Mar 28, 2013 Blogs and Bloggers, Essays on Music and Musicians

Weaving Time – Original Composition by Warren Senders, 1994.  Performed by Antigravity, in Pune, India, in 1994 at Ishvani Kendra Studios

When We Wove a Tapestry — A Reminiscence

©By Vijaya Sundaram

March 28th, 2013

The beautiful composition on the mp3 attachment above is by Warren Senders (photo, center), and it is one of my all-time  favorite compositions (and I love all of his music).

We had a lovely time at Ishvani Kendra, in Pune in 1994, towards the end of our year-long stay that year.  Every day, we would get there in the morning, and most days, we’d be out at twilight.  We’d sit there and play our hearts out, recording take after take.  That was a kind of meditation in itself.

Then, after a particularly intense session or two, we would emerge into the heat of the afternoon, just to breathe air that wasn’t musky with concentration.  The intensely bright haze of noon would glow gold and red in our eyes, and the beautiful flowering bougainvillea plants vied with each other to create a psychedelic feast of color.

It was truly a marriage of true minds for all of us during that week or so at Ishvani Kendra.  All of us loved each other, because our language was that of music — we understood each other perfectly.  We practised and recorded Warren’s compositions.  We practised and recorded mine.  I had been nervous, because I wasn’t sure whether the older gentlemen in the group would accept my direction after having been used to my being their colleague, not the composer/director.  I should have known better.  There was no question of ego.  They gave their best and utmost love and attention to the music composed by Warren and to my music.  It was pure and Apollonian.  I had never been happier.

This was the context:  Warren and I had taken a year off from our lives in the U.S. to go to India for the sole purpose of studying music, and composing / recording our original pieces.  Our practice, in general, was to live carefully, save up money for two years and go to India to live for one year.  We did it only twice – and the first time we went back to India for a whole year, we didn’t need to save that much, because Warren was awarded an AIIS (American Institute of Indian Studies) scholarship, which lasted us for that year.

Independent of each other, we composed several pieces that year (mine are on DAT tapes, and are not yet uploaded to this computer, so I’m putting up Warren’s compositions.  I promise to do some blog posts which include mine.  I hope you enjoy them).

During that year, which was pretty intense, we took Hindustani classical vocal lessons with our Guruji, the late Pt. Shreeram G. Devasthali.  By afternoon, evening and night, we’d compose or practise, take walks, prepare dinner or go out to dinner, and then practise again.  Most evenings, we’d hang out with our musician friends, and we were as one being. On weekends, we’d visit my grandparents and aunt, and also go for concerts.

In short, that was an idyllic year — for the most part.  Like any other year, it also had its frustrations — for example, we searched high and low for a drummer, and finally, towards the end of the year, came across a gem of a player, Nikhil Sohoni, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief.   There were also unaccountable periods of sadness for me for a few months, early in the year, and I revived only when I did music.  I don’t dwell on those as much as on the long, long periods of beautiful music-making, which we did with our teacher, and with our friends in the group which Warren had named and founded years ago: Antigravity.

Before this Antigravity, Warren had formed the American Antigravity in the 1970s, and that group was dynamic, with Phil Scarff on saxophones, Bob Pilkington on trombone, Tom MacDonald on drums, Dee Wood on guitar and Warren on bass.

When Warren had first come to India (to study Hindustani classical vocal music) on an Indo-American Fellowship in 1985, he set about forming his Indian chapter of Antigravity.  Although some of the personnel had changed over the years, the core group consisted of the following people since 1986:  Ramakant Paranjape, violin;  and Ajit Soman (now late), flute; Warren Senders, bass; then, along came Rajeev Devasthali, tabla, then Atul Keskar, dilruba and sitar, and finally, yours truly on guitar.   Nikhil Sohoni (percussion) was new to us in the year 1994.  As new to the group as him was our friend Caroline Dillon, cellist (missing from the group photograph) — she had had to fly back to the U.S. after her three-month stay in India.

Back to Ishvani Kendra and our insanely long recording sessions.  We recorded and practised, ate, chatted, drank endless cups of tea and coffee, laughed, got frustrated at times, laughed again, practised with redoubled concentration, and gave our hearts to the music, which was complex, demanding, difficult and brilliant.

The result?  Warren Senders’ CD:  Boogie For Hanuman.

Another result?  My cassette tape (we didn’t have enough capital for two CD productions that year):  Magic Realism.

I look back on that year, and feel a sense of accomplishment.  We came back to the U.S. at the start of 1995, and began our work lives again.  We also did radio shows (WGHB, Emerson Radio, WBUR, etc.), plus performances of Indian classical vocal music together.  We gave concerts with the American Antigravity which featured our own compositions as well.

As the song goes, It was a very good year.

And the time that we wove into it became a beautiful tapestry into which all our lives were woven, a tapestry in which our spirits and imaginations made intricate patterns, and through those complex patterns, love glowed in the music.

I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for listening!

~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S.  Once I upload my own music, I’ll do similar posts for my pieces.  Hope you enjoy them!

Tags: #Music, Antigravity, Indo-Jazz Synthesis, Ishvani Kendra, Original Composition by Warren Senders, Recording sessions, Reminiscences about Pune

Mar 28, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries

Lilies and Poppies
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 28th, 2013

Tomorrow is Good Friday.

It means nothing to me, in the religious sense.  I am an atheist Hindu, with a mystical, spiritual leaning.  Oh, and I went to a convent school in India, while coming from a somewhat orthodox Tamilian Brahmin family (our parents chose the route of “convent school education” for their two daughters for various reasons).

However, I do sometimes feel as if I’m carrying a cross up a hill, and being buried in a cave that’s shut with a boulder.

I’m still waiting for that angel to remove the boulder, so I can ascend on Easter Sunday.

Will I be done with the work that’s weighing on me?  Everything depends on that.  Work takes precedence over everything in this country.  So, there’s an extra-delicious sense of guilt when one is playing hooky, even if is for an hour or two.

See what I mean?  I used the phrase “playing hooky” so casually, thinking that if I don’t do my schoolwork immediately upon getting home, then it’s “playing hooky.”  I mean, my time is supposed to be MY time, and yet, I have to do work well into the wee hours, frequently.  And my so-called “Prep Time” at school is taken up with menial tasks.  It never ends.

Work is over-rated, I think.

What was it that the Christ said about the lilies of the field?

Forget Ascension.  I want to be one of those lilies.  Better still, a poppy, so that I can embrace blissful oblivion.

——————————–The End ————————————

P.S.  if anyone is a devout Christian and is reading my blog, please know that I mean no offense in using the metaphor of carrying a cross or wanting to ascend.  It is a metaphor.

P.P.S.  For those who might be worried about my mention of “poppy” and “oblivion,” please note that, again, I am being metaphorical.

Tags: Idleness, Leisure, Lilies of the field, Oblivion, Work

Mar 28, 2013 Essays on Music and Musicians, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Teaching and Learning

What Does it Mean to Be a Teacher?
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 28th, 2013

It means that you:

Give unstintingly of your attention to your student or students who are there to learn from you.

Not allow dislike, prejudice or frustration to mar your interactions, even if a student makes it VERY hard.

Don’t give in to despair when confronted with failure, either on the part of your students to understand, acknowledge, absorb or appreciate the beauty of what you’re offering, or what they’re learning, or on your own part for not always having been all of the things you wanted to be, from time to time — because we’re all exhausted, all human, all prone to retire from time to time, to lick our wounds and self-heal.

Find that which is pure, child-like (with a capacity for wonder, questioning and curiosity) in your student, and teach THAT person within the student.

Listen to, and learn from, your students.

Always remember you’re a conduit (through whom all of the knowledge, learning and understanding flow)  not the repository of all of those things.

Love, always love your student, love your own teacher, and love the subject you’re teaching deeply and completely.

****************************************************************

I was thinking of these things after I had a long talk with my husband, teacher extraordinaire. 

He had been feeling low, because a student had omitted mentioning him as his music teacher on his website (and had shamelessly mentioned more famous and well-known names in the field).  My husband wasn’t expecting gratitude, just acknowledgement, because in this field, as in any great field of artistic and soulful endeavor, one MUST acknowledge  one’s teachers, especially those with whom one has spent a significant amount of time.

My husband is primarily a teacher of Indian classical music (among other types of music).  He had taught this student thoughtfully, devotedly and completely, over a relatively long period of time, and didn’t expect much back from him.  The student was talented, but arrogant, puffed up with a spurious sense of self-importance.  We had already seen signs of that while he used to come to our place nine years or so ago, but we dismissed that as the cockiness of youth.

There is no way to get around this, no matter how much one might try and dismiss it as a passing wind which we “respect not.”  To find that one is consciously omitted rankles.  One would have to be a sage to brush it off. 

That student’s rank ingratitude and puffed-up self-importance will cause him grief one day. Every person has to face his or her Karmic duty. 

What was my husband’s response to feeling low about all this, plus other worries? 

This: 

I have taught many people; I have always tried to give appropriately to the individual student rather than use prefabricated lessons or curricula.

No two people want or need the same thing. But everyone needs music.

The world’s parlous condition increases our need for song. I sometimes become discouraged…but singing fortifies me and reminds me that I’m just one link in a chain that reaches farther back in time than any of us can imagine.

I have had so many great teachers in my life; I’m remembering them….while thinking of my students. If I cannot give what I know to my students, my teachers’ love and labor was in vain. My teachers loved me. I love my students. That’s how it works.

Tags: #Journal Entry, #Learning, #Teaching, Students, teachers