Bhakti Utsav Revelation

Slightly on a different line, this blog ‘post’ is actually going to be a transcription of some field notes. Obviously I’ll fix grammatical shorthands that I used, and probably have to improvise a bit where I can’t read my scribble. In the course of my traveling the length of India in the second half of my trip, I left my laptop back in Amritsar, rendering me without any note-taking device more efficient than found pens and bazaar-purchased notebooks. It was one of these notebooks that I scribbled a few pages called “Bhakti Utsav revelation”.

Bhakti Utsav was a concert I attended at the beginning of April in Delhi. Christi and Kirsten had just left, but I stayed a few extra days in Delhi in order to go to this concert. The setting was pretty spectacular, outside in Nehru Park just after sunset.

You can see the amazing display of marigolds and hanging candles, adorning a tree, which served as the stage. It was billed as “A 3-day festival celebrating the diverse ways of reaching out and beyond through music”. Although I attended only the first day, it was shortly after that that I scribbled down these notes about the “revelation”, because I sensed how big an effect it had on me:

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Hard to know if ‘revelation’ is the right word exactly, but it did feel like that. It was perhaps more a crystallization, or a ‘SNAP’ of my whole awareness catching up with what I had read and been told, joining with something that seemed to be al around me as I sat there listening.

The realization is something in the direction of ‘music is a means to spiritual realization’ (because it has the freeing effect of calming inner disturbances). I was aware, because I spent so much time tracking down music while there, that music in India isn’t always practically treated as a ‘means’ – the emphasis on gharanas (schools of technique), style, on needing to know pure musical technique before performing or listening in a temple.

This revelation was accumulating throughout the concert. The first pieces were by no means calming or clarifying, but had a very direct style with interesting timbres that held my attention. In them I perceived a singular structure that starkly alternated musical textures – all these songs have a simple structure and proportion, but here it was as though the skeleton was on the outside.

Then the young man’s singing, which was remarkable not for its beauty (his voice was a little hoarse and light) but for the intention that was so palpable. In his songs I heard interesting play with the ragas, lines that were varied and well-shaped, clear and interesting taans (improvisations).

The third group, Qawwali brothers from Pakistan brought the fun and joy into it. Not only did the brothers seem affable individuals, they were clearly having fun – they threw taans back and forth, competing to extend the farthest (the rapid imitation of ‘bol’ taan with ‘aah’ taan). At one point between before starting a new refrain, I think the older brother told a joke (in Hindi or Urdu), the punchline of which was the first sung line.

The fourth performance did the heavy lifting of deepening me to that Mystery place. Taking the stage in the third continuous hour of the concert, this singer was accompanied on tanpura, tabla, pakhawaj and flute. Her bhajans were shorter (~5 mins) than songs the others had done, allowing her to fit more songs into her segment and therefore display a wider range. The first ones were lively, her voice and the flute intertwining right on top of eachother in the improvisations. Her ragas at first were pretty straightforward (as had the previous group’s been), but later she sang more thorny ragas, which seemed to bridge a gulf from my understanding of Indian classical music to another place.

I noticed a growing tendency in my listening to forget the superficial analysis I usually did in my head while listening to Indian singers – such as ‘which named note is she on?’ or ‘what is a characteristic leap in this raga?’ At some point, I was only catching the endings of her phrases, where sometimes there was a familiar pattern. Everything in between, though, seemed at a distance, or through a haze, from my brain. Of course, I was still seated on the grass, and not on any altering substances, it’s just that I can only describe the music as wandering through territories I couldn’t follow. I also remember that the flute player was silent more often as her improvisations progressed, seemingly sympathetic to my notion that the singer was off in uncharted territory.

This obscurity, though, is what enabled Bombay Jayeshri to hit me with full force. There was a long pause before she came on as the fifth and final singer (I think the violin player was re-tuning both of the tanpuras). In addition to the violin, two young female singers backed up Bombayji, and there was a tabla player and (S. Indian) clay-pot player. By the time this group came to the stage, we were in the fourth hour of the concert, and I was thinking about being tired, about how I was going to get back to my hotel on the other side of the city at this late hour, about the mosquito bites, etc. She began, and I made mental notes of a few details as I tried to make myself listen with attention:

The whole emanation of their music was very calm. The tabla and pot players were silent, except for playing finger cymbals on regular beats. The violin player stayed under the three voices in dynamics, but played hushed, wheeling figures, like some kind of consonant cadenza. The secondary singers would pick up and repeat a line that Bombayji sang (all one-word names of God – some I recognized, like Shiv, but others not), and his enabled Bombayji’s voice to create harmonic lines against the rocking repetitions.

All of sudden, as they were reaching the end of this lilting introductory section, something clicked and I realized, like waking abruptly from a dream, that I hadn’t ever been truly listening. Immediately all my trying to understand simple fell away from my body. Though I was, strictly speaking, analytically aware of what transpired in the music, it didn’t dominate my other reactions. With this realization, suddenly every part of me was listening and overwhelmed at the immensity (which was immense because I seemed surrounded by it) of the calm bliss in what Bombayji and the other musicians were creating (a better word is probably emanating, it truly felt distinct from the live creation of an artist). Tears welled up in my eyes, and I felt bigger beyond my bounds than in a long while.

I put this transcription up here first, but next I would like to deal with my post-Revelation experience of hearing devotional music. Even compare, if I can, listening to Sikh kirtan or qawwali before and after this moment in time. I also want to use a little bit of Alduous Huxley to talk about the opening of these ‘doors of perception’. And finally, I want to remind myself and you, just so the record is straight, that this did occur in a ‘concert’ setting – something intentionally advocated as devotional music, and an evening that drew from at least four distinct traditions – and that Bombay Jayeshri, and the others, are truly world-class performers. As I continue to reflect on that fact, it is possible that my experience at the moment was because of me ‘opening the doors’, but it is also possible that it was not an accident, and not totally of my doing. Maybe someone of Bombayji’s caliber has the control (power? devotion?) to be able to do that.