Mumbai Inevitably one cycles back what what hears that is new back to what one knows that is old from your own experience. The more I kept looking at the poster for the bands from Norway and the United Kingdom playing for people in Dharavi in honor of ACORN’s work with recyclers there, I assumed Blue Frog was a concert promoter. Seemed to me like Blue Frog would be a totally appropriate name for a rock promo operation in the States. Catching up with Judith Francorsi, one of our long time and super volunteers and helpers-in-all-ways, she laughed when I mentioned that and finally drew the picture more clearly for me.

Turns out the Blue Frog is sort of a jazz club / music club in Bombay, and quite popular. They fill the very popular and hip niche in the big city as a venue for European groups to come play. Judy says the cover is not too high but once in, eating and drinking is pricey, and they pack them in, because they are such a one-of-a-kind venue in Mumbai. European groups of all shapes and sizes want to come to India and are attracted to playing here, and though the place is not that large, they often also book into Bangalore and elsewhere in other venues. Though Vinod has a brother who runs a great jazz club and restaurant in Bangalore and some of the groups bounce over to the One Note when in India, that was not the connection, but somehow in the magic of of relationships a connection was made. No small amount of it in Judith’s analysis, since she’s also involved in music among other things, is that the groups themselves want to have some authentic experiences in a more real India than another darkened club. The notion of playing at the Nature Park for our recyclers was a coming together of various strands that worked. The event on April 29^th turns out to be one of six throughout the year that the Blue Frog has now promised to do for the ACORN Foundation (India), so I was delighted to get to have an “aha” moment and figure it all out. Next time I’ll have to save up and see if we can go see the Blue Frog face to face, so to speak.

If there were blue frogs around Mumbai, the National Geographic would be just the outfit to track them down and get them on film. It turns out that in a coming episode of the National Geographic television show they are doing a whole segment on Dharavi and our recyclers! They followed one of our main leaders around for days and spent weeks with our people on the ground, literally. They even followed her children to school.

Fingers crossed, but I get the feeling this is going to be powerful, and could be a huge boost to our operation in Bombay!