sounds of joy
This I could listen to all day.
Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938-; bansuri [bamboo flute]) & Vijay Ghate (1964-; tabla), Raag Jog, live, Italy (Cabella), 2007
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music offers an escape from the swamp of the self.
spellbinding
Hariprasad Chaurasia (bansuri [bamboo flute]), Raga Bhimpalasi, 1991
#1
#2
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lagniappe
radio
Today, celebrating the jazz saxophonist’s birthday, WKCR-FM (Columbia University) is Coleman Hawkins Radio.
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reading table
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
—Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), The Rambler (#2), 1750
Shivkumar Sharma (santoor) & Zakir Hussain (tabla), live, Tokyo, 1988
#1
#2
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lagniappe
radio
Today it’s all ragas all day at WKCR-FM (Columbia University), where they’re hosting the Ragas Live Festival—24 hours straight of Indian classical music, featuring 24 live in-studio performances.
serendipity
Every so often, like, for instance, last night, when I was listening to the radio* while working on a brief for a client who’s serving a 20-year sentence for attempted murder, I find myself being totally swept away by something that, a minute earlier, I didn’t even know existed.
Pannalal Ghosh (1911-1960), bansuri (Indian flute), Raga Darbari
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lagniappe
random thoughts
One thing we can be sure of, in an otherwise uncertain world, is that each of us is a child of a God who may or may not exist.
*Raag Aur Taal, WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
sounds of India
Vilayat Khan (1928-2004), sitar, with Kishan Maharaj (1923-2008), tabla, Raga Bhairavi, live, London, 2002
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lagniappe
reading table
Sun and moon, sun and moon, time goes.
—John Updike, Rabbit, Run
passings
Ravi Shankar, sitarist and composer, April 7, 1920-December 11, 2012
With Ali Akbar Khan (sarod), et al., “Bangla Dhun,” New York (The Concert for Bengladesh), 1971
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lagniappe
art beat: Art Institute of Chicago
Here’s my one-word review of the newly opened gallery of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, where, Tuesday morning (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building), sunlight was streaming through the windows: stunning.
refuge from the storm
Hariprasad Chaurasia, bansuri (bamboo flute)
Raag Shivanjali, live, Germany (Stuttgart), 1995
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Friday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Utagawa Hiroshige, Sparrows and Camellia in Snow, c. 1831-33
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reading table
singing in the tree
are you a widower, Crow
Milky Way above—Kobayashi Issa, 1804 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
street music: Bangalore (India)
Four drummers, 2010
24 hours of ragas
On Thursday, June 21st WKCR-FM will feature a historic first in radio broadcast: a live raga marathon with 24 musicians performing in 24 hours! Curated by Brooklyn Raga Massive and HarmoNYom, the festival will start on Wednesday, June 20th at midnight and end on Thursday June 21st at midnight. Raga, which literally means “to color the mind,” are musical modes in Indian Classical Music that correspond with specific times of the day or the night. All Ragas in the festival will correspond to the time of their performance. Read more for the schedule of the festival:
12am Neel Murgai – Sitar
1am Sameer Gupta and Ehren Hanson – Tabla Duo
2am Achyut Joshi – Vocal
3am Iklhaq Hussain – Sitar
4am Anjana Roy and Sanjay Rajan Pal – Sitar and Tabla
5am Akshay Anantapadmanabhan – Mridangam
6am Indrajit Roy Chowdhury – Sitar
7am Daisy Paradis – Sitar
8am Samarth Nagarkar – Vocal
9am Eric Fraser – Flute
10am Falu Shah – Vocal
11am Shanti Sivani – Vocal
12pm Steve Gorn – Flute
1pm Karavika – Violin & Cello
2pm Gargi Shinde – Sitar
3pm Camila Celin – Sarod
4pm Kedar Naphade – Harmonium
5pm Vivek Rudrapatna – Carnatic Violin
6pm Jay Gandhi – Flute
7pm Andrew Mendelson – Sitar
8pm Arun Ramamurthy – Carnatic Violin
9pm Ashvin Bhogendra – Carnatic Vocal
10pm Oded Tzur – Saxophone
11pm Kiran Ahluwalia – VocalOn Tabla & Harmonium accompaniment:
Nitin Mitta, Sameer Gupta, Ehren Hanson, Naren Budhakar, Dan Weiss, Stephen Celluci, Andrew ShantzOn Mridingam accompaniment:
Akshay Anantapadmanabhan
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Nikhil Banerjee, sitar (with Kanai Dutta, tabla)
Rag Bhimpalasri, Rag Multani (35:42-)
Live, Netherlands (Rotterdam), 1970
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
There’s no “Indian music” in India.
Too much beauty in your life?
Well, I guess you can skip this.
Shivkumar Sharma, santoor
Hariprasad Chaurasia, bansuri (bamboo flute)
Raga Bhoopali, live, India (Mumbai), 1995 (music begins at 3:55)
More Pandit Sharma? Here.
More Pandit Chaurasia? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
—Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense” (Collected Poems, 2012)
music clip of the day 