[lit-ideas] Re: Ravi Shankar 1920-2012
- From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:30:17 -0500
John answering Robert: The windows were wide open; Ravi Shankar was on
the record player...
Get Ravi off the stereo, dude! Turntables were so delicate. A little
pressure...boom. Even Ravi's sitar would have placed mine out of
operation. (How concernedly geekish LP-ers were! My B&O turntable with
Shure stylus, its forgotten but prestigious amp feeding into Bose 501
wooden [!] speakers.)
But I digress. Somewhere I have, or had, RS's first LP and the
Menuhin-Shankar jam. His playing taught me to discriminate between
morning, afternoon, and evening ragas. Despite attending concerts by
other Indian musicians, I've never been transported by them. He was the
perfect ambassador.
(A friend in late '70s backpacked--his bike useless in northern Indian
mud--through Afghanistan and India to Dharamsala. As he trekked up
through clouds to the Buddhist monastery, he heard music: the monks were
listening to bootleg Bob Marley tapes. His return journey was more
difficult. When he reached Germany, he bought a sitar--hearing that
Germans made the best sitars--and wearing a Nehru jacket acquired in his
travels, he played sitar music on street corners in West Berlin until he
managed to raise enough money for the jet trip home. Did I mention he
looked a bit like John Lennon? And the sitar really did have a good
sound.)
But I digress. Ravi...for me, he opened a new way of understanding
musical structure.
Yours in the extermination of al-Qaeda,
Eric
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