The Diary of a Travelling Musician

Lugging around a guitar halfway across the world was proving to be a draining experience,so when Sarah Calvert boarded a flight from Toronto to New Delhi,she decided to travel with her latest find: the ukulele from the Hawaiian islands. “It’s a miniature version of the guitar and has four strings. It’s Hawaii’s national musical instrument and the minute I laid my eyes on it,I fell in love with it. It compliments my style of music,the sound is mellow,” says the Canadian singer,songwriter and musician,who is teaching yoga in Chandigarh. “I learned yoga in England 15 years back,and have been travelling with it along with my music,” adds Calvert,who is a professional yoga trainer and practices music to “keep her soul afloat”.

Born into a conservative family in Ontario,Canada,the 37-year-old took to music courtesy her uncles and aunts who were jazz players,performers and percussionists. “Although I started learning music at the age of seven,I always thought I’d become a lawyer and have a real job.” But fate had other plans. She went on from studying English literature,history and French,to being a ski instructor in British Columbia,Canada. After completing her higher education in France,she shifted base to a small town in England,Canterbury,where she became a high school teacher. Then one day,she gave it all up to backpack across Europe,South and Central America. “Even when I was teaching,I was moonlighting as a singer,writing songs and performing,” says Calvert. The turning point came three years back,when she lost her mother to cancer. “Everything changed. I realised life is too short. I went back to college in Toronto and studied jazz,piano and vocals,which opened a whole new language for me,through melody and harmony ,” she adds.

Calvert used this newly learned musical grammar to pen more songs. For her stage name,she picked the lines from the famous song that her mother and she sang together,Que Sera Sera. “It’s Que Sarah,” says Calvert,flashing her visiting card which reads the same and has her posing like a diva,in a flaming red dress.

It has been three years since she has been struggling as a musician. “It’s more of a financial struggle,” she smiles,revisiting days of dog walking for extra money,being a substitute teacher,taking piano and guitar lessons — till she was on board as an assistant music director in a hit broadway musical in Toronto called ‘My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding’. “I have a friend whose mother came out of the closet and married a

Wiccan and the play was based on the subject,” says Calvert,who has also recorded an album,Other Side,and another on the Kundalini mantras. “This was after I learned the Kundalini yoga.”

All set to perform at the Cafe Kaffee Kuch on Sunday evening,Calvert is now toying with the idea of a one woman show with her grandmother in Canada. “It will have musical excerpts from my journal and I’m penning another musical now,” she says,adding that she is simultaneously writing a book on her adventurous life. “It is inspired by Eat,Pray,Love,” she reveals.