The sun was just beginning to rise over the desert 50 kilometres outside Jaisalmer, a northern town in the Indian province of Rajasthan. I emerged from the large, comfortable tent in the compound we were staying in and ambled along a small, thin strip of road that seemed to travel into Infinity. Two camels stood silhouetted against the eastern sky. A peacock crossed the road. A young man walked quickly towards a small hut, disappearing through a rickety door. The air smelled of wood smoke and dried camel dung from a nearby fire. The sky had just begun to turn pink. I zipped up my coat and stared at the flat lines of low trees in front of me. Deep, ancient silence, then the squawk of crows flying close above.
When I returned to our small compound, I saw a man using his shawl to dust off a small ledge. He was dressed in a white pull over shirt, billowing long white pants, and worn sandals. Atop that was a vest covered in animal skin, a red turban sat on his thin head. He cleaned the stones methodically, almost as if he were conducting some kind of ceremony. He then lay his shawl down, sat on the ledge, and slowly opened a long thin case from which he drew a wooden flute. Rather, it was two flutes. He gently laid the flutes down on his shawl and stood back up, now clasping his hands in front of him in prayer, as he murmured words while facing the rising sun. Finished with this ritual he carefully sat back down. He picked up his flutes and motioned to me to come sit by simply patting the space beside him. He took up the two flutes and began to play. One flute gave him his drone, and the other gave him his melody. Now only a few feet away from him I watched him as if I had never seen anyone make music before.
He kept the rhythm of his melody with muscles in his throat that I could see dilating and compressing as if he himself were a drum. He was circular breathing, effortlessly, so that the melody and drone never stopped. The melody was simple, and yet adorned with subtle grace notes and rhythmic motifs that gave it layers and dimension. Somehow he was able to keep his drone perfectly pitched, modulated by the amount of air that he put into the flute, and his right hand danced on the holes of the flute in a way that told me he had played this melody hundreds if not thousands of times. His eyes—how to describe them? At first they seemed expressionless. And yet in that absence were depths. They were both dark and light, like the surface of a windless sea. Finished with one melody, he began another. I marvelled at the beauty of the sound, thanking him after each tune.
My traveling companion, Anupam, had woken up, and he joined us now sitting to the right of the flautist. Soon they were talking in Hindi, and this is what I later learned.
The man, who appeared to be in his 40s, lived about 20 miles from where we sat. During the monsoon season he farmed. Now we were in the winter months, the tourist season, and he had left his family at home to sleep on the floor of this and other tourist camps, making small bits of money in donations as he sat playing his music every morning. He and Anupam talked about the tuning and various ragas he employed. He was able to adjust the tuning by pushing bits of beeswax affixed to the flute across a tiny portion of one or two of the holes. He had made the flutes himself. His father and grandfather had been flute players, his father had tried to talk him out of taking up the instrument. But as a young boy he secretly began to practice the flute when his father wasn't around, and slowly his father consented, realizing that the boy’s love of music was too pure to reject. “How old was this music,” we asked? About 1000 years. When he found out that Anupam was a “Senia Maihar” musician (A North Indian classical musician) he said, “Oh I’ve heard about you guys from my Dad, and I always wanted to meet a Senia musician, I’m really happy I met you.” He went on to narrate a folklore story about Mian Tansen, legendary 16th century musician who’s bloodline trained Allauddin Khan (Anupam’s guru.)
Anupam asked him if he would like to learn some of the classical ragas or know more about them, he replied “No, not really … it’s of no use to me... these five ragas I play have a lifetime in them for me.”
Such a pure and honest lesson about contentment for both of us.
Anupam asked him whether he had any desire to move to the big cities of Bombay or Delhi so that he could make more money. No, he did not. His life in these spartan surroundings was sufficient. He had no interest in any other options. With that he began to play more of these melodies, using different scales, continuing to keep the trance- like rhythm pulsating with the muscles of his throat. Time stood still. The worries of the human race, and within my own mind, stood to the side. In their place was this moment, this music.
These Rajasthani tunes, and the instruments in this part of the world, are the taproot of much music that we know today. They’re at the core of so-called gypsy music, music that turned into flamenco, sounds that migrated west through Arabia, deep into southern Europe, and even snaking north towards the British Isles. I had the feeling that I'd heard the music before, it was both deeply familiar and unfamiliar. In fact I had the eerie sense that I had heard one of these melodies in my dreams before the man arrived, before the sun had come up.
I ended up playing a song with him. I was a bit rusty, my chops weak. You can hear me falter rhythmically once or twice. But I soon found myself drawn up into the energy of his playing, no matter that I didn’t know the song. It was a great experience that still reverberates inside me.
.
Finally the time came for us to leave. We withdrew a small wad of rupees from our wallets and left it with him. It was obvious that he enjoyed playing for people who were interested in him, who took the time to truly listen, who respected him. I could easily imagine how many times he sat on that ledge, or others like it, playing for people who would simply walk by and pay him no mind.
Wonderful, Joel. Thanks for sharing.