As the Revered Martin Luther King Jr once said, “If you have a dream… you must pursue it.”
And Swami Vivekananda had exorted, “Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached”.
These became the soul energy which had driven me throughout and shaped my young mind, as they should have. For any musician, the journey of becoming somebody from nobody is a like dream. But, essentially, the most important and primary factor in this journey is to be under the divine providence; the tutelage of the right guru. In my case, I consider myself to be extremely lucky for being groomed by two great maestros of Indian classical music, Pandit Kanai Dutta and Pandit Shankar Ghosh.
A candid moment with Pandit Ravi Shankar
In my professional career as a performing artiste, I was lucky to have been noticed by some of the great masters of Indian Classical Music. I have seen the world of music through their eyes. This is however a dream coming true. I have played in some of the worlds’ most renowned venues. The artists that I have seen in close proximity are the pillars of World Music.
Whatever I have become, I believe that it is the extreme bestowed blessings and love of my Gurus which made me see the whole world through the realization of the essence of World Music.
During the mid 1960s, Indian classical music became the sound of the century as many of the Western practitioners of music got introduced to and influenced by the Indian classical system, which, in turn, made Indian music popular throughout the world. Over the last more than three-and-a-half decades, I have seen the Western music world change for good reasons.
The first journey abroad happened with Ustad Munawar Ali Khan Sahab to the UK and Germany when I was in my early twenties. Over the next 38 years, I have extensively toured the US, the UK, both Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and so on. I experienced World Music through numerous sacred music festivals exposing myself to numerous forms of music and new sounds from different corners of the world.
World Music as I understood is a platter of thoughts served with new sounds. Peter Gabriel was one of the first musicians to have worked extensively on this direction. Besides being a classical musician, I had great interest in other forms of music. This somehow led me to form a language of music which influences of many forms, be it jazz and blues, Latin music, North African music and folk music from different parts of the globe.
I was lucky to have worked with many symphony orchestras under Pandit Ravi Shankarji, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Dr L. Subramanium. I would say that an inclusion of a tabla alongside a timpani or a violin section or a brass section is definitely a step towards world music.
I am happy to have played with many a symphony orchestras, be it the London Symphony (with Pandit Ravi Shankar and Dr L. Subramanium), Leipzig Symphony, Royal Madrid Symphony, Scotland Symphony, Norwegian Symphony (with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan), Sao Paolo State Symphony of Brazil (with Dr L. Subramaniam), Leipzig Symphony of Germany, Kazakh Symphony of Kazakhstan, Qatar Symphony of Qatar (with Naveen Kumar), Sai Symphony, Milano Symphony of Italy, Madrid Symphony and many more.
World Music is a concept in my view. You open your mind and expose yourself to several forms of music from different corners of the world. It is essential to master one form and, in my case, it was Indian classical music.
To play at the great Carnegie Hall in New York so many times with Ravi Shankarji and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan Sahab; to play at the Royal Albert Hall in England; at South Bank Barbican Centre in London; and the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles in California have been an enormous pleasure as well as a world repute.
Halle Joe Bus with Pandit Ravi Shankar and his wife Sukanya touring coast to coast in the US
The Hollywood Bowl, an amphitheatre in Los Angeles, California, was one of the most beautiful places in the whole world, and it marks history because, possibly, Raviji was the first Indian to perform over there. Pandit Ravi Shankarji curated and presented a programme entitled India Calling, which was organised by National Geographic.
Theatre Champ De Elysees Paris was again an experience beyond words. One of the most memorable concerts for me was the Concert for George at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 2002. For me, to see some of the greatest names on the international music scene perform was a great eye opener. Raviji curated and composed an orchestra as a tribute to his favourite student, George Harrison, alongside Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison and many other greats. However, the evening opened with me and Anoushka Shankar performing together and then continued playing with the orchestra which she conducted.
Performing in the city of Arle, South of France, with Raviji and Anoushka at the anniversary of the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was again a great experience to cherish.
The outcome of my extensive travel and exposure to different forms of music of great masters and collaboration of Indian Music with different genres by the legends I played with resulted in my formation of Taal-Tantra and several other projects. The idea of creating a band has always been in my mind since I was trying to connect the world music forms and was trying to celebrate the same through synthesis.
Since the establishment of Taal-Tantra in 2000 followed by The Taal-Tantra Experience, it has borne out as the rhythm popular in recent years, and has emerged as one of the foremost world music bands regularly enthralling audiences in the Middle East, North America, Europe, Germany, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India, experimenting with time less jazz, Indian classical music, folk music and indigenous drumming.
Though I visited so many countries in the past 40 years of my life, I have never separated myself from my roots. The more I have played at different places, the more I have discovered that there is this great soul that binds every one of us together irrespective of our cultural, temporal and spatial differences. I firmly believe that music is beyond boundaries and there is only good music that exists around us. As performing musicians, we celebrate music every moment and every day.
However, I feel very happy to witness the celebration of World Music Day. World Music is a platter of different music from all over the world. On the one hand it gives me immense joy to see that the young generation is very keen to take this up as the legacy they bear is to be cared for with greater responsibility. On the other, it also puts emphasis on how we are connected with a thread of music globally. Not everyone is blessed with the gift of art, and specifically music. I am lucky as a musician to have seen the best and been blessed by the greatest.
Music can make our soul reach the highest consciousness. And that is the greatest reward a musician can have on the World Music Day.
Celebrate music.