Keeping the beat
For nearly 10 years Oppenheimer studied under one of the most pre-eminent tabla instructors in the world. The tabla are a pair of small drums used largely in classical Hindustani music. They are played with the musician’s hands while he sits cross-legged in front of them.
While studying in Rutherford, New Jersey, he helped his teacher found a large and successful tabla school. But as satisfying and life altering as the experience was, he said he noticed the hustle and bustle of the city slowly eating away at him.
“I felt like I needed to heal from almost a decade in New Jersey. I mean seriously, it’s intense up there,” said Oppenheimer, who grew up in Batesville. “I felt like I needed to come back and just ground a little bit. I wanted space. Everything is so non-stop and packed up there, just go-go-go, and get out of my way if you’re not.”
So Oppenheimer packed up, tuned in, and started his own school here. Now he has about 10 tabla students in Charlottesville and Richmond, is almost finished building a house on a quiet stretch of land in Batesville, and has a 15-month-old daughter with his wife, who also grew up in the area. He has the luxury of being able to take time to think and be present in his life on a daily and moment-by-moment basis without having to always worry about what’s next.
I had a very similar experience. For the last six years I’ve been a reporter on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and while it was an amazing journey and a key glimpse into how the political meat gets processed, I began to see myself growing cynical with the navel-gazing and self-obsessed, albeit growing and lucrative, realm of journalism that exists within the city.
I was struggling to find purpose in what I wrote about on a daily basis, and I found myself complaining about it to anyone who would listen. So I packed my things and moved back home to pursue writing and reporting that really mattered to me. I was caught up in the story Oppenheimer told me. He fell in love with his craft and has humble aspirations to revive the ancient and somewhat dying art form by bringing it into the mainstream while keeping its roots intact. And Charlottesville has all of the key components, he thinks, to make that possible.
“Charlottesville has a great audience; I think people genuinely enjoy music here,” said Oppenheimer, seated on a couch in his living room with the tabla at his feet. “If there’re 25 people or there’s 200 people I really enjoy it. I’m not expecting to make a full career out of performing in Charlottesville, but I think this is a really great area to create music, perform music, and experiment… Charlottesville’s a very good place to create ideas and let them start to grow. The natural beauty here is very inspiring, the cost of living is not crazy, it’s doable. It’s a wonderful place to start projects.”
To be sure, there is no shortage of dreams in Charlottesville. Many of us have our parents and their generation to thank for that. They created the template for searching for fulfillment and marrying those ideals with economic opportunities. They built the foundation that allowed us to grow up thinking we could do anything we wanted, run away as teens with flights of fancy, and come back as adults, sometimes with plans, sometimes only with intentions, but always on our own terms.
Now, it’s our task to strike the right balance between giving due credit and seizing the territory and energy necessary to make our dreams a reality. To make shrewder compromises between quality of life and income and to add value to a place we’ve known intimately all our lives, that the rest of the world seems just now to be discovering.
It’s funny how reporting a story can make you look at things differently. The boomers and the boomerangers. Going there and back again together. Loving Charlottesville and wanting it to grow into the town we all know it can be.