talvin singh & rakesh chaurasia | "meeting" | vira | 2002
a couple of weeks ago i put up a song by talvin singh and said something about mixing classical indian percussion with european clubs and japanese cheerleaders. well, this is mr singh with everything but the classical indian stripped away. (actually, you don't hear his tablas until three minutes in. it's quite a nice effect, bringing in the percussion after an extended flute introduction.)
i have been interested in india and buddhism for about half of my time on earth. i was first introduced to indian music through a recording of laurence ferlinghetti's poem "assassination raga". my eleventh-grade english literature teacher at fairport high school introduced me to the beat poets. she had us reading a lot of avant-garde stuff that really shaped me. (i was a poet and a painter back then; i am an ambulance chaser now. who says life is all about progress?)
"assassination raga" is about the assassinations of the kennedy brothers and the social and moral decay in america. it contrasts the sublimity of death and spiritual transcendence with the horrors of the modern age. at this point in their history, ferlinghetti and ginsburg were moving out of jazz and into eastern philosophy. a beautiful raga plays behind ferlinghetti's musings, just like jazz did in the 1950s. this was really the first indian music I ever heard. (there is some language in this as well, so don't listen to it if you don't want to hear it.)
laurence ferlinghetti | "assassination raga" | ferlinghetti: tyrannus nix? / assassination raga / big sur sun sutra / moscow in the wilderness | 1970
after high school and before my mission, i spent several months working at allen's grocery store on 300 south in provo and painting. i was moving away from depeche mode and the like, the cure had just released wish, which i thought signaled the end of "the good cure" (i was right), and i was getting into some sweet hippie music: cream, cat stevens, jefferson airplane, etc. at this time i picked up sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band and "within you, without you" blew me away.
the beatles | "within you without you" | sgt pepper's lonely hearts club band | 1967
i went on an exploratory mission to every library that had indian music. i listened to ravi shankar as a salve during hard times in brazil. i took a buddhist philosophy class at byu. and i've read several books on buddhism and hinduism since.
i've found that, beside the sublime beauty of the indian tradition, there is a lot of understanding of my own religion and relationship with god and the divine realm that comes from perceiving my tradition through a "wider-angled lens". i believe god transcends mortal culture, and that much of what we think about god comes more from our western liberal tradition rather than from god. when i look toward god through a mixed prism of traditions, some of the refractions and distortions in the lens i took on from my society are demonstrated, if not completely cured. this has been invaluable to me.
