. It combines the

petals of jasmine and natural jasmine to soften it and what it does is it balances the astringency of the tea in this light aromatic gentle tea. It's a green tea of course. It has certain softness. It has sweetness. It's very gentle on the palate and the aftertaste is also gentle. It's all about harmony but gentle harmony. So I know with percussion it might be a little difficult but I know you can do it. Well as I told you before any of these drums can play very gentle sounds and very aggressive sounds as well. As you were talking about you know different flavors and I remember you use at another time the word note in teas right? So this is a very musical term if I may say so that note is like the heart of a music piece. Percussions are made for you know playing rhythms that stem from the heartbeat but then note how these different notes as you feel these different tones of flavors in different

parts of the tongue in the mouth how not simply the rhythms but different notes are created out of the drums for example if I play this it makes a melody see it's not simply there but then I when I put it into a framework of a rhythm cycle so it's soft and creates different notes not simply rhythms but within a time cycle. That's beautiful and in fact melody is very appropriate because this next tea that we are going to look at is actually a melody it's a melody in tea in fruit it combines a fine mid-grown cilantro tea right little bit oaky but also combines fruit notes and here we have a little bit of citrus so you have that spectacular sensuous sweetness of strawberry it's almost a fleshy sweetness you have a little bit of raspberry which is different it's a little harsher little bit more tart but all coming together and the melody comes from the tea so like we had the jasmine with the softness and the aromatics the

floral note of the jasmine right coming together with the green tea here you have a black tea which is a fermented tea so it has more intensity and it's bringing together into the melody that you showed us so beautifully it is a beautiful concept and really as you say when you really take it back to its roots what you are doing and what I am doing here is trying to understand how nature has influenced and really expressing nature in our respective traditions and arts that's right exactly so fruity fragrant sweet it's like commonly whenever I taste this tea I imagine it as how it would be when you walk through an orchard where you have the beautiful aromas of raspberry of mango or different fruits little tart little sweet soft but woody so very complex indeed that's challenge indeed but I know that for you it's not really a challenge so we're gonna see what you can do with it okay let's try to do it

without any of these drums now that would be the drum syllables all these drums have a very rich ID qualified drum languages see for example the tabla na tung tata kata kadigana any syllable can be verbally uttered on this tongue kata tung or dung dung so I'll try to express that feeling through a combination of drum syllables express verbally that combines some of these drums yet and also bringing it a melodic aspect to it that's harmony that was magnificent magnificent truly a walk through a fragrant orchard and exactly expressing this inspirations very sensation now I have an altogether different challenge because this tea it comes of course with a Sri Lankan pedigree but it has a little bit of a variation here the variation comes from the fact that it is a combination of a tea in this case again a tea from around four thousand five hundred feet elevation so it has the brightness and the body the balance but it is combined in this case

with a little bit of bitter almond so you have a little bit of bitterness but you have the sweetness you have the nuttiness complex not as complex as the berry sensation but deliciously different with that nutty sweetness the woodiness of the tea and in a in a in a probably a more aggressive more intense tea than what we had in the jasmine and certainly more intense that we had in the soft wood woody fruits that we tried in the earlier one oh well the word nutty taste brings me to this made out of some kind of African nuts this is an African instrument though this rattle it brings the sound of the nuts so let's try to combine this with maybe the pot drum here it rings it doesn't really give bitter taste but well I can turn it to bitterness no it's a pleasant bitterness it's a pleasant bitterness so I think you're doing it right yeah so let's try and combine these two the nuts and the base sound of the color

perfect perfect and in fact this African instrument was the bitterness of that almond the sweetness and the base notes perfectly embodied the tea and the rest of the profile the taste profile of the almond fantastic I really you know when we started talking about this project I never imagined how much similarity what the parallels the synergies similarity in heritage yes that we would we would see but also now similarity in terms of the sensors sensors yeah magnificent so now we go back to something that is a little bit like the very sensation it is somewhat like a walk in an orchard but it has like with all our teas it has a little bit of a twist and this twist is a citrus twist so I'm going to taste it so that I can express it more accurately we have here from the skin of the orange and the lemon you get the oils that really give it more definition and actually it's according to our

tradition I think we value the skin and the whole fruit more than just the inside so most of the world you discard the good stuff and you eat the pulp and the of course not that it's not good but that flavor yes comes from the oils on the skin it has a little bit of citrus so it's a little bit lemony little bit of orange and it has a little hint and in this case we have our the world's finest cinnamon growing in Sri Lanka so this line of teas it has each one has a little bit of a magic in it and for us the magic comes purely from nature so in addition to the tea which is of course magical in itself you have real cinnamon and cinnamon is so good for human health but in taste it's also quite extraordinary and quite unique so it's a the entry is quite gentle with the orange sweet then it evolves with the citrus the lemon and then you have the

cinnamon that comes in with a little bit of a sort of a reminder that they spice the world it's a spicy beautiful world yes exactly so if I'm right cinemas are also grown in the country in low country as well as a country oh it's not a lot mostly mostly low country isn't it mostly low country this gall that's right the southern part of Sri Lanka southern part of Sri Lanka exactly here we have a drum from the low country this actually the southern part of Sri Lanka which is called the Ruhunu Beraiah and also called the Pahattarat Beraiah which literally means the drum of the low country let me express this flavor through this drum which belongs to the Pahattarat of or the southern lowlands of Sri Lanka ideal perfect there's an interesting thing about this drum the skin used for this drum is actually the stomach lining of the cow and as far as I know there are very few musical instruments that use

that part of animal for a musical instrument it has a unique sound unique sound it elegantly embodies what we talked of because it captures the feeling that you get when you taste this combination this complex combination of citrus the lime the orange the spice it's it's beautiful thank you thank you now this one I'm actually going to bring across to you so that you can have a taste so I got this is your spoon yeah so maybe if I can ask you to just dip it in and take a little bit of a taste I don't know how to slurp though don't worry don't worry about that can make as much of a mess as you like so in that you have this you could interpret as a feminine tea it's a tea that combines tea again a bright typically Ceylon tea from the Dimbula Valley you combine it with the softness and the romance of rose and the the lingering finish that you should feel now is natural vanilla so

it's a combination it's not a pure tea but it's a tea that combines beautiful ingredients to produce a tea that we call a desert tea you know we tea is so good for your health right and we want people who enjoy tea and in fact people who don't yet enjoy tea to have good healthy lives and so what we encourage them is skip the sugar take this kind it is this is natural there is no there is no sweetness added to it right take this and you get the sensation of a desert it's very different to a beauty it's not a conventional tea in the form of it's not a synthesized flavor but it is a pure tea and we have here I told you that each one has a magical ingredient and we have in this Belimal so a lot of the sweetness is complemented you see some depth some savory notes coming in that is the Belimal and that is complementing the rose and it creates that additional complexity so bare flowers are so

incredibly good for human health and so that is the magic there lovely you said it's you'd like to introduce it as a female kind of a yes absolutely and a desert tea and a desert tea yes of course I I just got the idea of you know like it's so tasteful and well if I may put it in my words normally a dessert is sweet so I got this kind of a very sweet feeling by sipping it means a natural sweetness within you so it means you're a sweet person because if you if you have a sweet feeling and you take this it's brings it out it complements each other yeah of course let's try to express it with this is not a drum but a percussion instrument that is used to give the beat only to a drum but it is so musical that it it will ring in your ears for a while the open and close sounds so two different flavors I love it and you know why

particularly that it it is relevant to this tea because bare flowers or Belimal it's something that well you and I know we take regularly yes detoxifies anti-immune and you know a lot of these diseases that we have in the world it's if they're immune diseases and and they not only they immune but also inflammation they're caused by inflammation and so this Belimal it helps so does tea tea is so good for health of course it was first discovered as a medicine and it's only then that it became the beverage that we know right but the diminishing note the softly diminishing note is almost spiritual almost meditative right and you can feel it's almost like a window into the soul like how when you play some of your instruments and so I find in the same way a good tea it should give you that serenity serenity exactly and I think that is the pairing that you have made you're right exactly yes thank you thank you so now we go on now this is something that is surpassingly gentle and

I'm going to use your spoon again because I want you to try this sorry I'm going to change your spoon because it's it's a very delicate this is actually a herb a herb these are the flowers of chamomile and just try a little bit of that floral notes of Apple there's a note of Apple also yes that's right gentle but very very gentle it's not gentle in a typical sense is gentle in a very gentle sense gentle sense is really gentle so I would like to yeah you see the Apple note and you see the herbal note right it's not really savory it's more sweet but I would like to use the udaki again here this hourglass shaped drum to play a very gentle rhythm the gentleness here is that when you take a very gentle slow walk maybe across a garden you see the natural rhythm of a human persons a human's walk is always in three beats one two three one two three if you take a slow walk you may try that that you walk in three beats you know

like the rhythm the natural rhythm that comes to you is three one two three one two three you know like two lovers hand-in-hand walking through a beautiful forest you're a romantic Ravi so I think maybe I might even say that comes from the rose and French vanilla with belimal that you tried I will interpret that as the soft feet of a baby walking and yes because this is a an infusion a herb that babies also enjoy so you made a beautiful parallel there so now we come to another herb but this is peppermint it's pure peppermint leaves and pepper mint is fantastic because it is a digestive you know after you've had a meal your your digestive system begins to operate and sometimes it can get a little bit of stress so what the mint the menthol does is it aids the digestion by relaxing the muscles and so this tea well it's an infusion so it's a herb has a sparkling sparkling really when you drink it you have to open

your eyes wider because it awakens the senses and it's it's vitalizing revitalizing it you you feel a freshness on your palate that comes it starts to tingle and so I think this tea should be expressed in something that is about life and and really revitalizing oh that brings me to this drum which has a very sprightly tone takura you captured it beautifully and that's what the mint the peppermint tea infusion does on your palate and it's what it does for your mind thank you Ravi it's been spectacular as far as I know this is the first time that this kind of harmony has been created amongst tea and your art and the way you use the art of percussion it's mind-blowing and like each of these in teas contain this magical ingredient you brought another magical ingredient and that is your art yeah and that's I mean the best is nature tea and this is clay this is wood and various other natural materials and so it all stems from nature so nature lives in harmony always and here

we are surrounded by nature yes and if it wasn't for the rain we could be out there in nature oh yes but this is not too bad we are surrounded by it so thank you Ravi thank you for inviting to you know experience this beautiful I mean this is my first experience with so many different kinds of teas at the same time it's beautiful I got to you know like I understood the different tastes and the the expressions that eat different tastes gives so a very new experience for me and thank you very much for giving me that experience perhaps this is going to inspire my drumming in the future and you know the adventure is going to continue this experience because next we're going to have to experience it with food great we will try culture tea percussion and Sri Lankan food lovely thank you