Random Culture Night: The Rudyard Kipling

I just got back from the Rudyard Kipling in beautiful Old Louisville. The place was a very intimate setting for two acts of music and two acts of art. The first set of music was Ut Gret (they pronounced it: oot greet). I don't pretend to be a musicologist and am terrible about defining genres, but if I had to make a decision this group was "improvisations from the smorgasborg of culture". Pretty much every peice they played had a different genre and each member contributed an equal amount to the whole. The band's leader mainly played the flute but switched instruments amongst a digeridoo and his own voice, and some instruments I couldn't name. While every member of the group was great and seemed to have a love of their instruments, I think that I particularly enjoyed the work of the bassist, who in several songs was given the lead melody which is so often rare in music. (So often people tend to think of bass instruments as mere background to songs.) The bassist also switch back and forth between his bass and what appeared to be an electric mandolin.

Accompanying Ut Gret's first set was a group of women that performed a "fashion show of love". The group's leader, "The Goddess of Love" recited the poetry written by the other women as they each showcased costumes and dances related to their poetry (and Ut Gret improvised responses to thus). Accompanying Ut Gret's second set was a young lady doing "belly dances". According to the somewhat drunken "music reviewer" (not that I didn't believe him, it's just that I've already forgotten his name and the magazine he said he worked for) leaning on my chair, it was nothing like real ...