The Mystical Beatle
When I was a kid, it was common to be asked “who’s your favorite Beatle”? While most of the youthful questioners probably expected the response of John or Paul, from a fairly early age I tilted toward George. This was before he had fully shown his colors by embarking on his solo career. I think I somehow intuited his introverted and, indeed, mystical tendencies early on. Or, perhaps this is just a bit of confirmation bias, because mystical music making was the direction that he took through much of his subsequent career. A 2011 biography of Harrison by Gary Tillery is titled Working Class Mystic. The title is an indication of the irony—or perhaps appropriateness—that a son of a Liverpool bus driver who for several years grew up in a house without indoor plumbing should have become an important vehicle for introducing the West to one of the world’s original spiritual traditions, that of India.
West Meets East
George’s great awakening occurred with Ravi Shankar, who served as an enduring influence and important collaborator throughout his career. Shankar had already experienced reaching out to interested Westerners by the time that he met Harrison. In 1967, he recorded West Meets East with the classical violinist, Yehudi Menuhin. The album won a Grammy, and it was the first time that an Asian musician had done so. This year marks the 55th anniversary of West Meets East. The musicians recorded two follow-up offerings into the next decade. Shankar had met Menuhin in 1952, and it was Menuhin who had invited Shankar to give his first concert in New York in 1955.
The co-recordings by the two artists were important works for Shankar; they were very popular—featured today on ‘best of’ albums by the sitarist—but historically important as forerunners of world music, the fertile hybridity that fully matured in the music scene of the late twentieth century. On those albums, Shankar invited Menuhin to improvise; improvisation is a central feature of Indian music, but it had sadly been phased out of the skill set of most Western classical musicians across the centuries. Menuhin creates melodic lines lightly reminiscent of Jewish music—the American-born Menuhin was of Lithuanian Jewish heritage—but this quality fuses elegantly with Shankar’s North Indian ragas to create an effective melding of each artist’s formidable musicianship.
A Friendship Forms
Harrison met Shankar in London in 1966 and took lessons from him later that year in Srinagar, India, and then again in 1968 while on a trip to India with the whole band to study meditation with the Maharishi. He was introduced to the older Indian musician by Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of The Byrds. Initially enthused by the newness and exoticism of India, the band members were soon disillusioned by their perception of the ‘unholy’, exploitative behavior of the Mahirishi. However, Shankar’s influence was enduring. George had already famously played some sitar on the earlier Beatle’s recording, “Norwegian Wood” (1965). But the presence was even stronger on “Within You, Without You,” a track on the highly experimental Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album of 1967. This history is well known and part of the band’s legend.
What is less well known is that the relationship between Harrison and Shankar endured over decades. They went on to tour together during 1974, though the stress of the tour landed Shankar in a hospital following a heart attack. The pair was even invited to the White House for a visit with President Gerald Ford.
A Summative Project
I have recently discovered an album, the Chants of India, that is new to me, but which was recorded in 1997. This is the 25th anniversary of the album, which features the composition of Shankar and was produced by Harrison. The arrangements center on hypnotic devotional chants that really have no equivalent in the West. As a result, these focused, spiritual chants still exude a spirit of the ‘other’ for the Western ear. They also speak of something ancient. The original Vedas—the poems that are the ancient hymns of Hinduism, a later religion inspired by them—were themselves chant-like in their form and presentation. Though there is no way of knowing, one can imagine a lineage back to an ancient ritual practice, one that is at least two thousand years older than, say, Gregorian chants, which are themselves more than one thousand years old. In fact, Chants of India was inspired in part by the success of Benedictine monks’ recordings of medieval chants during the 1990s.
The Spirit of Collaboration
The ancient lineage of the music and its spiritual significance is in itself impressive. Yet, Shankar elaborates the chants in, yes, an enchanting manner. He features not only passages of sitar, but lilting bamboo flute, ethereal harp, the mystical encompassing tones of the drone (often played on the tanpura) and a variety of group and solo voices. The Indian flute is called the bansuri, and the musician Ronu Majumdar contributes masterful passages to the album, but there were many accomplished musicians involved in the project. The two masters put a lot of care into these arrangements and their recording. The album was created both in Madras and at Harrison’s home studio in Oxfordshire.
Harrison would have been 54 years old at the time of the production. By contrast, Shankar was 77, a full generation older than Harrison, but this did not stunt their fruitful collaboration. The project had been conceived in celebration of Shankar’s 75th birthday. It must have been an honor for Harrison to compose so intimately with his friend and guru.
A Work of Love and Honor
For Shankar, the album was a special challenge. Vedic chants had been part of his early musical awakening when he heard them in the city of Benares as a youth. With this project, he was stepping into a lineage steeped in tradition, and it was different than his familiar specialization, Indian classical music. Shankar felt a special responsibility to find the right form for these spiritually significant chants that are so central to Indian belief and identity. He was successful, synthesizing an approach that is both accessible and honorific of the ancient tradition. The musical notation was by the English musician, John Barnham, who had collaborated with Shankar as early as the period of the Menuhin duets.
During the same period, Harrison also edited Shankar’s second autobiography, Raga Mala, which was published in 1999. Sadly, Harrison was diagnosed with cancer soon after the release of Chants of India, and he passed on in 2002. Selections from the album were performed at the “Concert for George” in November, 2002, which celebrated the famous musician’s life.
Uniting Past, Present and Future
The album serves well as an accompaniment to yoga and meditation. An inner flame is likely to flicker within you during many of the compositions. The music “works” to place one in that special place of focus and concentration characteristic of meditative states. And it works as a set of linked compositions, grounded deep in the past but with a touch of the contemporary in their delicate instrumentation and arrangement. Historically, the album is an important collaboration between two musicians who maintained a lifelong friendship, a fact that is itself somewhat rare in the hustle-and-bustle world of professional musicians.
Speaking of collaborations, Ravi Shankar’s daughters are important collaborators in their own right. Though he was lightly involved in his second daughter Norah Jones’ upbringing, somehow his collaborative, cooperative nature is found in her oeuvre as well, such as her immensely popular series of duets heard on “ . . . Featuring Norah Jones.” Anoushka Shankar, Shankar’s third daughter, took up her father’s instrument, the sitar, and has created compositions that cross over into several genres. In fact, it was in 1997, the same year as the Chants of India was released, that Shankar taught Anoushka to play the sitar; she was 16 at the time. Anoushka conducted the performances of selections from Chants of India at the celebration of Harrison’s life in 2002. Both Ravi and Anoushka Shankar received Grammy nominations for Best World Music Albums in 2013 for their individual endeavors. Ravi’s was posthumous as he had died in 2012 at the age of 92.
Ravi Shankar and George Harrison were a model of fruitful cross-cultural collaboration, and that spirit lives on in the careers of Shankar’s progenies. The album Chants of India remains relevant for our time, which features as great of an interest in yoga, meditation and the artistic expression of Indian spirituality as the decade in which it was recorded.
