Mungal Patasar

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Bio photo courtesy of Mark Lyndersay (http://lyndersaydigital.com) "Ever since I was a kid, I never saw myself' as a Trinidadian musician alone. I see myself' as a world musician and my kids as world musicians. I see the world as our home and not Trinidad alone. Trinidad is my rock: it is my gate: it is the place where I belong to, but my music and whatever God has given to me here is not for Trinidad alone, it is for the world." Mungal Mungal Patasar was born in 1948, into a home full of music in Trinidad. He came from a large family who did not have much money. Both his parents were singers and his father sang classical Indian music and his brothers were drummers and singers. By the age of eight, Patasar was playing harmonium, dholak and dhantal and played clarinet in his school's military band. He then learnt to play the mandolin on his own with a book and became one of the top mandolin players in the country. After leaving school, Mungal joined the civil service, working first at the Post Office and then went on to being a teacher until 1989. He then did a years course in Public Health and went on to spending twenty odd years in Public Health. He chose this field because he wanted the flexibility of a job where he could be free and not tied down in an office. Mungal got his first sitar at age twenty-seven and practised for eight years secretly before coming out public. In 1978, he participated in the Mastana Bahar competition and received the first prize. Up to the

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