India’s influence on Western music

My first reminiscence of seeing “world music” demonstrated live was way back in March 1984 when Shakti — the band fronted by guitarist John McLaughlin – played at the Cooperage Football Grounds in south Mumbai, featuring the likes of Zakir Husain on tabla and L Shankar on violin.

My next live experience of this then new genre happened four years later when Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour performed as part of the 1988 worldwide Amnesty International Human Rights Now! tour, at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, playing before an audience of 72,000 with Tracy Chapman as the opening act. Other examples include the explosive qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — who I saw perform live in Mumbai in 1996 — or the Jazz India-promoted Jazz Yatra festivals that provided a unique blend of jazz combined with Indian instrumentation too.

But the world music connection did not occur overnight, and was a growing movement that gained popularity in the ’60s, much credit for which goes to the international successes of leading Indian classical music exponents such as sitar player Pandit Ravi Shankar (of whom more later) and Ali Akbar Khan on sarod.

The culmination of what initially was considered to be diverse sounds was the obvious entry of Indian sounds in Western compositions, none more obvious than in songs like “Love You Too” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” on the Beatles’ 1966 album, ‘Revolver’, The Byrds’ 1966 released “Eight Miles High”, and on Traffic’s 1967 album, ‘Mr Fantasy’, which featured “Paper Sun”.

Which brings me to a unique concert titled ‘Let’s Merge’ (“experience and enjoy the experimental process with which fusion music is created”), which was organised by Inner Courtyard (“a regular platform for artistes to interact with a discerning audience”) at a public auditorium in South Mumbai in June that brought together what initially appeared to be an amalgamation of disparate talents. The progenitors, both Mumbai-based, consisted of leading Indian classical vocalist Dhanashree Pandit-Rai and composer, music director and pianist Merlin D’Souza.

Dhanashree is a trained singer under the tutelage of Pandit Firoz Dastur, subsequently specialising in thumri under the guidance of Shobha Gurtu prior to collaborating with renowned jazz and world music artistes. Keyboard wizard Merlin is, of course, a composer and pianist, who has dabbled in film, albums, advertising and theatre.

In selecting songs for their joint performance that eventually spanned almost two hours, the artistes — supported by a temporary and yet brilliant band featuring I.D. Rao (saxophone/flute), Bertie D’Silva (bass), and Aniruddha Shirke (tabla) — ran through songs that were straightforward Indian classical or Western musical tunes, but it was the fusion of the diverse sounds that really brought the performance to life. For instance, “Mane Na” — a composition by Dr Prabha Atre — was transformed into a blues song that Merlin commenced with an afro influence that was amazingly adapted by Dhanashree performing raag madhukauns in support. Later, Dhanashree took the lead with a thumri celebrating Holi festivities, which was backed by “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. But the surprises did not merely end here as “Autumn Leaves” — initially sung by Dhanashree in perfect French — was effortlessly blended with raag kirwani as Dhanashree switched to Hindi prior to the Paul Desmond composition, “Take 5” (popularised by the Dave Brubeck Quartet), merging with the Hindustani jhaptal, as both musical genres were wrapped in five beats.

Of course, no performance could be complete without bringing out the obvious inspiration of Indian classical music on The Beatles — which, as mentioned earlier, was courtesy member George Harrison being influenced by the learnings of Pandit Ravi Shankar and, with it, his passion for India and its musical heritage — with “Norwegian Wood” unified with raag bageshri. In all this, one must also recognise that the opening track of the ‘Let’s Merge’ concert, “Prabhujee”, a Pandit composition that appeared on his ‘Chants Of India’ album (produced by Harrison), which I proudly released in India on behalf of the company popularly known as HMV (now Saregama) which, then, represented Angel Records, a record label founded by EMI in 1953 and, since 2013, is merged within Warner Music. “Prabhujee” was set to raag shuddh kalyan, with Dhanashree and Merlin adding an interesting musical tangent of gospel to the invocation of this chant.

It was truly a memorable performance of world music that requires to be seen live, not merely heard, as the homework undertaken by Dhanashree and Merlin in “merging” the tracks between two genres was suitably introduced with trivia in pursuit as this musical genre continues to expand beyond physical boundaries.