I recently read Neil Kulkarni’s Eastern Spring: A 2nd Gen Memoir (Repeater, 2012), a short-and-sweet book filled with essays oriented around identity, writing, music and so forth. It was very refreshing. If I begin with music, Kulkarni’s most visible driving force, I was very pleased to encounter learned opinions on the aesthetic resonance between various forms of Indian music, particularly classical ragas and Marathi song – lavani in particular – and various strains of experimental, seemingly cutting-edge post-war Western music, from the prog of Moondog through the mutations of jungle. He particularly situates the 70s experimentalism of Miles Davis as perhaps the only modern Western music that is comparable in atmosphere and sophistication to the various sediments of the Indian (or Indic) tradition. In my more facetious Indo-centric moments, channeling the uncle wisdom from ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, I would make sweeping remarks of similar sentiments, so it is fairly amusing and interesting that someone imbued in Western musical criticism would make this point in such an evocative manner. All told, in switching from Pandit Kumar Gandharava and Ustad Bade Ali Khan through to Miles Davis’
Neil Kulkarni's Eastern Spring
Neil Kulkarni's Eastern Spring
Neil Kulkarni's Eastern Spring
I recently read Neil Kulkarni’s Eastern Spring: A 2nd Gen Memoir (Repeater, 2012), a short-and-sweet book filled with essays oriented around identity, writing, music and so forth. It was very refreshing. If I begin with music, Kulkarni’s most visible driving force, I was very pleased to encounter learned opinions on the aesthetic resonance between various forms of Indian music, particularly classical ragas and Marathi song – lavani in particular – and various strains of experimental, seemingly cutting-edge post-war Western music, from the prog of Moondog through the mutations of jungle. He particularly situates the 70s experimentalism of Miles Davis as perhaps the only modern Western music that is comparable in atmosphere and sophistication to the various sediments of the Indian (or Indic) tradition. In my more facetious Indo-centric moments, channeling the uncle wisdom from ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, I would make sweeping remarks of similar sentiments, so it is fairly amusing and interesting that someone imbued in Western musical criticism would make this point in such an evocative manner. All told, in switching from Pandit Kumar Gandharava and Ustad Bade Ali Khan through to Miles Davis’