WOEBOT

”The Real Deal” Indian Music Part Two.

One look at the horror that is Putumayo Music is enough to put anyone off “World Music” for ever. The imagery for one, the “happy” naïve illustration is excruciatingly dreadful. The label deals music in a less sophisticated manner than we’re sold exotic fruit. We’re supposed to imagine the artists lounging in the back of a pick-up truck with a dog with a handkerchief round it’s neck, or laughing round a beach barbecue while extra-large ladies in batik hats gyrate in tie-die sarongs, paper lanterns lilt in the sea-breeze, rastas pluck acoustic guitars. No beggars. No chemical factories. They’re particularly keen on “musical journeys” so we get Starbucks-friendly collections like “Gypsy Caravan” and “Millwall to Mombassa” (OK I made that last one up). It’s vision of Reggae stretches between Ziggy Marley and Lucky Dube. The hellspawn of Putumayo also handily encapsulates everything everything “World Music” has become and I’m not even gonna start teasing that term apart. The “Putumayo” flavour is discernable everywhere, from The Rough Guide’s Introductions to World Music (they may contain excellent music for all I know) to Stern’s own label stuff (once again just a superficial swipe at “naff marketing”) to the Real World Releases (just plain guff in this case).

I’ll confess I’m hard to please, the recent Virgin Records series tried to aim at the street/hipsters (artists lit with red and blue lights) but didn’t entice. The only recent World Music series I’ve fell for has been “Ethiopiques”, but that’s just reissued old stuff. However I’m convinced it could be done well, and pitched just right. OK on the surface this might seem to be an issue of packaging, but it’s also where to “put” the music, who to associate with it, and crucially who to record in the first place. I find it frustrating to know there is a whole universe of utterly intriguing music blocked out, just because one middleman panders to another and to another. All dem underground Nigerian geniuses re-wiring Casio keyboards, dreaming of other galaxies; forever out of our reach.

It’s this same cloak of nonsense which has come to swathe Indian music. Admittedly Indian Classical music is a cussed inflexible entity thousands of years old. Indeed to frame it within a particular time, the 60’s and 70’s, which I guess I’m doing here, is total rubbish. In fact, you’d do as well to prepare yourselves to hear a lot of crap in this piece because I’m not even one hundredth the authority on Indian music that I ought to be. For starters I know (almost) NOTHING about the musical systems, that’s musicological shit as far as I’m concerned. Furthermore the connoisseurship within this music is preposterously deep. Hip-Hop has a way to go, believe! There’s an unyielding structure to what is deemed superb which mimics the centuries-old intransigence of the music. Holy Cows all over the shop. I tend, surprise surprise, to like the more “unorthodox stuff”, which within the realms of scholarship could be read as “that beneath consideration.”

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This from 1955. Yehudi Menuhin introduces Ustad Ali Akbar Khan to the USA, where it came out, I think on Angel records. The liner notes are quotes from an article by Menuhin on Indian Music from The New York Times. This record was the one that was La Monte Young’s first exposure to Indian music. By all accounts it blew his tiny mind. The “famous” passage (I say “famous” but I know of no-one else who’s tracked down this record in connection with this anecdote) features Menuhin introducing Shirish Gor’s Tamboura, which for a few moments plays on it’s own, without the Sarod or Tabla. If you don’t know, the Tamboura is the instrument that provides a constant underlying drone, a perfect circle of sound. The Tamboura sounds extremely like an electric current passing through the air, rising and falling through a cyclical frequency like the sound of a computer processor or the phasing of shortwave radio. This sound transported La Monte Young to his childhood experiences of resting atop giant Gasoline Storage Towers (inadvertently inhaling their intoxicating fumes) and tripping out to the sound of High-Tension Stepdown Transformers. The experience to be later remapped onto Opium and Minimalism.

But also an interesting record in that it points to the problems record companies would have/create in presenting this music to “The West”, signaling too the importance of characters like Menuhin and giants like Alain Danielou (behind all the UNESCO recordings) would have in bringing this music to foreign ears.

This my favourite volume from the *AMAZING* Anthology of World Music~North Indian Classical Music UNESCO recordings which you can buy here and is about the best whistle-stop guide you can get of the music. Particularly incredible off this is Bismillah Khan’s gamma-ray shenai. For a wholly organic music, this stuff can sure as hell sound electric. Unfortunately, you’re immediately confronted with one of the pitfalls of presenting this stuff abroad. Too often the music is framed within the structure of ethnomusicology. One has to root around on the original vinyl pressing to discover who the heck the instumentalists are. See this as well:

From 1954 on the French BAM label. No indication of musicians names. That's sorta dodgy.

This from 1952 on Folkways (scratches head, crikey I had no idea this one was THAT old) curated by Danielou again, with the emphasis on the broader picture rather than the individuals in practise. This is where I admit I’m frequently swayed into buying this stuff (dirt cheap usually) by the covers…..

…..Like this one’s on Ocora. Gold print onto cloth! A scratchy recording like the previous two, but a lovely “objet.”

And finally in the ethnomusicology bracket this:

Which is stunning, and which I’m offering a download of at the bottom. In this instance from the folk end of Indian Music. Play this back to back with The JB’s “The Grunt”. Featuring, again invisible on the liner notes by esteemed musicologist John Levy, Bismillah “Darth Vader” Khan. If you’ve a checked “Music In The World Of Islam” series by Jean Jenkins and Paul Rovsing Olsen then you’ll know of the musical continuities stretching from North India right across to Morocco. In the light of that its not TOO far-fetched to draw parallels between this and James Brown’s stuff. OK I’ll admit it’s a bollocks theory.

Now I’m going to endeavour to split things up into groups. First up Sitars.

Ravi on Deutsche Gramophon. Mmm not a big fan of the Rav-ster. Don’t like the sitar as an instrument that much. With the strings I prefer the sound of the Sarod, which is bassier.

Though this tremendous. Delicate and gourgeous. Bought after checking a huge pile of these records, and falling for it’s sound. Don’t bother looking for duplicates of these, just trust your ears and make your own discoveries.

Last bit of Sitar action. What an amazing cover! I saw Vilayat Khan the other day play the concert for Gujarat in London. It was a virtuoso, if incredibly demanding, performance. He’s a bit old now in truth.

This on Sarod.. Quite lovely. While I was busy damning any allusion to trans-islamic music the sarod on this sounds mighty like some kind of flamenco-tinged guitar. It’s a corny reference but some of the twists of the melody on this are reminiscent of Ry Cooder’s pedal steel on Paris, Texas. Like I said, naff reference point, but in spite of Cooder’s atrocious pedigree (he’s the Putumayo kid…I HATE the Buena Vista thing) I like that soundtrack. In a record store in Granada in Spain I found a treasure trove of (not-for-sale) trans-islamic records with lovely field recordings from Afghanistan amid LPs like “Concerto por Aranjua.” This record could have been in there.

While we’re still in the conventional frame, check these Vocal records:

In which seasoned dudes go “Aaha ahaaa ahhhha aaaaaha aaaaaaaahha”, and wave their right hand meaningfully in the air. The Bhimsen Joshi (which I got in San Francisco) by far the best. Though points too Gulam Ali Khan for the period screen-print and to Munawar Khan for his shades. Nuff Respek! The link here between Bhimsen Joshi and Pandit Pran Nath…..

..…being that both are of the Kirana school of vocalists. While Pran Nath’s record (on Douglas) was in the “Routes to India” chart, this is here because it’s a purer record than the other. La Monte and Marian on Tamboura here, and as you might expect it’s high in the mix. Pran Nath on heavy form. Really stunning recording, though the “authorities” say the alap (intro) is far too long and generally damn it as a fake. Oh well!

However it’s often the less acceptable, less classically sanctioned forms of Indian Classical music which are the most attractive, and that’s NOT JUST to non-westerners. Case in point being this:

A three way summit with the greatest “eccentric practitioners” of their instruments. Shivkumar Sharma on Santoor (a struck dulcimer), Hariprasad Chaurasia on Flute and Brijbushan Kabra on Guitar. This is really nice and was massively popular in India. It was something like the greatest-selling Indian classical record EVER. In consequence it’s relatively easy to track down a copy.

Sharma is absolutely brilliant, and the Santoor’s sound is just so sublime. I’m particularly fond of the latter which, seeing as it’s Ocora (this time props in effect), must still be available.

Onto other “non-official” instruments, the Sarangi, which is something like a viola.

Ram Narayan is the accepted master of this instrument. I have a whole slew of his (Hey I’m not showing you ALL my Indian records!), but this other one by Ustad Nathoo Khan particularly bewitching. The Sarangi snakes around the Tabla. It’s a very dark miserable sound. Very forbidding.

Of course the Shenai, Bismillah Khan’s instrument is deeply unorthodox. Here he is in a stunning duet with Prof. V.J.Jog, one of my all-time fave records ever this. Sounds like an open-air recording, crickets meshing with the Tamboura as Shenai and Violin (!) mimic eachother. Actually karnatic lore suggests that the Violin may have originally been an Indian instrument.

And finally, the Flute. The don of which is NOT to my mind Chaurasia but:

Pannallal Ghosh. And if you like your Tamboura mixed high check out the amazing track in the download pack. This is mind-blowingly great music. I sent Jon Astronaut this on CD and he LOVED it. So dig! And note the deeply “exotica” flavour of that second record cover!

Oh and this dude plays flute too:

But not very well.

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It’s always struck me as weird that this music doesn’t have a currency at least as strong as say that of Jamaica or West Africa in the West. BTW “Routes to India.” If you’re looking for “deep” contemplative music, something to run alongside the subterranean streams of Electronica, then with Indian Classical music you’re sorted. The music is elegiac and sweetly uplifting, even divinely fulfilling. Recovering from the scariest trip of my life (the point at which I vowed, successfully, NO MORE DRUGS!) At that time listening to Dub Reggae threatened to suck me into another aspect. It was L. Subramaniam’s violin playing and Pannallal Ghosh’s flute, so squarely and honestly expanded, open to the infinite spiritual horizon, that gently grounded me, without denying the logic of trans-dimensional experiences. Woah!

I visited India in 1991. I even went to and stayed in Rishikesh where The Beatles came to be with Maharishi Yogi. Seeing the Himalayas rise vertically from the flood-plains of the Ganges in a train. Mostly listening to Can.

Posted by Woebot at September 21, 2003 11:00 PM