Mbira night

We have been attending an "mbira night" every Tuesday evening. Mbira nights usually start with a potluck dinner at 5pm, and then we move on the the jamming! There were 10 or so people at this gathering, and there have been two more now as well.
The mbira sits inside a large calabash gourd, also called "deze", which amplifies the mbira.
The shakers are called "hosho" and are the heartbeat of the music. We had so much fun, and Aloka just loves mbira nights! She is constantly amazing me at how musical and rhythmic she is!
The person in this video below that I'm sitting next to is Kris, my awesome mbira teacher. He is a talented percussionist and musician. He is also the one with the yellow deze.
In case anyone is wondering what happened to the belly dance post, i removed it because of privacy issues with the dancers not wanting to be on the internet, which i completely understand!
So here are some videos of mbira night!


and here's one more of the same song, which is called "mbavarira" or (she takes me away) and I'm posting it because it's longer so you can hear more of the song, which has become one of my favorites. I often just sit up at night and get lost in it, playing it for a long time and unaware of how much time is passing. It's such a beautiful one.
A friend is lending me one of the most beautiful mbira on this earth and I've been playing it constantly. It has a very watery quality, and I think it sounds like mermaids singing underwater, or perhaps what the sirens must have sounded like in Odysseus. It's incredibly hypnotic and mesmerizing.


Ok, here's one of the bellydance videos that i can still put up here. This is the video of the beautiful tribal belly dancers and then the contrasting style just after them. Josh and were joking that the latter kind of reminds us of the Laker girls "eastern" style or something!