A few years ago I discovered the music from Steffen-Basho Junghans and through him a whole new area of guitar music : the raga-guitar music. He provided me a lot of information and did send me some tapes for me to discover this style reference.
Therefore I wrote an article in Bourdonske (I think it was in 1999 or sooner). I still have the original Dutch article here. A few years later I started building up these webpages to stimulate this movement and interest.
Already some years later, perhaps simultaneously, I noticed many more guitarists starting to publish separate releases, with raga experiments.
Because of this growing new movement, which is partly a post-Takoma revival too, with a large portion of raga-guitar interest, I decided to write a new article for Ruis magazine. The dutch article you can still read here, which was published march 2005. A much larger English version of that article, as introduction to this music you can read here. The other related webpages are review pages on new guitarists, especially when raga-guitar related.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE RAGA-(STYLE)GUITAR
(& SOME PARALLEL INDIAN INFLUENCES)
REMARKS ABOUT THE PRE-LP HISTORY
Before the publishing of records musical history looked different and was recorded only in small portions. During a large portion of cultural history I’m sure there always have been Indian musicians travelling and participating in especially court music. Also there one can find out cooperations of musicians between different origins, adaptations and communications about musical theories, and so on. Only recently music has become accessible to ordinary people. Anyone can become a musician and can adapt whatever he finds necessary to express himself. Nowadays in the west, not only schools and books and sometimes concerts can be valuable, but also recordings.
FOLKWAYS, RAVI SHANKAR & ALI AKHBAR KHAN
Since the fifties and early sixties there was a rising popularity of Indian, Eastern and Asiatic music in America, with residence in North California and Washington. Some original masters came to America for concerts. Important influences were Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee for the sitar, Hamza El Din for the Arabian, Turkish and Nubian oud, and later Brij Bhushan Kabra for the Indian slide guitar. A few of these masters stayed and founded their own school or influence. One of the most known is Ali Akhbar Khan, master of the Indian sarod who founded its College of Music in San Rafael,CA.
In New York the real Indian/Eastern "thing" started around Washington in the middle of a new creative folk and jazz scene, in coffeehouses and within the blues, stimulated by the Richard Spottswood-record collection : The Folkways Series, including the music people could hear in Asiatic restaurants. A few young people wanted to be confronted of what was going on in the world within a bigger context and range. People like Max Ochs, Robbie Basho and Sandy Bull were very moved by this Eastern/Indian thing.
SANDY BULL
One of the earliest serious investigators of ethical styles on the guitar was Sandy Bull. His first recording from 1963 "Fantasias for guitar and banjo" (Vanguard) was very much influenced by the Nubian oud player Hamza El Din. His recordings opened up the possibilities in world music. His most remarkable raga moment was “Blend II”, on “Inventions” from 1965, with incredible jazzdrummer Billy Higgins, one of the best early raga-guitar examples I know of.
ROBBIE BASHO
While Sandy Bull lived a rather calm life in the New York pool, Basho travelled around in America in the sixties. Basho had started with writing lessons with Rudd Fleming where he was heavily inspired by Matsuo Basho, most known Japanese Haiku-writer of the 17th century. Here he met Max Ochs who introduced him into folk music. The biggest impression on him was the big Cultural Centre from the University where Richard Spottswood worked there at the library in the music department. First he changed his name from Daniel Robinson into Robbie Basho. He started to play blues combined with local protest songs. Also Bill Roberts (from "Hey Joe") had its influence on him. John Fahey he did meet too. With Mach Ochs, and like many of the Washington-scène, he went to Berkely to develop the Hindu styles. In Seattle he saw Hindu dancing, and some Tibetan lamas. But not until after hearing a Ravi Shankar- finally everything changed. Back in Berkely he worked on his "Esoteric Doctrine of colors and spheres" and recorded until '71 6 lp's for Takoma, one for Blue Thumb, in '72 en '74 and 2 lp's for Vanguard and after a big break 2 LP's in '78/'79 2 for Windham Hill, 1 for Silver Label Rec.. Before he died in 1986 there were three more private tapes. Where John Fahey founded the solo guitar string movement, and Leo Kottke made it popular, it was Basho's vision and technique that leaded to the "impressionistic guitar school" that evolved on its own to the New Age guitar movement. Basho had developed a raga structure that fitted for North American music. This structure fitted on several moods. Especially the second album from 1965, “The Grail and the Lotus” was pure American raga.
STEFFEN BASHO-JUNGHANS
The achievements of Robbie Basho were further developed by Steffen Basho Junghans in his work, first with "In Search of the Eagle's voice" as an impressive early work, and then further developed into complete refinement in his "Song of the earth" and several other works to be followed after that. After two impressionistic guitar albums (Fleur de Lis I and II) and the raga-guitar related releases he also recorded a few experimental acoustic guitar releases or tracks. His goal was to develop something inside a modal raga structure with rhythmic developments, creating a new blend of new music. Many of his releases are amongst the best examples of this, serious approach. The music is not only played skilfully but also has a “warm” sophisticated development. If one analyses Steffen's approach one has to realize he works with a revolutionary focus. (seperate reviews you can find on next page)
JOHN FAHEY & TAKOMA LABEL
John Fahey started stimulating the steelstringguitar movement, and a development of a distinctive American guitar sound creativity. He now is regarded as the father of the steelstring guitar. He founded the now legendary Takoma-label in 1959. Kottke’s first release on the label showed a remarkable guitar talent. But after a while Kottke started to make songs and didn’t show that much attention to guitar solo work. But it was still the success of Kottke’s song releases that also made people pay attention to the Takoma label. John Fahey’s Indian music influence came only around mid 60’s when Wilson and Pat Sullivan introduced it to him. Like Basho also Fahey made composed music. Only now and then he investigated some principles of Indian music and experimented with it in some tracks. While for the Sandy Bull track and Robbie Basho one can speak about the development of a raga-guitar technique, John Fahey tried especially different compositional ideas.
PETER WALKER
On The Vanguard label was one other guitarist who independently completely wanted to develop an American raga technique. From Cambridge Walker had travelled through Spain and North Africa, was living in Mexico for a while listening to Indian music. He employed the Indian concept of starting with a drone, adding a scale based on the drone, then a melodic line based upon the scale, then weaving, reweaving, and interweaving the melodic line so that a freely improvised piece is constructed. When playing ragas on the guitar his approach is to set up a drone pattern usually based upon the first, fifth and fourth intervals of a western scale, and when he feels that, a steady pulse of the drone has been established to work in a melody line based upon a popular American folk song or whatever melody line he finds appealing. When that melody line is inserted he improvises on the emotions of it staying within the same modal structure, adding additional combinations of notes when improvising. This kind of improvising is closest to what some of the later raga-guitar improvisers would try for themselves.
DAVY GRAHAM
Davy Graham stood for the British/European movement of acoustic guitar. He had a huge influence on Bert Jansch and John Renbourne. Before him in Europe guitar music had no own creative field. Early 60’s he was already a legend because he was experimenting to fuse rock,folk,blues,jazz and Indian music. He played a while with Alexis Korners Blues Incorporated and John Mayall’s Bluesbrakers. But after having seen a duo concert between Ravi Shankar and Ali Akhbar Khan he started working on ideas to fuse east and west. Most of his early ideas seemed somewhat theoretical, or technical examples now when we look back. Since the 70’s he also learned the sarod, oud and bouzouki. He recorded 2 LP’s with them in the eighties.
CLARCK HUTCHINSON
I noticed one more English recording, an experimenting electric guitar album from the band Clarck Hutchinson, A=MH² from 1969 where the guitarist Mick Hutchinson tried an improvisation in Indian scale. Also this track is interesting to hear.
THE SITAR-POPULARISATION
After the first acoustic and steelstring guitar-experiments in the mid 60’s the Indian music influence was about to make a different turn. Since The Birds sitar use and the appearance of Ravi Shankar on the popular “Sgt.Pepper” album, sitar became the hip instrument, especially for its sound. It became one of the possible elements of psychedelic music,. Sitar was one of these hip instruments used in pop, psychedelia and even folk (under influence of Incredible String Band since 1967) especially popular between 1967-1969. But serious compositional ideas with sitar or any other related instrument were hard to find.
The first ever pop example of an Indian influence came actually from The Seventh Sons who recorded in 1964 their album “raga”, a true open tuning hippie excursion, which was released on the right moment, on ESP, in 1968. The group I heard also played with Fred Neil, who recorded an improvised raga-rock track on his turn in 1966. (read the story under the review here). Nice sitarbeat was also released by the guitarist Big Jim-Sullivan (also under the name of Lord Sitar), with Beatles covers played on sitar and backed by a poprock band or a gogo band (Lord Sitar). Also the nephew of Ravi, Ananda Shankar made serious east/West pop compositions with sitar and rock band first, and with many Beatles covers on his first album in 1970. His albums became one of the best examples of Indian/West Fusions, but he was sadly neglected, while all attention always went to the actually more traditional Ravi Shankar. Ravi might have introduced the term “fusion” back in 1961 with his duet with Bud Shank, it was Ananda who really succeeded bringing this to a mature style.
The only other serious raga-consideration I still have to mention in popmusic are the first 2 albums from The Third Ear Band (1969-1970), with percussion, oboe, violin, cello. (Radioshow on Third Ear Band see next page).
(All sitar/indo-fusion etc. related music you can find here).
RAGA-GUITAR IN JAZZ : JOHN MCLAUGHLIN & SHAKTI
Also in Jazz sitar and tempura was used more often, since Coltrane, Don Chery, Pharoah Sanders, Brother Ah and many others had discovered it. Especially within the “cosmic music” period in jazz (1966-1974 more or less) one can find many examples of wonderful use of ethnical influences. “Indo-jazz” was before introduced by the Indian John Mayer with his cooperation with Joe Harriott (sax) since early 60’s. But not many people tried anything on his guitar.
John McLauglin had an Indian guru who thought him also how to play Indian music. John developed for it his own guitar by adding some resonance strings to it. This way the sound of the acoustic guitar was much closer to the sitar. With the Indian group Shakti he introduced raga-like pieces played virtuously on his guitar. Especially the first, live recorded album is amazing. The compositions were co-written by another nephew of Shankar. With this, also the concept of the sitar-guitar was born. Various other designs were manufactured, like also electric sitar-guitars, the coral guitar and various similar models. But it was also because of the overuse exploitation of guitarists like John McLauglin on over-skilled stage-performances that the attention to serious music began to enter a tiring stage. Also thanks to other over-ambitious clowns like Keith Emerson trying to prove also pop music could develop serious music people felt the loss of the true basic spirit of inspiration, which led to a complete turn of attention in music, to genres like punk. Since then any serious music genre, which had overexposed its skills had no surviving power any more. Since mid 70’s it would take at least 20 years before a renewed interest in Indian music, especially for experiments in guitar would be reconsidered.
INDIAN SLIDE-GUITAR & MORE INDIAN GUITARISTS
Of course also in India are important names and developments.
The Indian slide-guitar technique came forth from a kidnapped Indian who lived in Hawaï. After him it came back to India with the Hawaiian steel guitar master Tao Moe, who spent a number of years living and performing in India during the early 1940s. Moe had a student, an Indian named Garny Niss, who was the first Indian to play Hawaiian music. Garny Niss, in turn, had a student named Brij Bushan Kabra in the 1950's. He, on his turn, became the first musician to play Indian Classical music on Hawaiian guitar, later on an archtop guitar and he was discovered by the 1st American musicians in the late 50s/early 60s. It are also the South India's gottuvadyam and the North India's vichitra vina instruments which are played with this technique. Brij Bushan Kabra released an LP for Word Pacific in the sixties, one on American edition in '83 and another one on Oriental Records in 1986.
The most important North Indian slide-player is Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. He developed his own ‘mohan vina’ from a modified archtop guitar.
Of equal importance is Debashish Bhattacharya, a disciple of the great Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and of the earlier mentioned Brij Bhushan Kabra. He developed several modified guitar-instruments. The ‘Dev Veena’ which he developed is a very innovative guitar which is the synthesis of the veena, the sitar, the sarod and the Arabian kannur. It has 22 strings and is played flat on the lap. (review on next page).
Another more recent slide guitarist I discovered lately was Barun Kumar Pal who also has his own design of an Indian slide-guitar (two records of his are reviewed on next page).
Of course there exist many more Indian musicians who play the hawaïin guitar, like Dr. Kamala Shankar, Varanasi (a great slide player), G.Jaywant, Sanjay Kumar Verma and many more,...
Prasanna played and recorded some fine traditional Karnatic music on the electric guitar. The first introduction of electric guitar was done before him by Sukumar Prasadin the seventies. Besides he also plays some jazzfusion. (link to homepage)
