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!