From Bollywood to London

A.R. Rahman takes British popular culture by storm

Teed Rockwell, Sep 09, 2002

Here's a paradox: Bollywood songs are actually more Indian than Hindustani or Karnatik music. Why? Because Indian classical music communicates profound truths that transcends the parochialism of any particular country. That is why anyone who takes the trouble to study it carefully can learn to appreciate its greatness, just as they can learn to appreciate Beethoven or Duke Ellington. In contrast, the ephemeral popular music of a particular time and place gets its charm from the personal experiences of those who have grown to love it.

I will never be able to justify why I still like Donovan and the Lovin’ Spoonful, just as my nieces cannot explain why they like Britney Spears and the Spice Girls. Similarly, when a non-Indian tries to appreciate Bollywood music, it sometimes seems like hearing a story that falls flat, and then being told “Well, you had to be there.” Part of what makes Bollywood music seems so un-Indian to outsiders is its willingness to incorporate glitzy fragments of Western culture. But it is only the Indian perspective which makes these elements seem glamorous—they are exotic to Indians, just as India is exotic to the West. And because no one can ever see themselves as being exotic, no Westerner can ever experience the appeal of Bollywood music. Q.E.D.

But this neat formula doesn’t work when globalization starts to dissolve the barriers that make one culture exotic to another. Now that Indian movie viewers have more direct contact with Western culture, they are not as easily dazzled, and Bollywood composers are developing facility and creativity with Western idioms to hold their audience’s attention. The result is music which, although still very commercial and “for the moment,” is no longer as parochial culturally. The best Bollywood music today uses multitrack engineering and sophisticated arrangements that can hold their own with the slickest hits at the top of the Western pop charts.

And as a result, Bollywood music is gradually shedding its Western image as a tacky curiosity. In England, India is now establishing its own cultural “Raj” over its former colonizers, as hip Londoners become infatuated with all things Bollywood. Almost every song that becomes No. 1 in India shows up on the English pop charts, and each new song appears to be staying longer and climbing higher. It seems that England is experiencing an “Indian invasion” in many ways analogous to the “British Invasion” of America that was lead by the Beatles during the ’60s.

The person who is unquestionably at the head of this invasion is A.R. Rahman. Like the Bollywood composers of the previous decades, Rahman has a thorough knowledge of symphonic orchestration. He studied music at Trinity College Oxford, and his father, R.K. Shekhar, wrote scores for many Malayalam films. But after his father’s death, Rahman was forced to go out in the world as a professional keyboard player when he was only 9 years old. This taught him things about synthesizers and electronics that gave him a composing style that everyone else in Bollywood now strives to emulate. This sound is based on an ingenious fusion of techno drum beats, funky electric bass, and traditional Indian percussion. Thanks to Rahman, London club-hoppers now find it completely natural to dance to Hindi lyrics sung on top of kaharwa or dadra tal, especially when the original versions have been remixed by Indo-Brit DJs.

These dance hits are actually only a small part of what Rahman is capable of composing. Some of his best work (which doe not get on the soundtrack albums) is the mood music, which is most effective when it isn’t noticed. In a historical movie like Lagaan, he created montages of sampled Indian folk instruments to suggest a time before electronic sampling existed, although bass and drum machine fade gradually in for the big dance numbers. In Taal, which takes place in modern Bollywood, he composed ballroom dances for a corporate party, and a spectacular hip-hop instrumental that combines electronic beats and breaks with an audaciously original arrangement for symphony orchestra. And yes, he has studied Indian classical music as well: Two years of Hindustani music with Krishna Nand, and two years of Karnatik music with Daksha Murti. But although he has Indian colors in his paint box, he uses them like a symphonic composer—not lines, but opulent textures that are perfect for the larger-than-life intensity of popular Indian movies.

It would be difficult to overestimate Rahman’s impact on Indian listeners. He has sold over 100 million albums; some press releases say as many as 200 million. Unfortunately, the difference between the two figures would have little impact on Rahman’s finances, because he is paid a flat fee for each movie score. Nevertheless, Rahman has a unique level of independence for a Bollywood artist. He receives the kind of attention from fans that used to be given only to those who worked in front of the camera. He is one of the few Indian film professionals, on or off-screen, who refuses to work on more than one movie at a time. He regularly works with directors who are committed to stretching or breaking the old Bollywood formulas. And now—what may be the biggest step ever taken by any Indian film composer—he has written the score for Bombay Dreams, a musical playing in London’s West End theater district.

The show was the idea of British stage composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who refers to Rahman as a “melodic genius.” Webber originally wanted to license songs that Rahman had already written for films, and build a show around them. But Rahman wanted the challenge of creating something in a whole new medium, and more than half of the music ended up being written especially for the new show. He also combined parts of his old melodies to create new songs with English words by Webber’s lyricist Don Black.

When I interviewed Rahman during the previews in London, he seemed tired, but remarkably patient and peaceful. I asked him how much he had learned about composing from his father. “I have memories of sitting on his lap when I was 5 and learning piano,” he said, “But shortly after that he went into the hospital and never really came out again. But he did teach me what it meant to be a human being, not just a composer. Everyone who knew him spoke of him as a hero.” I noticed that the orchestra pit contained only keyboard, bass, drums, and flute. Why was that? “It’s very hard to get a good mix with acoustic instruments,” he said, “so we sampled all sorts of instruments, both Indian and Western, especially for this score. We’ve got vocalist Murtaza from Madras in those keyboards, along with the Madras Session String Orchestra and sarod and sitar. But we hope eventually to use live cello and strings.” How about live Indian musicians, to play along with the two Indian percussionists seated on either side of the stage? “I love working with Indian musicians in the studio, where I can let them improvise, and then sample and edit so I can put the notes in exactly the right place. But you can’t mike them properly in a live situation, and you can’t expect them to read 65 bars of rests and then play exactly the notes you’ve written out for them. They’re like free birds, and you can’t cage them up that way.”

Does Rahman’s music thrive when transplanted to London? After seeing the show twice, I can definitely say that it works on its own terms. Not one second of it is boring, and there are many moments which are memorable and inspired. When Rahman’s keyboards create the crazed pastiche of melodies and Mumbai street sounds for the opening number, or when the hero sings while his friends mime an imaginary film studio with bamboo rods and a broken sewing machine, you know this show has captured both sides of the Bollywood dream. We see not only what these films are like, but also how much they mean to people who pay to see them even when they have no money for food.

As is usually the case with Lloyd Webber musicals, half the critics love it, half hate it, and the public is lining up for blocks to get in. Rahman is already getting offers to do scores for Hollywood films, and he seems well on the way to international stardom. But I cannot hope that the next step for him will be a return to—dare I say it—authentic Bollywood music. Does it make any sense at all to speak of purity when referring to commercialized filmi pop? Well, yes, according to my 10-year-old blond niece, who has now lost interest in the Spice Girls. She discovered Bollywood movies when she was living in Oxford, and now repeatedly plays the video-tapes so she can learn the dance steps and the Hindi words. In England, you can rent Bollywood movies at Blockbuster. And her reaction to Bombay Dreams was that the music was not Indian enough. I had to agree with her; without the rich palette of Indian acoustic sounds, or the distinctive Indian vocals, the score sometimes sounded like lamb curry without the curry. Rahman has shown that he can make Western music accessible to Indians. If he realizes that now he needs to lean in the other direction to maintain balance, he will almost certainly be equally successful in making Indian music accessible to Westerners.

Teed Rockwell has studied classical Indian music for fifteen years at the Ali Akbar College of Music and privately with Habib Khan and the Salamat Ali Khan family.

Two Melodies Together

The many faces of jugalbandi

Teed Rockwell, Sep 13, 2002

Despite stereotypes, India, like America, is a country that feeds and nourishes creative individuality. Just as Americans have been inspired by the archetype of the cowboy who wanders the open spaces in search of a dream, so Indians are inspired by the yogi who wanders inner spaces in search of realization. To see the parallel with America, consider the scene in Huckleberry Finn, where Huck is trying to decide between what his elders have told him is right (returning Jim to slavery) and what he feels is right. He eventually decides on the latter, saying “O.K., then I’ll go to hell.” Variations of this scene have been acted out by Indians throughout history. Indians always speak as if obedience to tradition was their highest priority. But when push comes to shove, it is always the inner voice of intuition that wins out.

This individualistic ideal is embodied especially vividly in the person of the Hindustani musician, who creates a single melody on the spot as it reveals itself. Traditionally, the creator of this single line interacted with no other musicians. Like Krishna with his flute, or Saraswati with her veena, he or she enjoyed complete and solitary fulfillment. The other musicians who played with these soloists were supposed to add support, but keep creative input to a minimum. The tanpura played the same notes over and over. The tabla player usually marked the rhythm cycle by repeating the same theka pattern, unless given permission to take a solo. And although vocal music has long been accompanied by a bowed instrument or harmonium, this accompanist traditionally was required to copy what the singer had just sung.

Like most Indian traditions, however, this one eventually yielded to the pressure of individual creativity. The modern tabla player rarely plays an unornamented theka pattern. The only way that one can now identify the taal cycle is to listen for the khali section, where the tabla player muffles the bass drum by playing with the flat of his hand. Within this relatively free format, however, the best modern tabla players now interact with the melody instrument in complex cross-rhythmic patterns. Vocal accompanists, like the great sarangi player Sultan Khan, are playing beautifully ornamented parts that are more like counterpoint than accompaniment, and are taking solos of their own. And with the creation of the jugalbandi form, it is now common for two melody instruments to play together, which creates a situation where neither can be seen as “the soloist.”

The question of what exactly they both ought to play, however, is not as simple as it may seem. Hindustani music is still essentially the expression of creative individuals, even if now they are interacting with each other. How is it possible for two musicians to play together meaningfully in a tradition that is essentially monophonic and improvised? One possibility is to borrow a technique from Karnatik music, and alternate between two musicians playing pre composed melodies in unison, and then each one soloing. Ravi and Anoushka Shankar have recently started incorporating something like this format into their jugalbandi performances, although they go beyond it by occasionally even (gasp!) playing harmonies. Of course harmonies are very beautiful, and Western music would be thin gruel without them. But there is a very real danger that the essence of improvised music can be lost if one assumes that this is the only possible direction for progress.

Jazz made this assumption in the 1930s, and the resulting Big Band Swing arrangements stifled the soloist’s creativity. This was why the best jazz improvisers of the ’40s left the big bands to start small bebop combos. And the European rationalist assumption that the pen was mightier than any other tool or instrument turned the musician into the obedient menial of the composer. Improvisation was completely lost with the rise of the symphony orchestra. Jugalbandi cannot be seen as one small step in the direction of a band or orchestra, it is a completely different perspective altogether: two soloists in interactive conversation with each other not fused together as a single ensemble.

Vocal jugalbandi often comes close to resembling counterpoint, with the two singers frequently overlapping with each other. This works especially well in Dhrupad, where the long held notes form something almost like harmonies in widely spaced Pentatonic ragas. But the Salamat Ali Khan family transplanted this style to Khayal when they switched from Dhrupad, and sometimes even include three singers at once.

Pandit Jasraj developed an ingenious and profound style which is now called Jasrangi Jugalbandi, and which is firmly rooted in Indian tradition. It is based on an ancient method called Moorchana Paddhati, which creates different ragas from the same sequence of notes by changing the note that is designated as Sa. This is analogous to the modal system in Western music, which creates modes such as Phrygian and Dorian by playing a major scale (such as C) and designating some note other than C as the tonic. If a male singer and a female singer perform two ragas together which are related in this manner, the Ma note of the man’s raga could be the Sa note of the woman’s raga (or vice versa). However, all of the pitches that they sing would be the same, except for the fact that the man would be singing the lower notes of the scale, and the woman would be singing the upper notes. The result is that two very different ragas, with different tonal centers, ornaments, and performance histories can be performed at the same time, and are thus revealed to be both fundamentally related and significantly different.

All of these vocal forms of jugalbandi are usually restricted to players who have studied with the same guru and thus have a close affinity with each other. In fact, in most cases the performers are blood relatives, whose vocal blend is enhanced by the shared speech patterns that emerge when a family grows up together in the same household. Instrumental jugalbandis are usually structured as alternating solos rather than as counterpoint; the interaction is thus successive rather than simultaneous. But these instrumental jug-albandis are also assumed to work best when players share a guru. Ali Akbar and Ravi Shankar were perhaps the most famous jugalbandi duo of the 20th century, and their common roots in the teachings of Allaudin Khan were what made their performances together so unforgettable.

Nevertheless, there is one dramatic example of great jugalbandis created by two artists from different traditions. Vocalist Pandit Jasraj and bansuri maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia come from radically different musical backgrounds, and are the only jugalbandi duo that combines instrumental and vocal. But they have been performing together for almost a decade. One of these performances was recorded on a wonderful CD by tablist and record producer Eman, and this recording shows the many affinities that enable these two great artists to co-create.

Chaurasia once said that he played the bansuri because “the flute is an instrument you can sing through.” Like a singer he has superb breath control, perhaps because of his youthful training as a wrestler. His tone is strong, sweet, and unwavering, and he plays sruti patterns that were once thought to be impossible for the bansuri. The speed with which he can play the most dazzling rhythmic and melodic patterns has justly made him a great favorite with musicians all over, especially in the jazz world.

Jasraj’s amazing command of his three-and-a-half octave range makes it hard to believe that his voice is not an instrument of some sort. He can sing every possible sitar bend, sarod slide, and tabla rhythm, reminding us that the voice is where all music began. Usually with vocalists one has to choose between an experienced older singer whose voice is not as powerful as it was, or a strong young voice that still has more to learn. With Jasraj you get it all, for his 72 years of musical experience have given him artistic wisdom, and yet miraculously left his voice as young as an enchanted prince.

Although Jasraj and Chaurasia came to music from very different starting points, their turbulent early histories revealed in each an overwhelming desire to play the best possible music, regardless of the obstacles that were thrown in their way.

Chaurasia was born into a family of wrestlers with no interest in music. The only way he was able to get access to his first flute was by stealing it. He approached his first teacher, Pt. Rajaram, when he was only 10 years old, and had to learn to play in secret. When Chaurasia told his father that he was leaving home to accept his first job at All India Radio, his father asked him how he could have been hired as a flute player when he couldn’t play the flute! The exposure he received on All India Radio got him numerous offers from film composers, but success in this new career did not satisfy him. He wanted more classical training, and he remembered that Allaudin Khan had once said to him “if you can’t study with me, you should study with my daughter.” Chaurasia had never heard Annapurna Devi play before. Almost no one had, for there are no recordings of her, and she had not played in public since her divorce from Ravi Shankar. But she lived nearby in Mumbai, and Allaudin Khan was miles away in Maihar, so Chaurasia knocked on her door and asked to study with her. She told him to get out, calling him a “film wallah.” But he persisted for three years, until she finally agreed to even listen to him. When she heard him she said, “If I am to teach you, you must start completely over. How can you do that now?” He said that he would switch over to playing his flute on the opposite side, so that he would have to relearn all of his fingering. She agreed to this, and remains his guru to this day.

Although Pandit Jasraj was born into a family that had been singers for generations, his father’s early death forced his family to decide that he would never become a musician himself. He was sent to school, in hopes that he would master some lucrative middle-class profession. But one day he heard an old gramophone record of a ghazal in a café and knew immediately that he wanted to become a singer. He cut classes so he could come to that café and listen to that same record over and over, for there was no other music anywhere nearby. Finally, his family decided to let him become a tabla player, for there was a greater demand for accompanists than for soloists. He became accepted as prodigy before he was teenager, but resolved to become a singer instead when a promoter insulted him, and then refused to let him sit on the same level as the soloist. At 14 he began studying vocal music with his older brother Sangeet Mahamahopadhyaya Pandit Maniram, and thus began his life of devotion to singing. “I still play tabla for myself, but no longer perform,” says Jasraj, “but my tabla experience helps me hear what the tabla players are doing, and that means I can interact with them more effectively. Today of course the tabla players are treated with more respect, and that’s a good thing. With someone like Zakir Hussain, how could you do otherwise?”

Today both Jasraj and Chaurasia have been showered with honors. Both men have received the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Vibhushan, the Sangeet Natak Academy award, and the Rajeev Gandhi award. Chaurasia has received the best musician award from the Cine Musician Association, and has produced two platinum albums. Jasraj has auditoriums named after him in two North American cities, and the Jasraj Award was created by the government of Canada to honor and aide students of Indian music. Both men have also created schools of Indian music. Chaurasia’s Brindavan Gurukul gives free instruction to poor children in Mumbai, and is in the process of establishing a branch in California. Pandit Jasraj has schools run by his disciples in Atlanta, Vancouver, Pittsburgh, Tampa, and Jersey City. When they come together again to perform a jugalbandi, it will undoubtedly be a creation of three extraordinary individuals that will be both spontaneous and spiritual.

Electric Karnatik

L. Shankar revolutionizes South Indian violin

TEED ROCKWELL, Oct 03, 2002

One in a Million. Shankar and Gingger. www.silverlinerecords.com
Raga Aberi. Shankar with Zakir Hussain and Vikku Vinayakram. www.musicoftheworld.com/index2.html
Eternal Light. Shankar with Zakir Hussain and T.H. Vinayakram. www.momentrecords.com

In classical Hindustani music there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as a composer. Great musicians do “compose” ragas. But although these ragas do prescribe precise borders for improvisations, a raga is not a melody that is played the same way every time. In Karnatik music, however, (not unlike in European classical music) reverence for the great composers of the past is a constant influence on the musicians of the present. These composers were not composers in the Western sense i.e. people who wrote marks on paper that told instrumentalists and vocalists what music they were supposed to perform. But the music they created and performed has been passed down and is still the most requested part of the Karnatik musician’s repertoire. Just as the most popular Western orchestral music is Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, so the reliable stand-bys for the Karnatik musician are “the trinity”: Thyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar, and Syama Sastri, who were in fact performing and composing at about the same time as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.

This reverence for the past, however, has not stifled innovation in the present. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is violinist Shankar, who created a 10-stringed double violin that enables him to add the low notes of cello and double-bass to the standard violin range. This instrument not only expanded his performance range in Karnatik music, it also enabled him to become a sought-after rock session player. His wide vibratos and swooping slides sound like bowed Jimi Hendrix when run through electronic processing, and create the perfect World-Techno solos for rock musicians such as Peter Gabriel and the Talking Heads. Shankar even co-composed a film score with Peter Gabriel for Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ.

This contact with the world of rock understandably inspired Shankar to think of himself as rock star material. Like every classically trained Indian instrumentalist, he has studied vocal music intensively, and knows how to sing in a musically expressive manner. Unfortunately, writing simple music is often very difficult for people who have been trained in rich and complex traditions.

Shankar’s foray as a pop music frontman, a DVD called “One in a Million,” is exactly the opposite of its title. It is technically impeccable in performance and composition, and indistinguishable from millions of other albums. In an interview on the DVD Shankar says, “I play many instruments—violin, guitar—but my main instrument is my voice.” Shankar seems to think that will increase his chances of becoming a rock star. There is very little violin on the album. The instrumental accompaniment is provided by his friends from the rock world—Phil Collins, Tony Levin, and others—and they are supporting his vocals by doing pretty much what they would do on any other rock album.

Combining rock with other traditions often produces music that is fresh and imaginative. But there is no combination of styles here. If Shankar were combining Indian music with rock, I am sure that he could make music that would compare favorably with Shabazz, Jai Uttal, or Cheb I Sabbah. But Shankar has simply thrown out everything that makes him a great artist, and is pretending to be a westernized mediocrity in hopes of attracting a pop audience. He would do well to notice that this is not the strategy used by his friends who have become rock stars. There is far more world music on a Peter Gabriel or King Crimson album than there is on “One in a Million.”

Fortunately, the two other recordings listed above are among the many that show Shankar’s special gift for simultaneously revolutionizing and preserving Karnatik music. Both albums feature original compositions by Shankar. “Eternal Light” has a truly ground-breaking ragamalika which not only combines several different scales, but also includes vocal interludes, and even shifts tonal centers and taals. Raga Aberi (nominated for a Grammy in 1996) uses the traditional Karnatik format of ragam, tanam, pallavi. But the double-necked violin opens new frontiers that revitalize this tradition in truly profound ways.

A solid-bodied electric violin has no natural reverberance at all, which makes it almost sound like the listener is sitting directly underneath the strings. So Shankar adds varying amounts of reverb, (On Raga Aberi very little, on Eternal Light a great deal), which makes the instrument sound like it is two different sizes. Because the low strings are much shorter and thinner than standard cello or bass strings, they are extremely slack, which gives their sound a wild plaintive quality. And because he does not use the standard vibrato that Western string players use, these strings do not sound like cello or bass even when he is playing in the lower register. This is especially noticeable when Shankar is playing the droning patterns which Western violinists call “double-stops.” When he barely touches the high strings, he creates a delicate sound in the double-stops that flutters expressively around the melody. When he digs deep into the low strings, he creates a wide vibrato that seems to be stretching them almost to their breaking point. And there is nothing to compare to his “double-necked double-stops” in which he plays chords that do multi-octave leaps over all 10 strings.

Is there anyone else who can play this amazing instrument? Shankar’s musical partner, Gingger, has been studying with him for eight years, and plays the only other instrument of this kind in the world. Is she any good? That’s a hard question to answer with first hand evidence, for the only recording of the two of them is Shankar’s pop DVD. She and Shankar sing together for most of this album. But whatever violin-playing they do is so buried in synthesizers, it’s hard to even identify, let alone evaluate. And there are no recordings of the two of them playing classical music.

However, I did find a review on the Internet of one their live classical performances which said “After the show, I was reeling for three hours … an amazing performance which brought improvisation and virtuosity together to create an very involving experience.” There is some double tracking on the Raga Aberi album which gives some idea of how two double violins could interact with each other—octave melodies, jugalbandi—and it is quite beautiful. There is no doubt that Shankar at his best is as good as anyone could ask for. To hear him play with his prize student is sure to be an event that is not to be missed.

Musical Travels

The Rough Guide leads a tour through rarely explored corners of Indian music

TEED ROCKWELL, Oct 30, 2002

The Rough Guide to the Music of India. Available at www.worldmusic.net
This is the age of coalition capitalism, in which no one business ever seems to produce something by itself. Today’s movies usually start with a series of animated logos by the contributing production companies—staring tigers, stampeding horses, small boys fishing from the moon—which sometimes seem to take as long as the movie itself. But movies are not the only art form that relies on coalitions. The Rough Guide to the Music of India CD has four logos on the back, symbolizing companies whose relationship is described thusly: “Produced by World Music Network, in association with Rough Guides, 11.11.11, and New Internationalist.” So what did each of these organizations contribute to this CD? There’s no answer to that question in the liner notes, and a Web search gives too many answers to put in a single article.

None of these organizations are stereotypically capitalist; one senses that their executives wear jeans and sandals rather than suits and power ties. New Internationalist magazine features articles on Islamic feminism and the ethical implications of corporate globalization. The Belgian organization 11.11.11 gets its name from a yearly ceremony they hold on November 11 at 11:00 to remind people of the inequitable distribution of wealth between the northern and southern hemispheres. And Rough Guides provides all kinds of information for travelers of every sort: where to find good hotels and restaurants, deals on travel insurance and airline tickets, even guides for travelers through cyberspace. They rightly concluded that it was in their best interest to get people interested in as many different kinds of international music as possible, and World Music Network realized that those who came to the rough guides Web site would probably be as interested in hearing international music as traveling to different countries. And so the two companies joined forces to produce over 80 Rough Guide CDs, several of which feature Indian music. There is one CD entirely devoted to Bhangra, another to Bollywood music, and one with nothing but Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And for those who have trouble choosing, there is this CD, which offers a little bit of everything.

The thing that makes this CD compilation interesting is that it makes none of the obvious choices. There is no Ravi Shankar, no Ali Akbar Khan, and no attempt to focus on what is “pure” or “genuine.” On the contrary, the primary focus seems to be on the ways in which Indians have appropriated and transformed Western elements for their own aesthetic purposes. The inside panel has an image that expresses this perfectly: three Indian boys playing cricket on a dock near the Ganges river, using a bat and wicket that they obviously had made and beautifully decorated themselves. Cricket is, of course, now as Indian as samosas, and most of the music on this CD is every bit as Indian as cricket.

There are four filmi songs, each of which captures the spirit of a very different stage in the history of Indian popular music. The first song on the album, Asha Bhosle’s “Aaj Ki Raat” is clearly designed to be played through tiny crystal radios strapped to the front of buses—the sound is thin and squawky, like 78rpm vinyl. It also has orchestrations that are straight out of a James Bond Movie—twangy electric guitars, trumpet blasts, echo effects that make Bhosle’s voice reiterate like this-this-this-this, and whatever other Western pop music tricks were in vogue at the time. The song, however, is considered to be a classic. It is been rerecorded by many people, including San Francisco’s Avant-Garde Kronos String Quartette, and Bhosle’s version, for all its eccentricities, has an undeniable charm. There is one moment I especially like, which sounds at first like a girlish squeal, but actually contains subtle shifts in sruti that are genuinely musical.

One benefit of starting with an old recording is that it makes the rest of the recordings on this CD sound like masterpieces of modern engineering. A.R. Rahman’s “Thee Thee” from the movie Thiruda, Thiruda was recorded 20 years later, but shows a thorough understanding of both audio recording and Western popular music. Rahman’s music does not just borrow bits and pieces from the West, he takes the music to new places and discovers affinities with Indian music that make authentic sense. There is a similar high recording quality to be found on the many classical selections, with a strong emphasis on recently introduced or rarely heard instruments.

Mohan Bhatt plays Hindustani slide guitar, and Ravikiran plays the chitra vina, which is the traditional Karnatik equivalent of the slide guitar. Kadri Gopalnath plays a 19th century Karnatik melody by Thyagaraja on the saxophone. Kamalesh Maitra plays melodies on the array of tuned tablas known as tabla tarang, which was originally invented at the request of Uday Shankar to accompany his dance troupe. Even the relatively straightforward classical selections strive for something out of the ordinary. Sultan Khan is not only featured in a jugalbandi with sitarist Rais Khan, but also in a vocal performance of the Rajasthani folk song “Soja Re” sung as a memorial tribute to the recently deceased Allah Rakha, and accompanied by his son Zakir Hussain.

And all of this is described and explained in meticulous detail in producer Ken Hunt’s liner notes. His omnivorous affection for all aspects of Indian music was clearly the unifying factor behind this diverse album. I would quibble with his statement that the CD’s recording of the New Bharat Brass Band may sound out of tune “to Western ears.”

This is undeniably true, but anyone who has ever studied Indian music would know that it would sound even more out of tune to Indian ears. It’s just that the Indians wouldn’t care, because they would know that a wedding is not the time to worry about such things. But overall, Hunt’s notes are eloquent, perceptive, and well-informed, and make him the perfect tour guide for this colorful journey through the many varieties of Indian music.

East Meets West Meets East Meet …

How English Brass Band music traveled to India and back again

TEED ROCKWELL, Dec 19, 2002

Rahmania. The Bollywood Brass Band. Emergency Exit Arts available at www.bollywoodbrassband.co.uk

Fanfare Du Rajastan. Jaipur Kawa Brass Band Iris Music available at www.amazon.com

Disco Bhangra: Wedding Bands from Rajastan. Avant (Japan) available from Down Home Music Store, 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, CA 94530. (510) 525-2129.

During the British Raj, marching bands were considered one of the primary ways of imposing the “civilizing” force of European culture on the Indian populace. In the days before wireless communication, the bagpipes were the only way that thousands of troops could immediately be informed of their commander’s orders. Each bagpipe melody was a signal with a specific military meaning, such as halt, attack, retreat, etc. And military parades, with thousands of soldiers marching in lockstep to the sounds of brass bands, were an effective way of expressing the power of the British Empire.

For this reason, thousands of Indian men and boys were taught to play a variety of western band instruments: bagpipes, trumpets, clarinets, tubas, snare drums. And when homesick British soldiers wanted to hear something to remind them of England, these same musicians could be pressed into service to perform at dances and Sunday concerts in the park. When they performed they wore uniforms that combined elements of both English and Indian military finery: brass buttons, gold braid, along with silk sashes and turbans!

Today the British military presence in India is only a memory, but surprising manifestations of the old marching bands’ influence can still be found. Sonoma State musicologist and khayal singer Laxmi Ganesh Tewari once showed me a picture of an Indian man in a loincloth sitting on the ground next to a tabla player, playing a bagpipe made with beautifully embroidered Indian cloth. I asked Tewari “Is there a bagpipe gharana in India?” “Actually, that man’s grandfather played bagpipe in a British marching band,” said Tewari. “When the British left, they let him keep the bagpipe, and it was passed down through the family since then. The original cloth was a Scottish tartan, but it wore out years ago. He plays Indian folk tunes on it, mostly.”

But by far the biggest impact has been the persistent popularity of what are often called “band parties.” Traditionally public celebrations were accompanied by the music of folk drums and Indian wind instruments—the shehnai in the north and the nadaswaram in the south. But now almost every important occasion in India is accompanied by a large aggregate of brass and reed players, who march through the streets letting everyone know by sheer volume and enthusiasm that something important is going on. These bands are considered an indispensable part of most Indian weddings. They also play on holidays like Diwali and Ganesh Chaturthi.

Since the departure of the Raj, British spit and polish has been replaced by the Indian entrepreneurial spirit. In any large Indian city there will be up to 100 brass bands competing for business. They tend to be in a particular area of the city and each has its own shop, which is basically a small room opening onto the street that displays pictures of the band and uniform choices. The band itself however, is an extremely amorphous unit, whose membership and size fluctuates depending on who is available and how much the customer is willing and/or able to pay. The person who manages the band is the most accomplished player, and owns the uniforms, which have the same Anglo-Indian military style as the old army bands. The manager usually plays improvised lines on clarinet or saxophone, and is often a fairly accomplished musician. But the rest of the players are picked up for each individual job, and often have to be supplied instruments by the manager. In fact, in the larger jobs many of the “musicians” can’t play at all, but only carry instruments to give a sense that a really big band is playing.

The album “Disco Bhangra” features recordings of several such “band parties,” with varying levels of technical competence. This music has clearly taken on a life of its own since the British left. “God Save the Queen” is no longer on the set list. The primary repertoire is Indian film songs, including one with the English lyrics “I am a disco dancer.” Each band usually accompanies a singer amplified by a squawky, echoing, battery powered P.A. system carried on a hand-drawn cart, usually decorated with Christmas tree lights powered by the same battery. And although there is some expressive playing by an occasional lead clarinetist, it’s obvious that most of the other musicians are making educated (and not so educated) guesses as to what parts they are supposed to play next. The result is more listenable than you might think from this description, but it is definitely not music for the compulsive perfectionist.

The Jaipur Kawa Brass Band is in a different class altogether, featuring performers who have played together for years. Admittedly their arranged unison lines are not always perfect. But their rhythm section has powerful and tight interactions between bass drums and cymbals, and the horns and reeds have a wild expressive vibrato reminiscent of the gamak used by khayal singers. It isn’t classical music, but it has an authentic intensity that could have arisen nowhere but in India. Understandably, this music has started to appeal to lovers of Western brass band music, and the Jaipur Kawa band is now one of many such groups that has been well received in England and Europe.

Another such group was the Shyam Brass Band, which collaborated with an English band that was then called Crocodile Styles. These Brits were so enthusiastic about this new style of music that they renamed themselves the Bollywood Brass Band, and begin learning the Shyam Band’s arrangements of Indian film songs. At one of their concerts, a well-to-do Indian gentleman asked them if they played weddings. That first wedding performance led to more and more offers, and soon they had all the paraphernalia of an Indian wedding band—including an Indian dhol drummer, and those nifty Anglo-Indian band uniforms with turbans and sashes.

And so band party music has come full circle. Once played by Indians hired by English in India who wanted to be reminded of England, it is now played by English hired by Indians in England who want to be reminded of India. And these English (who have last names like Cohen, Jago, and d’Amonville) are certainly going to take this “traditional music” in new directions. The band’s first (self-titled) album was a faithful reproduction of their wedding party performances. With their second album “Rahmania,” they collaborate with a percussion ensemble called Sambhangra, which combines Indian and Latin percussions, to create arrangements of the songs of film composer A.R. Rahman. They are also using the recording studio to create techno remixes of their own songs. Will their customers object to this innovation? Not Likely. How can you capture Rahman’s unique Bollywood sound without drum machines and synthesizers?

Teed Rockwell has studied classical Indian music for fifteen years at the Ali Akbar College of Music and privately with Habib Khan and the Salamat Ali Khan family.

Tradition and Change

Prabha Atre speaks of the future of Indian music

TEED ROCKWELL, Feb 12, 2003

Enlightening the Listener, book and cassette by Prabha Atre. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi. Available through Amazon.com.

It’s obvious that many Indian classical musi-cians are willing to blend their music with other styles. What is not so widely acknowledged is that classical music itself has changed over the centuries and continues to change today. The assumption is that classical music itself is an unbroken and unchanging tradition, even if classical musicians might occasionally want to combine that tradition with other elements. Prabha Atre, however, sees things differently, and there are good reasons for taking her views seriously.

She is one of the foremost female khyal vocalists representing the Kirana Gharana, having received the Padmashree and the Sangeet Natak Academy awards from the Indian government. She has been an assistant producer for All India Radio, and once ran a classical record label called Swarashree.

And perhaps most importantly, she is familiar with both the modern and traditional methods of training musicians. She was trained in the traditional gurukul system by the late Sureshbabu Mane and his famous sister, Padmabhushan Hirabai Badodekar. But she has also been Head of the Department of Music, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai, and taught at the University of California on a senior Fulbright fellowship.

In her recent book “Enlightening the Listener,” Atre draws on this rich domain of experience to make some refreshingly original observations on the differences between traditional and modern systems of music and of music education. The first essay, which takes up about one third of the book, is an introduction to the fundamentals of Hindustani music, with an emphasis on vocal. This sort of thing has been done many times before, but Atre does it well, and even the most experienced listener will pick up something new and interesting from her analysis. Especially helpful are the sections on vocal ornaments which, thanks to the accompanying cassette, are much clearer than mere verbal descriptions could ever be. She also has created some charts that show relationships and differences between various styles of music. These are quite original and ingenious, and yet the connections and distinctions still seem undeniable once she points them out. The real meat of the book, however, are the numerous short essays which build on the information in the first essay, and give persuasive arguments why much of what passes for common wisdom in Indian music needs to be reconsidered.

One of her biggest concerns is the fact that the university system produces scholars and the gurukul system produces musicians. Having learned and taught in both worlds she can see the strengths and weaknesses of each. She boldly suggests that the reason the gurukul system requires years of work to produce great artists is that it is not very efficient. Because so little theory gets taught, it is difficult for the artists to expand what they know to new territory, or to overcome blocks and obstacles to their progress. The university system, on the other hand, often produces people who can pass tests and do research about music theory, but do not learn how to perform. She suggests a variety of specific solutions to these and other problems, based on her experience as a teacher: creating more performance opportunities in universities, and utilizing modern technology such as the tape recorder and the metronome to speed up the learning process.

Performance is a learning experience not only because it gives an opportunity to practice. A discriminating audience also teaches the performer by responding to her best moments with cries of encouragement, and those elements that inspire the audience naturally become more prominent in the repertoire of the performer. Atre even asserts that film music has had a positive influence on classical music, because it has forced khayal singers to work on beauty of tone in their singing, and not just focus on creativity in improvisation. She also has a very effective series of exercises for learning a melody, concentrating on each musical element separately, so that words, melody, sargam, and tabla bols are each absorbed through separate forms of practice.

Sargam, in particular, is her passion, for she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject. Although her dissertation became the basis for two award wining books which were first published in Marathi, then translated into Hindi, this book contains her only English writings on this or any other subject. And these English writings are clearly only the visible tip of a highly developed set of arguments and theories. Atre points out that no singer marks every single note he/she sings with a sargam syllable, especially during those long ornamented passages called murki. The choice of sargam syllables thus determines which notes the singer considers to be fundamental and which are mere ornaments. This shapes how the melody is heard in ways that cannot be duplicated by either an instrument or a poetic verse. The increasing importance of sargam is also an indication of the artist’s constant need to free herself from the words, and to express the raga as a pure abstraction with it’s own uniquely musical meaning. Atre sees this trend as essential for the development of Indian music.

This last claim may seem uncontroversial to Westerners, but it puts Atre in conflict with traditional Indian music theory. If ragas are purely abstract, then the system of rasas, which is designed to describe the emotional content of works of art, is not a universal set of transcendental principles, but only a set of social agreements and conventions. It also means that the idea that each raga should only be played at certain times is also only a social convention. Some may find this hard to accept, but Atre bites this particular bullet with enthusiasm, giving numerous arguments why these principles cannot be as universal as traditionally believed.

Her arguments undeniably have some merit, but personally I am inclined to lean more towards the traditional view. The idea that music is completely abstract was embraced by many 20th century Avant-garde composers in the West, and it often caused them to create music which was sterile, cerebral, and lifeless. Perhaps there is some middle ground between these two extremes. Couldn’t we say that even though the rasas are based on traditions and conventions, that they are still a valid basis for creative expression?

After all, the meanings of words are based entirely on social conventions, and poets still manage to create art with them. Why couldn’t musicians do the same? I don’t know what Atre’s reply would be to this suggestion, but I am sure it would be perceptive and thoughtful. Her openness to new ideas is beautifully expressed in this quote from her book: “In the sphere of art, no questions have final answers or need to be answered with finality. They are open ended. It is enough to examine them, ponder over them, in which process many a cobweb is brushed away.”

Teed Rockwell has studied classical Indian music for fifteen years at the Ali Akbar College of Music and privately with Habib Khan and the Salamat Ali Khan family.

A Night to Remember

Sound photosynthesis captures classic Ali Akbar Khan-Zakir Hussain performance

TEED ROCKWELL, Mar 12, 2003

Ali Akbar Khan accompanied by Zakir Hussain. Concert at St. John’s in Berkeley, 1987. Part I: Roop Manjari Mallar and Pahari Jhinjoti. Part II: Zilla Kafi. Available at www.soundphotsynthesis.com and www.aacm.org.

Now that home videos are widely avail-able, it is possible to not only hear concerts from the past but see them, and this is an even greater blessing.

Even though music is a sonic art form, the visual element is still important, even for concerts by musicians who have no interest in theatrics. Concerts may produce some spiritual “vibe” or “energy,” which can’t be captured on film or video. But a video can still increase our appreciation of music in ways that an audio recording cannot, because what we hear is shaped and conditioned by what we see. Modern neuroscience has taught us that the theory of five separate senses is a myth. The input from our eyes, ears, and tactile sensors crosses and blends throughout the brain; it is not processed by discrete modules. Seeing the musician’s hands thus makes it easier to hear exactly the speed and depth of the trill or vibrato or slide. Even the hand gestures of khayal singers, which have no direct causal connection to the sounds of the voice, give a sense of the ebb and flow of the melody. And when you can repeatedly see a musician’s performance, with the opportunity to play back particular passages, you get an understanding of a musician’s art that cannot be duplicated any other way.

These two videos have been amongst my most precious possessions for years. I was fortunate enough to attend this concert in 1987, and can never forget the impact that it had on the Bay Area Hindustani music community. The thunderous applause did not stop even after Ali Akbar Khan and Zakir Hussain had walked the full length of the concert hall and out into the lobby. For months afterwards, the students at the Ali Akbar College of Music received lessons from Khansahib that were filled with exuberant youthful energy. In every class he introduced melodies and rhythms of breathtaking virtuosity with an impish smile on his face, as if to say, “I dare you to try this one.” These videos of that groundbreaking evening make it possible to retrace the source of that inspiration, which had a profound impact on all of Khansahib’s students during that time.

The videos themselves are unedited one-camera shoots, which are documents not works of art. They are almost never out of focus, the sound can be heard clearly even through a television speaker, and the videographer knew enough about the music to point the camera at the right person at the right time. All of this enables the video to become an invisible conduit for the performance, which is so magnificent that it quickly dispels any awareness that one is watching a tiny screen in one’s living room. And because this video provides an opportunity to see and hear the same concert several times, this music can continue to reveal the many facets of its greatness with each new viewing. The strong personal communication between the two musicians is definitely one factor. We see Hussain reverently trying to touch Khansahib’s feet during the applause, and Khansahib seizing Hussain’s hands in a handshake before they could reach their intended destination. But most importantly, we see Khansahib’s and Hussain’s ability to work completely within a tradition without being at all confined by it. Studying other Hindustani musicians reveals that there are certain structures that everyone else follows, to make sure that their improvisations have firm foundations. Khansahib and Hussain, however, know these foundations so well that they can use them as points of departure, rather than places to settle down.

Traditionally, the featured performance of a concert is a single raga, first developed in the solo alaap-jhor-jhala format, and then moving on to variations on a gat (melody) that follows the taal cycle played by the tabla player. Khansahib, however, plays the alaap/jhor/jhala in the raga Roop Manjari Mallar, and the gat in raga Pahari Jhinjoti. It was an unlikely combination, even though the two ragas have very similar scales.

Roop Manjari Mallar is a rare and difficult raga, which Khansahib admitted he was playing in public for the first time. Pahari Jhinjoti was described by Khansahib as “a small and questionable raga, which gives you lots of freedom, like a big estate on a small island.” Khansahib used this freedom to bend the light raga into the shape of the heavy raga by using the same leitmotif in both: the phrase “n P m R G (or in the key of C: B flat, G, F, D, E). He then proceeded to play variations on that phrase which seriously rival the variations that Beethoven built around the famous four note phrase in his fifth symphony.

The phrase first appears in the long arhythmic alaap at the beginning of the concert. It then reappears as the mukhda (extended pickup phrase) in the gat built around the new raga. Most Hindustani musicians use the mukhda as a recurring theme, and play or sing their variations everywhere else.

Khansahib, however, reverses this practice, and uses the mukhda as the place to do the most complex variations. And because he has already played this mukhda phrase several times in the alaap, he can start building these variations almost immediately. He triple-times the phrase and plays it three times, so it becomes a tihai that is exactly the length of the mukhda.

He then builds several other tihais around this same phrase, changing its length and adding a variety of different slides and trills. And finally, once this phrase has become completely associated with the tihai format, Khansahib uses it to create a bizarre hybrid: a pseudo-tihai which repeats the same melodic phrase three times, but stretches and compresses the rhythmic values so that no one of these phrases is the same length.

These revolutionary variations on the tihai format are only one example of Hussain’s and Khansahib’s ability to create a breathtakingly large number of variations within what anyone else would see as a narrow range of possibilities. There is a period of almost 10 minutes where Khansahib plays nothing but variations on low-note slides and bends. The emotional intensity increases as vibrato and slides become gradually deeper and wider, and each phrase climbs higher as it moves up the scale, then down, then up again. When Hussain takes a solo, he explores all the nuances of one distinctive rhythmic pattern. One solo is built around the triplet shuffle known as “trigun laya,” another explores every ripple of the rich textural swirls of fast terekita patterns. Traditionally, when a tabla player takes a solo, the melody instrument plays a preset pattern. Khansahib, however, ornaments this supportive melody in ways that help shape and guide the solo, without ever overpowering it.

The performance of these paired ragas concludes when Khansahib breaks his second string of the evening, and gracefully escapes with a wildly dissonant, but rhythmically impeccable, tihai. (The first broken string had been used by Hussain as an opportunity for a tabla solo, which concluded with the creaking sound of Khansahib’s tuning pegs, followed by the reappearance of the gat at exactly the right point in the taal cycle.) Khansahib had announced that he was going to play in both slow and fast tintal. However, the variations in slow tintal had built up to such a level of speed and exuberance that the fast tintal had become superfluous. But because both artists and audience could not bear to have this concert end, the artists performed the two pieces on the second video. Zilla Kafi in moderate tintal could not stay moderate for very long. Once again, the energy builds higher and higher, and the imagination is continually challenged by audacious variations. Then Khansahib expresses his regrets that the concert hall will have to close soon, and plays a Bhairavi in dadra tal to conclude the evening. This would ordinarily be a diverting light classical appetizer, but even here Khansahib pushes the envelope.

Among other things, he plays whole phrases exactly a quarter-step sharp, then resolves back to standard tuning in places that make perfect musical sense. And finally, there is the applause, and the flowers, and the memories, which thanks to these videos, can be shared forever.

Teed Rockwell has studied Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and other great Indian musicians. He is the first person to play Hindustani music on the Touchstyle Fretboard.

All in the Family

Kriyative World Music launches new label with T.N. Krishnan recording

TEED ROCKWELL, Apr 14, 2003

The Carnatic Violin. T.N. Krishnan (violin) with Sriram Krishnan (violin) and Trichy Sankaran (mridangam). Available at www.kriyative.com.

I recently received a CD from a record producer who signed his name as Ram Krishnan. When I told him that I might need some information on Karnatik music to review the album he had sent me, he said modestly that he could probably give me the help I needed. I only realized what an understatement this was when I figured out that he was actually the Sriram Krishnan listed as second violin, and that his father, T.N. Krishnan, was the great Karnatik violinist featured on the album. Sriram might appear to some people to be more “modern” than the rest of his family. He is a computer engineer by profession, and recorded this first album on his Kriyative label using the computer program Pro Tools(R). “It was lucky for me that recording went digital, because now I can use my computer engineering skills, without having to learn the details of traditional analog recording” says Sriram. But he also grew up practicing Karnatik music four to five hours a day since the age of six, and if his progress did not satisfy his father and grandfather, it was his homework that had to be sacrificed. And although these two men who guided his life were unconditionally devoted to classical music, Sriram sees his father and grandfather as his primary inspiration for “pushing the envelope.”

Sriram’s grandfather, A. Narayana Iyer, came from a blood lineage of Karnatik musicians which goes back for six generations. He lived mostly in Kerala, far away from any of the major centers of Hindustani music. But this did not stop him from developing an interest in, and eventually learning to play, Hindustani music. It was also extremely rare for women in pre-independence India to have careers as classical instrumentalists. But this did not stop him from training his daughter, and eventually even permitting her to leave and study with another guru when she decided to become a Hindustani musician. She is now internationally known as Dr. N. Rajam, one of the world’s greatest Hindustani violinists. Consequently, Iyer’s lineage now has two branches. Rajam has trained her daughter Sangeetha Shankar and niece Kala Ramnath in the Hindustani tradition. T.N. Krishnan has continued the Karnatik lineage by training not only Sriram, but also Sriram’s sister Viji Krishnan Natarajan. And both sides of the tradition continue with Viji’s son and Sangeeta’s daughters.

“I should note that while these are the individuals who’ve chosen to pursue music professionally, every child in the family has been through some amount of training in music,” says Sriram. “We were taught that whether or not you choose to make your living with music, developing musical understanding and the discipline to master a skill was an essential part of being a fulfilled human being. The credit for this goes to my grandfather.”

“He was a true visionary who not only groomed and nurtured the talents of my father and aunt, but also trained countless children. He was a strict disciplinarian when it came to riyaaz (practice) who would not accept anything less than 150 percent every time. Concurrently he would balance that with words of encouragement and positive reinforcement. My father once told me that he’s never heard my grandfather lose his patience and tell someone that they would never ‘get’ it. Needless to say, my sister, my cousins, and I cherish the memories of our training under him; which is a remarkable legacy to leave behind. It’s quite natural for grandchildren to recall their grandparents with fond memories. But when you combine that with the intense guru-student relationship, you have a feeling that grows more meaningful and relevant over time.”

There’s also no question that this relationship must have been equally close between Iyer and his son T.N. Krishnan. Thanks to Sriram’s sensitivity to the family tradition, the sound of his father’s Karnatik violin has been captured on this recording perfectly. Because Karnatik violin does not use the steady vibrato of the European symphonic violin, it often sounds rather thin when recorded. Because Hindustani music was designed to be heard in intimate house concerts, it is usually recorded without reverb, and the assumption has been that Karnatik music should be recorded the same way. Sriram, however, points out that Karnatik music was often played for huge crowds at temples and the sound carried because the temples had hard reverberant walls. Sriram has duplicated this sound by an artful combination of electronic reverb and the natural resonance of the wood floors and walls of Mambo studios in Los Angeles. The result is a perfect showcase for the many unique nuances of T.N. Krishnan’s playing.

Krishnan was unquestionably an innovator, for it was the new level of virtuosity achieved by him and his contemporaries that elevated the violin to the status of a solo instrument. But his technical accomplishments are the sort which are not mastered by players who equate virtuosity with speed. Karnatik ragas have certain notes called jeeva swara or life notes, which are rather like the vadi and samvadi notes. These notes must be ornamented with particular kinds of gamaka (slides or vibrato), and all improvised melodies should frequently mark the jeeva swara with long held notes. Too many fast passages that scamper from octave to octave blur the jeeva swara and make all ragas in the same scale indistinguishable from each other. Krishnan can play fast when it is musically appropriate, but this is the only time that he plays fast. His awareness of the importance of the jeeva swara put the breath of life into every note he plays, fast or slow, and his command of every aspect of gamaka is truly awe-inspiring.

This recording whets the appetite for the next release of Kriyative records: a north meets south, brother and sister Jugalbandi with Krishnan and Rajan. At the moment we must rely on descriptions by Sriram, who is still mastering this unreleased recording. “One of the many fascinating contrasts between the two traditions is the way they develop the alapana (called the alap in the Hindustani tradition.) “When my aunt develops the raga in Hindustani style, she follows the note progression, lingering and exploring the distinctive mood of each note, while my father in the Karnatik style would use a characteristic “pidippu” (phrase or riff) to unequivocally establish the identity and personality of the raga, and then proceed to express all the various nuances and moods in each jeeva swara. He would play with the pidippu in ways that emphasize first certain notes, then others. Consequently, in both styles we hear the raga unfolding, but the unfolding process takes place in different ways and follows different rules. This is one of the many things which shows that although the traditions have different personalities today, they must have evolved from a single form of music that accounts for the family resemblance. This is why it is good for them to sometimes come together today, so that we can revel in both their similarities and their differences.”

Teed Rockwell has studied Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and other great Indian musicians. He is the first person to play Hindustani music on the Touchstyle Fretboard.

Jim Owen gathers his gurus for historic drum summit

TEED ROCKWELL, May 21, 2003

SACRED DRUMS OF INDIA. Subash Chandran (ghatam and drum recitations), Ganesh Kumar (kanjira), Swapan Chaudhuri (tabla), and Jim Santi Owen (Trap set). Recorded Aug. 27, 2002, at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, CA. Available at www.artbazaar.biz/riyaz

Indian classical music is handed down by the guru-shishya parampara, which is a social relationship more like that of parent and child than student and teacher. Traditionally, the student lived with the teacher, and helped around the house, and the idea of exchanging money for lessons was considered to be improper. If the student was not a blood relative of the teacher, it was often required that he marry into the family. Today the constant opportunities for travel have made this relationship the exception rather than the rule in modern India. Most Hindustani and Karnatik artists of this generation have been influenced, either consciously or unconsciously, by many kinds of music, both Indian and non-Indian. But this ideal has been kept alive in many ways at the Ali Akbar College of Music (AACM) in Northern California. Most of the students see the college as the spiritual center of their lives, and would never think of studying Indian music anywhere else. Percussionist Jim Santi Owen is a partial exception to this rule in certain ways, but he made sure to keep to the spirit of the guru-shishya parampara when he expanded his studies into Karnatik music.

Owen began studying tabla in 1991 with Swapan Chaudhuri at the Ali Akbar College of Music, and soon realized that Indian percussion was his first love. He became one of only three Americans to undergo the traditional Indian ritual with Chaudhuri called gandha bandhan, which formally seals and consecrates the guru-shishya relationship. When Owen became interested in studying Karnatik percussion, he first asked permission from his guru. When this permission was granted, Owen made sure to limit himself to only one guru for each style of music that he studied. He learned mridangam, ghatam, kanjira and morsing from T.H. Subash Chandran and tavil from K. Sekar. This led him to discover that India had many different forms of drum ensembles which break free of the standard drummer’s role of keeping and ornamenting the time for melody instruments.

In 1999 Owen received a fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies to research these percussion ensembles in India. He spent the better part of two-and-a-half years living in India conducting this research. Although based alternately in Kolkata and Chennai, he traveled extensively in India documenting drumming traditions in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and West Bengal. When he returned to the United States, he collaborated with AACM tabla player Tim Witter (who had also had a gandha bandhan with Chaudhuri) to co-found a percussion ensemble called Tabla Rasa, which explores the integration and intersection of various Indian percussion traditions.

Tabla Rasa features several AACM students playing tabla compositions, many of which are composed by their guru Swapan Chaudhuri. There is nothing quite like the sound of a tabla ensemble thundering triumphantly in tight rhythmic unison, and Tabla Rasa has been building a loyal following with each performance. Owen and Witter also produce concerts that feature guest percussionists from a variety of different traditions, from African congas to Italian tamborine. One of these performances, which featured the Hindustani and Karnatik percussion styles of Owen’s gurus, is now available on a CD called “Sacred Drums of India.”

This CD features Swapan Chaudhuri on tabla with two great Karnatik percussionists: Subash Chandran on ghatam, and Ganesh Kumar on kanjira. Although these three instruments sound very different from each other, they share a quality that is rare among hand percussion instruments: the ability to play both very low and very high pitches, sometimes simultaneously. The ghatam is basically a clay pot. When hit with the fingertips it creates high crisp staccato sounds, like the “terikitas” of a tabla. When hit with heel of the wrist, however, it can make rich booming sounds, and when the ghatam player contracts and releases his belly these sounds produces deep sliding pitches like the bass baya of the tablas. The kanjira, a tiny tamborine with only one jingle, can also make these deep sliding sounds, because its drum head is made of monitor lizard skin. When moistened in exactly the right way, this rare skin responds dramatically to hand pressure in ways that no synthetic fiber can match. (A fact that greatly frustrates modern kanjira players, because the monitor lizard is now listed as an endangered species and kanjira heads are almost impossible to replace.)

The CD begins with solos from each of these percussionists. Although the instruments have very different histories and tone colors, and the solos are all improvised, each performance still develops in ways that are noticeably similar to the others. First there is a basic rhythmic figure played in the crisp upper notes, followed by increasingly complex variations. Then the bass notes enter, increase in volume, and then begin to sweep up and down the lower register in dramatic flourishes. Finally the high notes reappear in fast flourishes, which are over-layered and/or alternate with the low booming pitches. The music then gradually increases in intensity and rhythmic complexity until it stops with a dramatic climax. Some of these similarities are probably the result of parallel developments in the different traditions, but unquestionably many of them were inspired by the spirit of the evening. There are repeated shouts of phrases of encouragement, such as “shaabash,” “bravo,” and “great”, which set up a sense of rapport that is noticeably infectious even on CD. And Chaudhuri, who ordinarily plays fixed compositions for solos, lets himself go with completely spontaneous improvisations that incorporate both elements from his own tradition and that of the other musicians he has just heard.

Ghatam-player Subash Chandran then does a solo recitation of konnokol, the syllables that are used to name each of the tone colors of the Karnatik mridangam. Although these syllables were originally developed as learning aids for Karnatik percussion, they have now become a virtuoso performance form in their own right. Not only does Chandran use every imaginable rhythmic division and combination (3, 4, 5, 7 and 9, to name a few) he also varies his vocal pitch, volume, and expression in ways that percussively blur the line between singing and speaking, surpassing even the best African-American rappers.

The final performance of the recording features all three master musicians accompanied by Owen on the Western jazz trap set. It may seem ironic that Owen, who has traveled so far to study so many different kinds of Indian percussion, ends up performing on that prosaic instrument that most Westerners assume is sufficiently described by the ambiguous term “drums.” Perhaps this is best explained by the aphorism from postcard philosopher Ashley Brilliant, “If you want to find out who you are, find out who everyone else is, and you’re what’s left.”

Owen has played Indian drums with many well-known American musicians, including Stanley Jordan and Pharaoh Sanders. But when playing on the stage with Indian virtuosos like Chaudhuri, Chandran, and Kumar, his ability to translate their rhythms to the trap set gives him an opportunity to play a role that is both supportive and creative. Certainly this combination of players from different traditions, which will reunite again in Berkeley this month, has enabled all involved to challenge both themselves and their audiences in ways that create profound experiences for everyone involved.

From Realization to Liberation

TEED ROCKWELL, Jun 02, 2003

LIBERATION. Karsh Kale with his band Realize and special guests Zakir Hussain, Bill Laswell, and the Madras Chamber Orchestra. Six Degrees Records. Available at most record stores and at www.sixdegreesrecords.com

Many of us who play instruments, or grew up listening to music played by actual human beings, have trouble accepting the idea that music can be made by sampling and programming. It just seems too easy to “create” music by pushing a button or moving a fader, and it seems unfair to refer to people who do such things as musicians. An analogous comparison can be made in the visual arts between painting and collage. Do we really want to say that someone who cuts out somebody else’s picture and pastes it on a canvas is as much an artist as someone who paints the picture herself? The answer to that question is actually “Yes, but … “ for both music and the visual arts.

First of all, it depends on how may cuts and pastes you make, and how skillfully you make them. Some DJs only decide which song should follow what for an evening’s party, and that requires only sensitivity, not artistry. And there are far too many techno-albums where the DJs/engineers only choose their favorite presets in their synthesizers, and then mixed in a few crowd noises from whereever they took their last exotic vacation.

But even the courts have ruled that if you use enough different sources in a Photoshop collage, and change the originals significantly, you have created and not plagiarized. There are literally billions of combinations of presets, samples, and processors that can be assembled from what is currently available on the market. Anyone who finds one of the few combinations that genuinely works is an artist who makes music. It takes time and patience to find out what each of these machines can do, and artistic creativity to decide what it is they should do.

Secondly, musical and visual collages can also supplement, rather than substitute for, mastery of brush or instrument. Picasso, Braque, and Matisse all made collages, which included pieces of wall paper and cloth in their paintings. These were great works of art, for they show the painting skill of their creators, and then extend beyond what a paintbrush could ever do. Are there DJs with a similar dual mastery of instruments and electronics? Not many, for although it does take time to make a first-rate techno album, twiddling a knob still gets a more impressive sound with less practice than running scales and rudiments, and the temptation of all that musical power is hard to resist. But Karsh Kale, who is both a techno DJ and a tabla player, has managed to create two albums in which musicianship and electronics are in nearly perfect balance.

Kale’s newest album Liberation builds on the success of its predecessor Realize, but shows even more mastery of both electronics and musicianship. The first impression it gives is one of sumptuous richness mercifully free of anything resembling cliche. For those of us with an analytical turn of mind, this leads naturally to an endless stream of questions of the form “how in the world did he do THAT?” Fortunately, I was able to contact Kale and ask him some of those questions, and the answers were usually as intriguing as the sounds themselves.

One song had a Zakir Hussain tabla solo accompanied by a strange drone I could only describe as a “strummed marimba.” That turned out to be a synthesizer sample of a Brazilian birimbao, with each key of the keyboard tuned to a different note. By rolling his hands across the notes of an open chord Kale created a completely new sound that combined the supportive qualities of a tanpura and a folk rhythm guitar. Another track featured percussion which sounded like an amplifier blowing up, but with rhythmic precision and fast trills. There was something undeniably satisfying about hearing a sound that ordinarily signifies destruction, but which had been completely harnessed for a positive musical effect. This turned out to be Kale’s “tablatronics” amplification system, which superimposed distortion on the signal produced by his tabla-playing. It was hard to tell whether the sound was made by man or machine, because of the precision of Kale’s playing, but no one could say this was a case of human musicians being replaced by machines.

The sheer variety of instruments and electronics used on this album is staggering: among many other things, there is sitar, sarod, bansuri, guitar, bass, Eastern and Western vocals, and every kind of electronic and acoustic percussion. The most impressive use of live musicians, however, is Kale’s audacious decision to travel to India to record the Madras Chamber Orchestra for string tracks. Every synthesizer has several settings labeled “strings,” and most pop musicians figure that the difference between the synthesizer and the live strings would not be worth the expense. Most people, however, apparently can’t tell the difference between margarine and butter, or cheese and the appropriately named “cheese whiz(R)” and our culture is much the poorer for it. The Madras Chamber Orchestra creates sounds that no European classical string section could ever emulate. But they do it with musicianship, not electronics, and no synthesized or sampled strings could ever have the same impact.

A unique style of string ensemble playing has evolved to serve the South Indian film industry centered in Madras (now Chennai). The musicians that work in these ensembles have studied Bach and Mozart, can read Western music notation, and hold their instruments in standard Western fashion. But they have also studied Karnatik violin, and can play Indian microtonal ornaments in tight unisons and octaves. Kale prepared his scores for this ensemble using the same method as the Madras film composers. He wrote out the main parts in Western notation, and sang all the microtonal phrases directly to the players in the studio. The 30 musicians then multi-tracked themselves to create a string section that covered the whole tonal range with the sound of hundreds of strings.

“It was worth the whole trip to see the musicians’ smiling faces as they played their parts to my music while wearing headphones,” said Kale. “These guys have played with every kind of musician and electronic device you could imagine. But this music seemed to really reach them. And I think it’s going to reach a lot of other people as well.”

Teed Rockwell has studied Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and other great Indian musicians. He is the first person to play Hindustani music on the Touchstyle Fretboard.

Slide Synergy

Debashish Bhattacharya and Bob Brozman create Innovative World Music Ensemble

TEED ROCKWELL, Jul 11, 2003

REFLECTION OF LOVE. Debashish Bhattacharya, Hindustani Classical Music on Slide Guitar with Subhashis Bhattacharya, tablas. Ragashree Music.

Teed Rockwell has studied Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and other great Indian musicians. He is the first person to play Hindustani music on the Touchstyle Fretboard.

Man Without a Country

Nitin Sawhney speaks for the lost Indian-British generation

By TEED ROCKWELL, Aug 01, 2003

BEYOND SKIN. Outcaste Records. PROPHECY. V2 Music. Both albums produced, arranged and composed by Nitin Sawhney. Both albums available in America only in the import sections of certain record stores.
Many years ago, I met a dark-skinned young woman in a sari at a classical

Hindustani concert. When she said that she was in America for the first time, I asked her if she was Indian. She replied, just a shade too politely, “I’m English; my parents are Indian.” I was very surprised at myself for being surprised by this. I always believed, and would have roundly criticized anyone for implying otherwise, that being American was a political characteristic, not an ethnic one. Only a yahoo would think even for a minute that Robert DeNiro or Christie Yamaguchi were less American than someone named Smith or Jones. Why then did I think of other nationalities as being inevitably homogeneous? Why did expressions like Indian-British or Japanese-Italian seem strange and unconvincing? This reaction was obviously ridiculous to me once I consciously acknowledged it. But judging from her reaction, this young woman had encountered plenty of people who would have objected or scoffed at her claim to be British.

For Nitin Sawhney, the question of what it means to be Indian-British is the central issue of his life. He was a co-founder of a highly successful British comedy ensemble called Goodness Gracious Me. Although they poked fun at Indians trying to be accepted in England, their underlying message was: “We’re here, we’re Indian, get used to it.” He has been a screenwriter, an actor, and film composer for many film comedies dealing with the lives of Indians in Britain. And he now devotes his time to composing music and producing record albums, which deal with these same issues in a more serious and thoughtful manner.

These albums have gathered numerous accolades from critics and fans in England. FHM magazine calls him a “genius;” Q magazine describes his work as “epic and diverse.” And there are several online listserves where fans discuss his work with reverence and enthusiasm. Nevertheless, his music has not been well received in the U.S. The publicist for the American branch of his current label told me she had no more demo CDs in stock because they were not planning on distributing his album here. His albums are only available, if at all, in the import bins of underground record stores. How is it that an artist who makes such a profound impact in England meets with so little success here?

There are no doubt many answers to that question, most of which will never be known by anyone. But I think the problem that Americans have with Sawhney’s music is that it has the eclecticism of good rock music, but without an essential element of the “teen appeal” that sells rock music.

Like the Beatles, Sawhney borrows from a variety of sources without mastering any of them. He plays both keyboard and acoustic guitar competently, but without virtuosity. This makes it hard for him to appeal to American jazz and world music fans, who enjoy instrumental and engineering virtuosos like Talvin Singh and Karsh Kale.

But unlike the Beatles, Sawhney does not provide a central forceful personality that rock fans can feel is singing especially to them. In fact, he never sings on any of his albums. Each cut has a different singer or rapper performing in a style radically different from the others. For all their eclecticism, the Beatles still managed to combine their various influences to create a style that was uniquely theirs. But although Sawhney’s music is unquestionably original, it is hard to say exactly what all his different creations have in common.

Beyond Skin opens with a rhythm and blues tune sung by a black female vocalist. But it is followed later by a jazz piano instrumental accompanied by the Indian jazz drummer Trilok Gurtu, then by an electronic techno-dance cut, then a flamenco guitar accompanying a qawwali vocalist, then a tabla player reciting tabla bols over an African drum solo. Most Americans who heard these albums probably wondered how all these different songs ended up on the same CD. Each song is quite nice in its own way, but Sawhney himself seems to be almost invisible on the albums that bear his name.

I think, however, that this invisibility is precisely what appeals to his Indian-British listeners. The best and brightest of them have achieved success by becoming invisible in their own country: soft-pedaling their Indian roots, without ever being accepted as truly British. Sawhney’s song lyrics are somewhat cryptic and ambiguous. But they all seem to express the lost sadness of someone who feels like a stranger in the only home he has ever known.

Listening to them, I cannot help but think of one of the two central characters in Rushdie’s Satanic Verses: the successful Indian-British actor who did voice-overs using every dialect and voice except his own, and whose face was never seen by anyone. Perhaps Sawhney’s Indian-British fans can sense his presence behind the radically different vocalists that appear on his albums, and empathize with a songwriter who writes for every voice but his own.
In fact, one gets the strongest sense of who Sawhney is, not by listening to the albums themselves, but by reading his liner notes. Here he alternately rages at and praises the two cultures that he finds himself suspended between. There is, for example, a comparison between technology and heroin that becomes surprisingly compelling as it unfolds over the length of a paragraph. He is also very good at what a French critic might call mots trouve: using “found words” as a form of “found art.”

The unifying thread in Beyond Skin is his reaction to the Indian atomic bomb. The album moves backwards in time: opening with the voice of Prime Minister Vajpayee, and concluding with American physicist Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita on the day of the first American atomic bomb. In between the songs are the voices of news commentators and ordinary people (including his own father) commenting on the bomb and on Western culture in general.
On the album Prophecy, there are two remarkable tracks that feature the very New York voice of a cab driver speaking conversationally over a hip-hop track that would ordinarily accompany a rapper. This man, identified only as “Street Guru,” explains why he has deliberately chosen a dead-end job. (“A lot of people with technical jobs are slaves to time. … at the end of your life, nobody is going to put on your tombstone that you got there in seven minutes instead of three!”)

It is also important to add that there is a noticeable growth of arranging mastery going from Beyond Skin to Prophecy. The orchestral textures on the second album (especially on the song “Breathing Light”) have a rich lyricism, which do point to the development of a distinctly recognizable style. And Sawhney’s most recent project—arranging and producing the soundtrack album for the Cirque Du Soleil Show Varekai—will enable him to have an influence that goes beyond his current Indian-British cult following. Although he may remain in the background for this and many other projects, this will not stop him from having his own unique impact.

Teed Rockwell has studied Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and other great Indian musicians. He is the first person to play Hindustani music on the Touchstyle Fretboard.

Unknown Giant

Bol Records debuts recording of up-and-coming tabla virtuoso

TEED ROCKWELL, Sep 17, 2003

TANMOY BOSE, Solo Tabla. Available at www.bolrecords.com

Unless it receives the patronage of kings and maharajas, serious art has a diffi-cult time surviving in the marketplace. All of the attention usually falls on a few stars, whose work is admired but rarely understood by the adoring crowds that pack their concert halls: stars like Ravi Shankar in Hindustani music, or Van Cliburn in European classical music, or Marcel Marceau in the world of mime. Unfortunately, numerous other equally gifted artists either barely survive on their music or get day jobs. This either-or division between stars and unknowns is not only inaccurate and unjust, it also makes it extremely difficult for new stars to develop their talent, or be recognized once they do develop talent.

Fortunately, there does exist a special kind of hero who actively fights against this state of affairs, who is best described by the oxymoron “underground impresario.” These people know good art when they see it, and also know enough about business, recording, and printing to successfully take on the challenges of first discovering new artists, and then marketing what most businessmen would consider to be unmarketable. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (of City Lights Books) performed this function for the Beat Poets. John Hammond played this role for the great jazz musicians. And now we have Parag Chordia’s Bol Records to work on behalf of a new generation of gifted Indian classical musicians.

Chordia’s commitment to Indian classical music manifests in many ways. He hosts a radio program on Stanford Station KZSU that plays nothing but Hindustani and Karnatik music from 12 to 3 p.m. every Friday. He produces concerts and teaches classes in Indian music on the Stanford University campus. And when he finds time, he plays the sarod himself. Bol Records, however, is his most ambitious project, and the one that will clearly have the most enduring effect.

There are no compromises or hedging of bets in the Bol Records catalog: neither fusion albums with well-known jazz musicians, nor tried and true classical big names bedecked with honors and hordes of fans. The focus is on young performers who play pure classical music, but who do not merely repeat what they have learned from their great masters. On the contrary, they can take Indian classical music in new directions—without combining it with anything else—precisely because they are so deeply steeped in the tradition. However, only someone who is familiar with the traditions will be able to hear just how innovative these new performers are. And so Chordia has taken on the heroic task of teaching his listeners the essential structures of classical music, so that they can appreciate how the Bol Records artists have developed and extended those structures.

Most people who listened to the Bol Records album of Tanmoy Bose’s tabla solos would hear a flurry of virtuoso drumming played against a repeating melody. Those who like heavy metal or jazz drumming would find this album invigorating and impressive. Those who are looking for something to play behind their yoga classes would probably put it aside and look for something with bansuri or sitar. But neither group would be able to hear that Bose’s playing combines the six major tabla traditions of Farrukhabad, Punjab, Banaras, Delhi, Lucknow, and Arjada into a new style that Bose feels should be called the Calcutta gharana.

However, thanks to the 32 pages of liner notes that come with the album, it becomes possible for anyone to train their ears to retrace these roots, if they are willing to do some careful studying. After the usual biographical introductions to Bose and his accompanist (sarangi player Ramesh Mishra), there is a detailed interview with Bose, in which he explains the differences between the different gharanas. This interview also includes references to 45 different sound samples (available on the Bol Records Web site) in which Bose both recites and plays typical examples of each style of tabla playing. This is followed by detailed descriptions and diagrams showing where the tabla must be struck to make each distinctive sound, and then some abstract discussions of aesthetics and the perceptual structures that shape our experience of music. Finally, there is an analysis of the performances themselves with transcriptions of the qaidas—the rhythmic themes which provide the foundation for Bose’s improvised variations.

Like all Hindustani music, a tabla solo is an improvisation within a strict framework. Knowing the qaidas, and how the patterns that make up the qaidas are divided, expanded and recombined, makes one aware that a tabla solo is a profound and complex creation, not a mere explosion of rhythmic energy.

One might be tempted to ask: is all this work really necessary? Why not let the rhythm of Bose’s playing carry you away, and not worry about the details? Many people who enjoy tabla solos wouldn’t know a dhin-dha-ge-tere-kita from a hole in the ground. Furthermore, many such people are sensitive to musical quality even if they “know” nothing about music. They can accurately distinguish good music from bad, even if they can’t say why. I certainly enjoyed this album the first several times I heard it, before I got a chance to look at the liner notes. But once I had taken the trouble to read the interview and listen to the accompanying sound samples, and learned how to decipher the tabla notation that was especially designed for this album, my whole experience of the music changed.

Of course, it is not possible to be aware of every single detail in the album with the explicit attention that Chordia gives to certain key passages. In fact, I still can’t fully hear all of the patterns described in the liner notes. But I can hear the shifts from one gharana to another at certain key moments, and usually tell when a new qaida is introduced. Each of these moments of explicit verbalizable insight triggers a horizon of radiating awareness, which is deeper and richer than the preverbal intuitions that preceded it. Thanks to these detailed descriptions, and to the superb quality of the sound engineering, I can hear that Bose’s playing is not only rhythmically exciting, but has a precision and clarity of tone that is rare even amongst the finest tabla players living today.

Chordia is aware that more than purely intellectual awareness is needed to appreciate depth and profundity of a great tabla solo. But as he points out in the liner notes, this intellectual understanding can open the door to “emotions that are abstract, sweet, profound, ecstatic and poignant.”

Teed Rockwell has studied Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and other great Indian musicians. He is the first person to play Hindustani music on the Touchstyle Fretboard.

Growing by Degrees

Six Degrees Records discovers and creates surprising connections between musical cultures

TEED ROCKWELL, Oct 13, 2003

ASIAN TRAVELS 2. Compilation of various artists, produced by Robert Duskis. Available at www.sixdegreesrecords.com  and at most record stores.

Whenever there has been a golden age in commercial recorded music, there has always been someone who has the power and the courage to say: “I like this. Let’s back it.” Unfortunately, once the music discovered by these visionaries becomes commercially successful, they are followed by a swarm of gray-suited bean counters who measure everything the visionaries do, and calcify their inspiration into a formula. The bean counters never bother to ask themselves whether they like or dislike the music they are selling. They are too busy doing surveys to determine which music is bought by people between the ages of 20 and 35 with incomes of over $50,000 a year. What people are buying, of course, is the music that was first introduced by the visionaries. The bean counters thus decide that the way to make money is to copy the visionaries, not realizing that the essential factor—creativity—is the one thing that cannot be copied. When the public decides that there is no point in buying new albums that are indistinguishable from the ones they bought last month, the music industry plunges into a financial decline—which lasts until another visionary manages to restart the cycle with a record that makes the public want to buy music again. The visionaries who create the market for music are called impractical idealists. The bean counters who destroy the market are called hard-headed down-to-earth business executives.

When Bob Duskis and Pat Berry left Windham Hill to start Six Degrees Records, they had just seen this cycle take place. Windham Hill founder Will Ackermann had created an entirely new market for solo acoustic instrumental music. Several years later, dozens of so-called “New Age” labels had glutted the market with albums of solo piano or guitar with trees on the covers. Ackermann was determined not to become a prisoner of the formula that others had abstracted from his vision. It was Duskis who gave Windham Hill a whole new direction by introducing Ackermann to new genres of European electronic music. Ackermann was so impressed with Duskis’ taste and insight that he made him head of Windham Hill’s west coast A&R (Artists and Repetoire). This made it possible for Duskis to sign up vocal groups, rock groups, and many other styles of music that were once thought to be way beyond Windham Hill’s territory. “Will has very open ears,” says Duskis. “He doesn’t have to be familiar with a new style of music to like it.”

Unfortunately, Ackermann began to have less and less control over his own label, and eventually left to start a whole new record company. Duskis hung around for a while, but it was clear that the spark and imagination was now gone. So he took his 11 years of experience with Windham Hill out into the marketplace, determined to start a record label that would be as creative as Windham Hill—which meant, of course, that the music itself would make no attempt to resemble the Windham Hill sound. “My business partner Pat Berry was the VP at sales and marketing at Windham Hill when I was head of A&R,” says Duskis. “We learned a lot about packaging and really building a product that looks, feels, and sounds unique and is of a high level of quality. Through that you build consumer loyalty.”

Duskis and Berry knew that the mainstream media were still being controlled by the bean counters, so they looked for alternatives—not only alternative publicity routes, but alternative audiences as well. When Six Degrees was distributed by Island Records, Duskis encountered Talvin Singh and the Asian underground scene in London. Here was an audience that no one in America even knew existed: South Asians living in England who were equally at home with tablas and drum machines, who had created a unique form of dance music for themselves. Duskis could see that world music was now being created by a worldwide modern diaspora, which produced every possible combination of culture clash in every corner of the globe.

The name “Six Degrees Records” was taken from the saying that everyone is connected to everyone else by no more than six degrees of separation, i.e. you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, etc. who knows anyone else on earth. Six Degrees makes an audience for its music (and the music itself) by following up those connections, and by creating new ones.

Six Degrees artist DJ Cheb i Sabbah is Algerian, but his first two albums, Sri Durga and Krishna Lila, are subtle modernizations of Hindustani and Karnatik music. His most recent album, As Far As, shows more influences from the jungles and plains of sub-Saharan Africa. Bob Holroyd, another Six Degrees artist, has also traveled extensively through Asia and Africa, and his albums feature music from both continents in varying amounts. With this much diversity within the work of a single artist, it can be more than a little confusing for a listener. Six Degrees deals with this by creating samplers grouping different songs together by their most noticeable geographical inspiration: Latin Travels, African Travels, Arabian Travels, and Asian Travels (volumes 1 and 2). Note, however, that these classifications are made by inspiration, not by location or ancestry. It’s not uncommon for the same artist to appear on two or three of these Travels albums, with a song chosen to create a different mood for each one.

Asian Travels 2 features the music inspired by the Indian Techno Club scene in London, but features artists from all over the world who hybridize this style even further. One song comes from the Austin, TX Govinda label, and another from a Tokyo-based producer and musician who records under the name Makyo for Dakini Records. (Six Degrees often features artists from other labels on their samplers, and frequently commissions brand new pieces from them.)

The main focal points for this style, however, are now London, New York, San Francisco, and New Delhi. “The Club Scenes in these cities have very different vibes,” says Duskis, who produced the Asian Travels compilations, and is also a DJ himself. “The New York and San Francisco scenes are more party oriented. The London scene, however, is very political. South Asians are a persecuted minority there, and this music is a rallying point for them. And in New Delhi, you have a crowd that finds this music exciting and exotic because it is seen as coming from England. The MIDIval PunditZ have started their own gatherings there, called Cyber Mehfils, which have brought this music back to the land of its roots. We’re very proud to have released their first album on Six Degrees.”

Some people claim that this kind of music is a new form of colonialism. When a producer in Los Angeles or Germany uses nothing but samples by artists he has never met, you might be able to make a case for this. But Duskis rightly points out that the bulk of this music is made by South Asians for South Asians. “For this next generation, what we now call world music is not a fusion of styles. They hear it as the music they grow up with, their own personal music. If Karsh Kale and Cheb i Sabbah can create music by combining different styles, what sort of music will come from this next generation, which uses this music as a starting point? I can’t even imagine it, and I can hardly wait to find out.”

Teed Rockwell has studied Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and other great Indian musicians. He is the first person to play Hindustani music on the Touchstyle Fretboard.