East Meets West Rec.
Ravi Shankar : Reminiscence of North Vista (IND,1969,re.2011)***°
When Ravi Shankar had moved to Hollywood to settle down and work as an ambassador of music, he quickly got a lot of attention of which the cooperation with The Beatles and the appearance on the Woodstock festival were the most important moments of attention. But he gave also more quiet and meditative concerts. Just ne week after Woodstock, these two ragas were recorded at the North Vista House. This concerts sound as if one is back in India, near the Ganges, where crickets can be heard, and a warm breeze hangs in the air.
The first raga, “Raga Kunsi Kanada North Vista”, starts to slowly develop itself first out of the resonating string tension, where a melody appears on one string first, with the birds and crickets in the background, starting to beautifully moan with its movement more and more, singing, with a deep voice as if being the voice of a crying animal, with the state of a man making this sing through with the energy of meditation, to then transform this into pleasure. Then a melody starts to be brought out more clearly, like a song in the higher tones of dedication with devotional singing. Then these higher tones tend to step down again while the rhythm slightly increases, with inner energy transforming this again, within the rhythm. Then a nicely entertaining melody occurs to improvise further on the raga themes, the rhythm increases further when this melody develops, hand shaking rhythms occur too. The tune goes to a highlight in melody and fast rhythm playing.
The second track is a more melodic/rhythmic improvisation with additional tabla this time. It is more like a mixture of what is a song and dance. Here can be heard only smaller variations hanging around the theme. There’s entertaining tabla. It is a bit more repetitive in its core but is of course enjoyable too.
