On An Overgrown Path

That photo was taken by me during a qawwali devotion at the Nizamuddin Dargah, Delhi during Ramadan and first appeared On An Overgrown Path in 2014 . Despite being a kafir I have tried during my thirteen years of blogging to present a fair and balanced view of Islam . In fact my attempts to be fair have, I know, caused some readers to think I am too sympathetic to the Islamic cause. But now those attempts have turned round and bitten me, and the story needs telling . My travel plans for 2018 included Iran, a country whose present regime I have little time for , but one with a rich cultural history that just begs to be explored. But as my travel planning progressed I came across the recently introduced requirement in the Iranian visa application process to provide details of social media accounts. Now sympathetic to the Islamic cause I may be. But entering Iran into the Overgrown Path search box returns some posts likely to give the mullahs heart attacks. Such as one containin...

In this book I am describing a journey into a region whose 'differences' from Europe are too great to be easily bridged: and difference is, in a way, akin to danger. We are leaving the security of our too uniform environment, in which there is little that is unfamiliar and nothing that is surprising, and entering into the tremendous strangeness of 'another' world... But are we really excluded from that world? I do not think so. Our feeling of exclusion rests mainly on an error peculiar to our Western way of thinking: we are wont to underestimate the creative value of the unfamiliar and are always tempted to do violence to it, to appropriate it, to take it over, on our own terms , into our own intellectual environment. It seems to me, however, that our age of disquiet no longer permits such cavalier attempts; many of us beginning to realize that cultural distances can and should be overcome by means other than intellectual rape: it might perhaps be overcome by surrend...

Whatever begins with the criterion, and basic motive of material gain, without having any real feeling, can never be successful, it will never realize its full potential. Music is not made to order, it isn’t just executed, whenever you try and contain it within specific boundaries, to limit it, to play just to make a living, for example, it will never achieve its potential grandeur. That quote is from the great Cretan lyra player and teacher Kostas Mountakis (1926-91). Among his pupils was the leading exponent of modern Cretan modal music Ross Daly . In Greece today the government's attempt to exit from the EU imposed bailout programme has created a big opportunity for the masters of the financial universe which is causing widespread resentment. This Reuters report explains what is happening: "Big money managers have started buying cheap Greek stocks from banks to lotteries as clouds over talks between Athens and its international creditors gradually clear, anticipating big...

A watershed moment in the evolution of rock stage-craft occurred one night after Jefferson Airplane had played a three-hour set to an ecstatic Fillimore crowd. Impresario Bill Graham asked guitarist Paul Kantner to go out and take a bow. "Fuck that, that's show business," Kantner responded. Graham's reply was priceless: "Schmuck! What do you think you are in?" Anecdote is from Rob Chapman's rambling, profuse and only sometimes engaging Psychedelia and Other Colours . Photo shows Jefferson Airplane at 1969 Woodstock Festival. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter .

An inevitable consequence of classical music's social media obsession is that the big get bigger and the rest get smaller. This is due to the accelerator effect of Twitter 're-tweets' and Facebook 'likes'. Once a topic reaches the social media tipping point it is liked and re-tweeted exponentially, while anything that fails to reach that crucial tipping point is buried beneath the wisdom of crowds. Such as ECM's CD of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian's Requiem . This important new work commemorates the estimated 1.2 million victims of the Armenian Genocide which took place in Turkey in 1915-16, and it speaks profoundly and movingly of the need for humanitarian ideals and unity between nations and cultures - the very subjects that celebrity musicians put centre stage at recent Proms . But with just a few exceptions - take a bow Sequenza21 - this new release was greeted with a crouching ovation on social media and a total absence of 'Tigran Mansuri...

This interview with Jordi Savall in La Stampa Cultura has been causing something of a furore. Forgive me if I don't have the story quite right, but the article is in Catalan and behind a paywall. But it appears Jordi's harsh comments about the state of Western classical music - formulaic, self-serving and lacking creativity - have been greeted with social media ripostes from within Spain that people in glass houses should not throw stones. Readers will know that over the years I have been one of Jordi's biggest fans , so it saddens me to say that I have sympathy for some of the views expressed by his critics. In recent years I have been uncomfortable with certain aspects of Jordi's work. For instance, his puzzling criticism of the Spanish government's arts policy when he was taken funding from the ethically compromised Abu Dhabi regime , the difficulty of reconciling his humanitarian stance with his concerts in China , and the lacklustre book and CD projects w...

My photo shows the village of Rocamadour in south-west France. The village is on one of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage routes and pilgrims come to venerate the Black Madonna in the Chapelle Notre-Dame. When I was approaching Rocamadour I was reminded of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh - see this post - and the interior of the Chapelle Notre-Dame seen below also has similarities to Vajrayana Buddhist shrines. It is easy and fashionable to view all the great wisdom traditions as just being ingredients in one big spiritual potpourri, and it is a view that I confess to having taken many times on this blog. So it was refreshing and invigorating to come across an alternative view recently in the form of David Webster 's book titled provocatively Dispirited: How contemporary spirituality makes us stupid, selfish and unhappy . David Webster is principal lecturer in religion, philosophy and ethics at the University of Gloucestershire where his main work is in Buddhist tho...

Arguments about whether classical music and politics should be mixed are futile. Because the two are irrevocably intertwined. As is shown by yesterday's press release from the City of London Corporation pressing the case for a new concert hall in London's newly designated 'culture mile'. This press release makes much of the Crossrail transport link that will serve the proposed hall. One of Crossrail's non-executive directors is Michael Cassidy . As readers of my previous posts on the subject will know, Michael Cassidy - who, incidentally, is a practicing lawyer - holds a number of influential positions in the City of London Corporation . He is also non-executive chairman of Askonas Holt ; this is the management agency that represents both Simon Rattle who is a leading advocate of the new hall, and his new orchestra the London Symphony Orchestra which is expected to be resident there. Daniel Barenboim is also managed by Askonas Holt and he and Simon Rattle ...

That header photo shows the British Muslim musician Ali Keeler playing with his Al Firdaus Ensemble. The status of music in Islam - forbidden or permissible - is frequently discussed and almost as frequently misunderstood. So I thought it useful to share an extract from an unpublished memoir by Ian Whiteman who was multi-instrumentalist for the mod band The Action and the Sufi-influenced cult psychedelic folk rock band Mighty Baby in the 1960s. Ian went on to make what is, to use a tired and devalued label , an inexplicably neglected masterpiece, the one-off album If Man But Knew by the Habibiyya. In 1971 Ian converted to Islam and became a member of the celebrated Bristol Gardens/Wood Dalling Sufi zawiya founded by the controversial Abdalqadir as-Sufi who later wrote an Islamic interpretation of Wagner's music . After converting to Islam Ian Whiteman took the name Abdallateef and as Abdallateef Whiteman has established a considerable reputation in the Muslim world as a graph...

During a 1970s Festival Hall concert conducted by Bernard Haitink a serial cougher decided to accompany the posthorn solo in the third movement of Mahler's monumental Third Symphony. Maestro Haitink continued to beat time with his baton while using his left hand to extract a white handkerchief from his pocket and hold it high over his head to encourage the cougher to mute the intrusive noise. Such an action would be unthinkable at the Proms today, because the conductor would spend the whole concert with an arm raised holding a handkerchief. At one time the Proms audience had the enviable reputation of being the best audience in the world, but now it is the noisiest. My most recent visit to a Prom was almost certainly my last. Because not only is the Albert Hall sound poor, the sight lines unacceptable, the ambient temperature too high and the foyer facilities inadequate. But I found myself surrounded by people who made it quite clear that they were not there to appreciate the m...

Elgar's symphonies have hardly been neglected at the BBC Proms and elsewhere. As an example, the Second Symphony has been played 37 times at the Proms, with two of those performances in the last three years; while the First has been given 51 times, including two performances in the last two years. So it is puzzling as to why the social networks are behaving as though Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin brought two undiscovered masterpieces to the Albert Hall, and it is doubly puzzling because his interpretations were passionate but hardly revelatory. Yes, it is noteworthy that this was Elgar from a foreign orchestra. But in 2008 Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra brought the First Symphony to the Proms. However it is not surprising that this European band's Elgar has been quietly forgotten, as Norrington's flexible tempo and vibrato free account ranks as one of the worst musical abominations I have ever had the misfortune to hear. If y...

On An Overgrown Path can exclusively reveal that according to an internal BBC source next year's Proms season will consist of 75 anti-Brexit speeches with encores of music . Photo comes from Guardian article Last Night of the Proms - behind the scenes . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter .

Fact can be stranger than fiction: in my most recent post about the legendary harpsichordist Scott Ross I said with tongue planted firmly in my cheek that there is a Scott Ross biopic just waiting to be made. But now a reader tells me that not only is a biopic planned, but it is in the final stages of production. See teaser video above and there is more information via this link . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

Igor Levit's BBC Proms encore was a masterstroke. Not enough political edge to ruffle feathers. But just enough to raise the media profile of an otherwise lacklustre Proms season and spark the Guardian headline ' Proms get political as Ode to Joy features on first night '; all of which is guaranteed to set #bbcproms trending. Well-meaning he may be, but Igor Levit improvised his Ode to Joy protected by the safety-net of a recording contract with multi-national Sony Music , a management contract with multi-national IMG Artists and a career trajectory launched with the help of a New Generation Artists bursary from global media giant and Proms promoter the BBC. Others also believe that music can make political statements, but they are doing it without the aid of corporate safety nets. Such as the young French-Syrian flautist Naïssam Jalal . Born to Syrian parents in Paris, she trained as a classical flautist. After completing her studies the teenage flautist embrace...

Three sages in the Himalayas sit in silence, meditating. Ten years go by, and the first one tweets, "What a wonderful morning." Another ten years go by and the second one tweets, "It might rain". Another ten years go by, and the third one tweets, "When will the two of you ever get off Twitter". That is my contemporary paraphrase of a story told by Jiddu Krishnamurti and reported in The Beauty of the Mountain published by the Krishnamurti Foundation. I took the photo when crossing a high pass in the western Himalayas en route from Kalka on the edge of the Ganges plain to the alpine desert of Ladakh - see my photo essay about the journey . Krishnamurti, who taught that "Authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing.. leaders destroy the following and followers destroy the leaders" had no time for gurus. But books such as Apprenticed to a Himlayan Master by Sri M, and Living wit...

That photo heads a Rest Is Noise post linked to Alex Ross' New Yorker article about the symbolic power of music. Alex quite correctly credits the photo as appearing in the program booklet for Toscanini's 1944 Red Cross benefit at Madison Square Garden and showing a 1943 mission by the 390th Bombardment Group. But there is another musical connection which Alex may not be aware of. During the Second World War the USAF bomber squadrons were based in East Anglia as the region offered the shortest flight paths to important targets in Germany . and between 1943 and 1945 the 390th Bombardment Bomb Group was based at Station 153 Parham in Suffolk. Just eleven miles from Parham is Aldeburgh, and for four years from 1785 the poet George Crabbe lived at the Moat House in Parham . Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes* is, of course, based on the eponymous narrative poem in George Crabbe's poetry collection The Borough . Crabbe wrote the poems in The Borough between 18...

Back in 2012 Alex Ross emailed me about a new bleeding-edge cycle for orchestra and electronics titled Sufi Word by the Belgian composer Jean-luc Fafchamps , and as a result of Alex's generous heads up I have written several related posts . Symbolism is an important component of Sufism , and although Jean-luc Fafchamps explains "I am not a Sufi, or even Muslim and I do not speak Arabic" the music is evolved from the symbolic interrelations between letters of the Arabic alphabet derived from a Sufi chart. This compositional system has parallels with the I Ching-derived chance operations that created the charts for John Cage's Music of Changes . Recently I was prompted to revisit Jean-luc Fafchamps' musical exercise in Islamicate symbolism by reading the Turkish-American scholar Ahmed Hulusi 's book Decoding the Quran: A Unique Sufi Interpretation - free legal download via this link . Ahmed Hulusi's thesis also draws on the decoding of Arabic lett...

News of the untimely death of sarangi master Dhruba Ghosh took me down some fascinating listening paths yesterday evening. These included the 2005 disc seen above featuring Dhruba Ghosh's older brother Nayan Ghosh titled Naghma - which is the Farsi and Urdu word for 'melody'. The musicians on the album artwork are from left to right Nayan Gosh (sitar), Paul Grant (santoor), Ross Daly (Cretan lyre) and Bijan Chemirani (zarb). The geographic reach of the music ranges from the Himalayas through Northern India to Kashmir, Afghanistan, Persia, Turkey and Crete, and includes a composition by Nayan Ghosh based on a traditional boatman's song from the Bengal-Ganges Plain. Every CD tells a story through its music, graphics and sleeve notes, and that intangible but crucial narrative - which touches on the cultural, emotional and personal - loses much when the music is reduced to the postmodern bits and bytes of streaming and downloads. It is well-known that a few cele...

The celebrated sarangi player Dhruba Ghosh who is seen above has died at a tragically early age. He was one of that small exalted group of musicians who are both masters of their own tradition and explorers who traveled successfully beyond their personal comfort zones to work with masters of other traditions; just one example was his exploration of the music of Tobias Hume with viol virtuoso Philippe Pierlot which featured here last year . Dhruba Ghosh's fellow explorers included the husband and wife exponents of contemporary Cretan modal music Kelly Thoma and Ross Daly, and Kelly has written the following tribute: Terrible news today...our dear friend and phenomenal musician Dhruba Ghosh left this world and traveled to another dimension at the age of 59. He was a rare person, wonderful, kind, with great sense of humor, warm and above all a huge musical inspiration for many of us...His sound is and will always be "written" on my soul. May he rest in peace and I hop...