Any Other Sitarists Here?

[duceditor]

Back in the mid to late sixties I spent as much time playing the sitar as the guitar. And although it has been some years since I played (and my old instrument is in pretty tough shape) I'm thinking of getting back into it. Any other sitarist here on the forum?

-don

[Wade Hampton]

I've fooled around on sitars a few times, but it's a challenging instrument, and I've never owned one, much less performed or gotten proficient on it.

Back in the 1970's when I was in college, however, I did meet another guy in my neighborhood (a student at the Music Conservatory, as it happened,) who was quite good on sitar. I'd tune my mountain dulcimer to C#, which is where he kept his sitar, and the two of us would raga out together!

We used to play out in the park on warm sunny days, as much to meet friendly, impressionable young women as anything else. He had long black hair and a black mustache, I had long blond hair and a red mustache, and when the inevitable question came - "Do you guys know 'Norwegian Wood?' " we'd smile and launch right into it.

It was a lot of fun. Met a lot of pretty girls that way...


Wade Hampton Miller

[duceditor]

Wade, the mountain dulcimer and sitar must have sounded wonderful together! Wish I could have been there!

You are certainly right about the sitar having been a babe magnet back then. I used to sit in Tomkins Sq. in N.Y.C. and later The Boston Commons and have similar experiences (right down to the requests for Norwegian Wood) ;-).

The most wonderful experience I ever had playing in a park was back in my NYC days. I was playing in Tompkins Sq -- it was the Summer of `67 -- surrounded as usual by a small crowd, playing an extended morning raga, when an "elderly" (hey, at age 19 everyone of 50 would qualify!) black gentleman approached and asked if he could get his bass and join me. I said "sure."About twenty minutes later he came back with an upright bass and got right into the groove with what I was playing. We started bouncing melody ideas off one another and got deeper and deeper into some odd eastern tonalities that frankly went beyond anything I had ever played.

That went on for, I don't know -- time was standing still -- maybe close to an hour, when I, exhausted physically and mentally from being drawn so far out of my regular 'zone', brought it to an end. The gentleman warmly smiled, said (I think) a brief word of "thanks," picked up his bass, and walked away.

I just sat there, trying catch my breath as it were, when a man who had been sitting close to us on the lawn whispered to me "Wow, what a privilege!" I asked him what he meant and he said to me "Don't you know who that was?" I answered "No." Then he looked at me, shook his head with amazement, and said "Hey man, that was Charlie Mingus!"

Later I looked at a record jacket photo and yes it was.

A few years back an author of a bio of Mingus was on NPR. I called in to the program and shared the experience. The author was not surprised by the story. Mingus, he said, lived right near Tomkins Sq. at that time and was really into eastern music.

Sure wish I had a recording of that. Or even a photo.

Speaking of photos... Here's one of me with the sitar taken that same summer. That sure was a long, long time (and a lot of hair) ago.



-don

[cellocolin]

Who did you study sitar with? I am not a player, but I am a bit of an aficionado of Hindustani music.

Great story about Mingus, by the way. That's not a story many people can tell!

[duceditor]

Originally Posted by cellocolin

Who did you study sitar with? I am not a player, but I am a bit of an aficionado of Hindustani music.

Great story about Mingus, by the way. That's not a story many people can tell!

I was self-taught.

Here's a funny related story... When I bought my sitar back in the summer of 1965 few people knew anything about them. George Harrison, of course had introduced the instrument to much of the (younger) western world when he used in on Rubber Soul's Norwegian Wood. (And then to even better effect on Sgt Pepper track "Within you and Without You"), but to the older generation the sound of the sitar remained what my own father enjoyed calling "chicken scratch."

Anyhow I, like so many others who were into both rock music and a search for spiritual discovery, quickly moved to George's sources, discovered Ravi Shankar and other fine Hindustani musicians, and started to seriously study the music.

I, as mentioned above, had no formal training. I got and read several books to start to understand the theory and construction, and listened long and closely to recordings -- enough where I thought I was starting to get the sense and aesthetics of the music. But the emphasis had to be on thought. Did I really have a clue? Frankly even I was not sure.

About two years into my involvement with the instrument, which focused equally on my understanding of "classical" form and totally free-form use of its sonorities in my own totally western music (For an example go here: http://www.60sgaragebands.com/images...ngering_On.mp3 ), I had the opportunity to put the former to a test. My older sister, it turned out, had become friends with a woman who was studying at the University of New Delhi and who had become a very capable tabla (drum) player. One afternoon she visited us at my parent's Long Island home and tshe and I spent a lovely afternoon sitting on the lawn near the pool making music.

My poor dad! The "chicken scratch" was driving him mad! But he, like most from the culture of my youth (my family were East European Jews), had a "thing" for education. If my sister's friend was actually studying this "art" at a university there HAD to be something to it.

The final gloss to the day -- which meant as much to me as to him -- came after she and I had put aside our instruments and were quietly sitting poolside taking in some refreshment. My dad approached and with typical bluntness asked here "Does he have any idea at all what he's doing?" and she responded "Yes! He's very good!"

Oh, to have an imprimatur! And in front of my dad to boot!

In fact she asked if I'd be interested in accompanying her back to New Delhi. She was quite confident that she could arrange for me to get a stipend from the University to formally continue my studies. And that I almost did. But life took a different and unexpected turn when a few weeks later I met the love of my life and shortly later married.

When my mom passed away some years ago I found a plexi "photo cube" (a purely `70s thing) filled with snapshots from that period one of which was taken that very day. Alas my mom had 'trimmed' it and removed the picture of the very pretty tablist. Here is what remained:



-don

[HHP]

Might be a good opportunity to record some on-hold music for modern IT call centers.

[duceditor]

Originally Posted by HHP

Might be a good opportunity to record some on-hold music for modern IT call centers.

-don

[TerryAllanHall]

Originally Posted by HHP

Might be a good opportunity to record some on-hold music for modern IT call centers.

[acousticjazz]

Everyone, great stories, duceditor~ I really dig yours, simply amazing... I'm not sure what my reaction would be... it be like playing guitar in the park with an absolutely amazing guitar player and finding out later it was Pat Metheny! Though he's pretty easy to recognize