MUSIC
Universal language
MITA KAPUR
|
Musician Lawrie Minson on his attempts to fuse Indian classical music with the Blues.
|
Creating seamless music: Lawrie Minson (right) with Salil Bhatt.
WORDS make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought. This description comes closest to capturing what country music does to you. Although Lawrie Minson, multi-instrumentalist from Australia professes "country music has a robust simplicity, it's music for every man on the street, it's about simple values, sentiments, about love and loss. It's like therapy."
A four-time Golden Guitar Award winner, Lawrie plays the Spanish guitar (with steel strings). In India for the 23rd Pt. Man Mohan Bhatt Memorial Festival, he and Salil Bhatt created seamless fire and grace with a combination of the satvik veena and the guitar. "I find strong parallels between classical Indian music and the Blues — the way we put up and bend our notes is similar. There is an earthiness in your folk music that strikes. Equally intriguing is the sensuousness that paradoxically mates with the raw energy — I find the same elements in our music too."
"No more tears to cry" sung by Lawrie was built up with Salil's slide guitar playing the pentatonic notes of raag Bhopali, combining it with the melody, Blue tonality, typical chord progression. "Creating fusion is like walking together, in step, getting out of the `personal feeling of a musical soliloquy' and embracing it as a universal language. We reflect through music a whole culture."
Landmark award
Into music since he was 12, Lawrie learnt to play the piano and like a typical teenager, went through the rhythms of rock `n' roll to his final focus — country blues. "I look up to musicians with great lyrics, that are contemporary and meaningful with simple melodies. Bob Dylan and Slim Dusty have had a cultural impact. They are cult figures, having touched the hearts of millions." The Tiara award for the Lawrie Minson group's album, "Land of the Twilight Zone" was a landmark.
Writing songs for Bobby Cash and recently having recorded five tracks with Salil, Lawrie has worked his way through "tonal balances, shifting dynamics, the fabric of the whole ensemble and the emergence of melodic lines".
To create fusion music "we have to listen, interpret and form chords that will complement and support. Soak it all up, assimilate and tune in with the ear, the mind and the heart".
"It requires a consciousness, a study of the roots before you can mix cultures. It is a discovery of scales, flavours, emotions. We have to empathise and be compassionate. It is not easy to fuse jog, which uses both the gandharas — komal and shudh. The intermingling has to be perfect."
A conversation held by the instruments, a dialogue built in abstract yet flowing spontaneously, the evocative mood of the notes, rising and falling like a gurgling stream, which gleefully throws up froth as it frolics past smoothened rocks. So it seemed as the composition, "Ganges meets Darling", washed over us, filling our senses.
"I discovered the Bhatt family in 1994 when I was planning a trip to India. I had bought Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's CD before leaving. A friend suggested I should meet them, since then there's never been a turning back." There is something about this country, "its people are the friendliest on the planet, its history fascinates, the depth of its culture, the complexity of its music is unfathomable".
"Music keeps you young. After silence it comes nearest to expressing that which is inexpressible, you are the music while the music lasts." Lawrie Minson plays the harmonica, the banjo along with his guitar with the same consummate ease, music seeping through his being, "making him exist", making him reach out to the average man who understands the very basic human emotions of bonding, belonging and sometimes losing.
E-mail the writer at mita@kapurs.in
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
