The dawn of Indian music in the West

488 Pages·2007·37.263 MB·English

by  Peter Lavezzoli

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PETER LAVEZZOQOLI
The Dawn of
Indian Music in the West
Bhairavi
CARLIE
In 1955, Ali Akbar Khan issued an LP called Music
of India: Morning and Evening Ragas, with spoken
introductions by Western classical violinist Yehudi
Menuhin. Until then, Indian classical music was
terra incognita in the West. When the same album
was reissued as a compact disc in 1995, under the
title Then and Now, it was a nominated for a
Grammy.
Between “then and now” has been the
explosive influence of Indian music and culture in
the West. Most visibly, the wonders of the Indian
musical world were spread by Ravi Shankar and
George Harrison of the Beatles, but the music also
had a profound effect on Mickey Hart and the
Grateful Dead, John McLaughlin, Philip Glass, the
Byrds, John Coltrane, and many others.
The annus mirabilis 1967 saw the Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi spreading Transcendental Meditation,
Swami Prabhupada founding the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness in New York
City, and the growing influence of Ravi Shankar.
Four years later, George Harrison organized the
groundbreaking Concert for Bangladesh, the first
charity event of rock. Shankar, who had already
enchanted rock audiences at festivals such as
Monterey Pop and Woodstock, achieved even
greater stardom at the Bangladesh Concert in New
York’s Madison Square Garden (where many
Westerners, still new to the sounds that they
heard, applauded after the Indian musicians had
finished tuning their instruments).
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Digitized by the Internet Archive
In 2022 with funding from
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THE DAWN OF
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—-— BHAIRAVI —-—
PETER LAVEZZOLI
continuum
NEW YORK © LONDON
2006
The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038
The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
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www.continuumbooks.com
Copyright © 2006 by Peter Lavezzoli
www.indoblue.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.
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Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lavezzoli, Peter.
The dawn of Indian music in the West : Bhairavi / by Peter
Lavezzoli.
Se Sin
Includes bibliographical references (p. _) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-1815-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-82641815-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Music—India—History and criticism. 2. Music—Indic
influences. 3. Popular music—Indic influences. 4. Musicians
—Interviews. 5. Spirituality in music. I. Title.
ML338.L39 2006
781.64'162914—dc22
2005030743
IN MEMORIAM
Josh Hayes Davis (1907-1984)
Mary Louise Lavezzoli (1905-2003)
Becky Prichard (1972-2003)
Ustad Allauddin Khan (d. 1972)
Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999)
Pandit Pran Nath (1918-1996)
Ustad Alla Rakha (1919-2000)
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
Ustad Vilayat Khan (1928-2004)
George Harrison (1943-2001)
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