Not this, not this

Thanks to a rendition by Amit Paul in the recently concluded Indian Idol competition, I came to know about Rabbi Shergill's 'Bulla ki Jaana'.
The lyrics of the song (Suman Kashyap's translation is reproduced below) is written by eighteenth century Punjabi Sufi poet Bulleh Shah.
Bulleh Shah's amazingly powerful lyrics is an example of apophatic, or negative, theology. This attempt to describe the undescribable is found in the Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. My favorite is the ever-searching and ever-wanting mantra in Advaita Vedanta:
neti, neti or not this, not this.

In Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, Yajnavalkya is questioned by his students to describe God. He states "The Divine is not this and it is not that" (neti, neti).

Thus, the Divine is not real as we are real, nor is it unreal. The divine is not living in the sense humans live, nor is it dead. The Divine is not compassionate as we use the term, nor is it uncompassionate. And so on. We can never truly define God in words. All we can do is say, it isn't this, but also, it isn't that either". In the end, the student must transcend words to understand the nature of the Divine.

In this sense, neti-neti is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever the Divine may be, when we attempt to capture it in human words, we must inevitably fall short, because we are limited in understanding, and words are limited in ability to express the transcendent. [Link]

Plotinus, the die-hard third century Platonist, took inspiration from these eastern ideas, and wrote the famous Enneads.

Generative of all, the unity is none of all, neither thing nor quality, nor intellect nor soul, not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time...

If any one were to demand of nature why it produces, it would answer, if it were willing to listen and speak: You should not ask questions, but understand keeping silence as I keep silence, for I am not in the habit of speaking.
(as quoted in Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's The Bhagavadgita)

Bulleh Shah, Yajnavalkya, or Plotinus's thoughts are a whiff of fresh air. They release us from our habits of thought.

This weariness, forgive me, my lord

This weariness, forgive me, my lord!
If ever, I fall behind in my journey.
My heart trembles in a strange fear
Forgive me that agony, forgive me my lord!
This impoverishment, forgive me, my lord!
If ever, I look behind;
In the heat of the day, in the blaze of the sun,
Your garland withers on the worship tray;
Forgive me that dullness, forgive me my lord!

Captain of our souls

What more can we say about our country's darling son? In every way he has shown us the path, inspiring a nation by his ideal of sacrifice and service. More photos here, with descriptions.

Rabindranath said, "If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative".

"We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children.", wrote Aurobindo.

The monks of Ramakrishna Mission work tirelessly for the welfare of the needy. Their activities are carried out in various parts of our country on the basis of the principles of Shiva Jnane Jiva Seva ("Service to people as service to God") and work is worship.


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Santana - Soul Sacrifice (Woodstock 1969)

Mike Shrieve - Drums
José Chepitó Areas and Mike Carabello - Timbales and Conga
Gregg Rolie - Keyboards
David Brown - Bass
Carlos Santana - Guitar (Gibson SG Special)

Ustad Rashid Khan declines invitation

Ustad Rashid Khan has declined to participate in this year's North American Bengali Conference. Here's what he had to say:

Dear Debashish da,

I am sorry to inform you that, I shall not be able to perform for your Banga Sammelan Concert to be held this year in.

My experience this year in April, in the US, was a nerve wrecking one. We are Artists, who have been awarded and felicitated by the highest offices in India and abroad. We represent the Culture Heritage of India but I am sorry to say that my experience there was such that I don't think I would want to go there for a second time and face such humiliation.

Hence, I would ask to be pardoned, and an once again taking this opportunity to thank you for having invited me to your conference.

Lots of love & regards to my audience and best wishes to everyone.

RASHID KHAN

You can read the letter on NABC website. Look under the left frame (International Performers).

Ustadji is one of the finest vocalists of Hindustani Classical. He comes from the Rampur Sahaswan Khayal Gharana,and was trained by the famous Ustad Nissar Hussain Khan. We spent whole nights waiting to buy tickets to his concerts at Nazrul Mancha, the Open Air Auditorium at Kolkata. I remember once we touched his feet after a concert. Ustadji is also a glaring example of the success of the Guru-Shishya parampara (which is a way of imparting tacit knowledge) in Indian Classical Music.

A whole day would be spent on practising just a single note. [Link]

Reminds me of a comment in Rock Street Journal: Santana (one of my favorite guitarists) can squeeze color out of one note. Malmsteen's unnecessary speed does not impress me much. Well said!

After hearing him, none other than Pandit Bhimsen Joshi (who comes from the mesmerizing Kirana Gharana) remarked,

"There is now at least one person in sight who is an assurance for the future of Indian vocal music."

Ustadji's rendition of the Yaman is one of the best I have heard till date. If you have napster, look it up. Also hear his Hamsadhwani, a very popular Carnatic raga known by the same name in Hindustani Classical. Here is a clip [10:10 - 7:20; there's a little conversation in between) of Hamsadhwani from Ritwick Ghatak's film 'Meghe Dhaka Tara' (The Cloud Strapped Star).

Only six degrees (of separation)

The band got its name - Moheener Ghoraguli - from the poem Ghora (Horses) by Bengali poet Jibanananda Das.

Victory to thee

Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
dispenser of India's destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, the Maratha country,
in the Dravida country, Utkala (Orissa) and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
it mingles in the rhapsodies of the pure waters of the Yamuna and the Ganges.
They chant only thy name,
they seek only thy blessings,
they sing only thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
thou dispenser of India's destiny.
Victory, Victory, Victory, Victory to thee.

The world's rhythm in my veins

I cannot translate this into English. You have to know the language. Words are not words. They have lives of their own.

[Update: The video has been changed. This one has subtitles in English.]

The rabindrasangeet is sung by Debabrata Biswas, the freebird on screen is Anil Chatterjee, and the clip is from Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) directed by Ritwick Ghatak. All his life, Ghatak had protested against the partition of Bengal.

Gayatri Spivak revisited

Arnab Ray has blogged about Radheshyam Rasia's bhojpuri singing, with a brief reference to Spivak's theory of the subaltern.

Two months ago, I had written about the popular and the subaltern, with an embed of the same Rasia Tailor video. But now, I think a more accurate analogy to Spivak's Can the subaltern Speak? is the last scene in Antarmahal, where Jashomati, the zamindar's younger wife played by Soha Ali Khan, commits suicide.



Antarmahal is based on Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's short story Protima. It's not clear if Jashomati is menstruating (see the movie and read Spivak's paper to know why I ask this question), but the ending is pretty close to Spivak's theory of the subaltern. In her original essay, Spivak writes about the suicide of Bhuvaneshwari Bhaduri, a young woman in her teens in 1926, and tries to drive home the argument that the subaltern as female, cannot be heard or read. Spivak is sometimes difficult to grasp, and is known for her obscurity. The point is made, however, in the last scene and it aptly portrays the original title of Spivak's essay: Power, Desire, Interest.

I am not a student of literary criticism, nor am I driven by the romanticism of protest. Any wrong analogies drawn, I hope, will be forgiven by those who know better.

Didn't you enjoy Amar Pal's mellifluous voice? [starts at 3:00]

Nothing comes

This room has plastered white walls,
books, machines, pencils and erasers,
light from the windows, even darkness in the corners.

In the morning, the sun comes in an orange-yellow,
which is different from the yellow-orange of evening.

Sometimes, two pigeons come looking for food,
phone calls come, dhobi comes with the clean clothes.

Why don't you come in these lonely evenings?
Sometimes, I wish you too had come by mistake.
Don't you know, when nothing comes, what comes is pain?

===================================

Yes, nothing comes. Iron Maiden is going to Bangalore. And we are sucking thumb in this village of ours.

In our college days, we had grown up listening to IM, and cheering Chintu, Jose, Chandhok, RR Singh and Srini to their renditions of Where Eagles Dare, and Hallowed Be Thy Name. IM was different from the other noise-generating, body-building type heavy metal bands (e.g. Megadeth; British heavy metal bands are anyday better than American ones). Their lyrics was engrossing - Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Icarus from Greek Mythology, Fear of the Dark and Wasted Years - and they had those mesmerizing twin lead guitar riffs by Dave Murray and Adrian Smith.

Here's a video of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Do listen to the melody of the twin lead at 2:35 and 2:07.

Poem

-- Donald Justice (1925 - 2004)

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
This poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamour of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.

(Chandrabindoo's Tāke Khoob Kāchhe Jei Pāi)

The popular and the subaltern

Conceptual clarity is essential to demarcate the popular and the subaltern. In her signature lucidity, Gayatri Spivak mentions in this symposium at UCSB that the popular and the subaltern do not inhabit a continuous space. I disagree. They might, in the mind of a person who does not know anything about the current state of affairs (Bhojpuri music, for example). I am that dork. Not only conceptual clarity, but contextual familiarity is essential too. Postmodern theorists/ literary critics/ armchair text-weavers, please take note. Chomsky said similar things too. And if you haven't, take a look at the mesmerizing postmodern generator. (scroll down to read the first line after the references)

On a different note, many problems, in my opinion, can be solved if we know how to break free from logical text into other forms of expression. That's why we have poems, alliterations, words that resemble sound, rhythms, rhymes, and limericks. And of course there's seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling -- all different ways to exit from text.

In that spirit, for wholesome entertainment, I present to you Rasia Tailor. Don't ask me whether it is popular or subaltern. I don't care anymore.

Please to note Rasia's move at 3:10 - 3:14.

Get (Assaf's) Rhythm

Mile sur mera tumhara

When in school, I remember watching this collage, of lovely images and vibrant sounds of a variety of languages, as it first travels from India's north to south, and then from the northeast to the west. Created by the Lok Sevā Sanchār Parishad, the video was promoted by Doordarshan and India's Ministry of Information. Enjoy!

If you can share a better quality video please do leave a comment.

What do you see?

ROME, Italy (AP) -- It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love.
Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua, just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."[Link]

Mantua, interestingly, is mentioned in Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet. But what makes us contemplative and melancholy? What flows from one to the other across thousands of years?

Probably the answer lies in Tagore’s profound observation – ‘Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin.’

Our aesthetic and sense of beauty is hard to destroy. We recognize it instantly, and make it our own. In this Rabindrasangeet, Kanika Banerjee celebrates the endlessness of this aesthetic, the persistence of its true form in the formless. The beauty of the alliteration - anuprās in Sanskrit - towards the end [2:00] is indeed captivating : angabihin ālingane sakal anga bhare.

The poem was generated from Somen Bhattacharjee's digital library.

And you feel laid back and your hands start clappin'

You don't need long hair to play the guitar. And you don't need to jump on the stage! In this video Chet Atkins plays the Yakety Axe, a version of Boots Randolph's Yakety Sax. In a more recent recording Mark Knopfler joined Chet in the picking. He sang too. Pure Joy!

Lyrics here.

The Magic of Malkauns at Midnight

Like western classical music, the roots of Indian classical music are religious. But while western classical music emphasizes harmony, Indian Classical Music is based on melody and rhythm. A Rāga specifies a set of rules for building the melody, and the rules for constructing melodies are different in different rāgas.

Different rāgas activate different emotional states. Pandit Ravi Shankar refers to a Sanskrit saying ‘Ranjayathi iti Rāga’, which means ‘that which colors the mind is a rāga'. In addition, each rāga is associated with a particular time of the day or a season of the year.

Malkauns is a rāga to be played in the midnight hour. Listen to this rendition of the Malkauns by Ustad Bismillah Khan. His instrument is the shehnai. If you have attended Indian weddings, you must have heard the lilting sound of the shehnai wafting in the air.

[For uninterrupted listening: click on play, immediately click on pause, and let the music buffer for some time - till the grey line reaches the end]

Bismillah Khan was an epitome of simplicity. He lived a spartan life in the city of Varanasi, also known as the 'city of temples and learning'. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honor. Read about his performances at Delhi’s Red Fort here.

A good way to remember rāgas is to identify them by the tune of film songs. Here is a song (from the famous movie Baiju Bawra) based on Malkauns, sung by Mohammad Rafi. Enjoy!

Rocking gypsies

Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music--not too much, or the soul could not sustain it--from time to time.

-- Vikram Seth in An Equal Music.

Fandango nights is from Willie and Lobo's album Puerto Vallarta Squeeze, a novel of the same name by Robert James Waller. Yes he is the same guy who wrote The Bridges of Madison County. Both the novels have been made into movies.

Jatindra Nath Das

[A large number of revolutionaries were convicted in the Lahore conspiracy Case … many of them were sent to the Andamans. The revolutionary under-trials went on hunger strike protesting against the horrible conditions in jails. They demanded that they be treated as political prisoners and not as criminals. On 13th September, 1929, after 64 days of an epic hunger strike Jatin Das, the iron willed young man from Bengal died. The entire nation rallied behind the hunger strikers. Thousands came to pay homage at every station passed by the train carrying his body from Lahore to Calcutta. At Calcutta, a two-mile-long procession of more than half a million people carried his coffin to the cremation ground.] link (scroll down little)

To know more read this excellent article by Balbir K Punj.

Here is Bhagat Singh’s letter to The Home Member, Government of India.

Hearing Jatin Das’s painful death, on the night of 13th September, 1929, Tagore wrote this poem and put music to it. An attempt at translation will be futile. The poem is presented in Bengali script, the song is sung by Shantidev Ghosh (starts at 00:46).

The image of the poem was generated from this digital library prepared by Somen Bhattacharjee .

Ankhiyan Bhaili Lal

Beat of India is trying to save the rich folk songs of India from the onslaught of the big record labels. It is a fantastic effort. Once you become a member you get three songs free - like this bhojpuri song by Manoj Tiwari. It is about a couple's mischief during Holi. Enjoy!

[For uninterrupted listening: click on play, immediately click on pause, and let the music buffer for some time - till the grey line reaches the end]

Also, listen to the enchanting Music from Malwa.