Ken Hunt dec.98

Pontifications from the Internet pulpit -
the Mask, the Mirror and the Maze

Last time talk turned, as it frequently does, to Desire and, of the four elements, Fire with its rapaciousness symbolises Desire the best. Director Deepa Mehta's Fire has inflamed passions in the subcontinent, in the process proving highly controversial in the subcontinent, if the news overload on the subject is anything to go by. At the beginning of December 1998 the Delhi Regal cinema screening the film was targeted by Hindu extremists. In a coordinated exercise bully-boy activists (identified as members of the Shiv Sena party) put the frighteners on the cinema forcing it to withdraw one of the most important films to come out of the subcontinent in years. A little glass was smashed, a little stuff ripped down and a few feathers ruffled. By the time the police got there, the perpetrators had gone. Other cinemas in the city took the hint and cancelled further screenings. Cinemas in Mumbai (Bombay), Pune and Surat also felt the squeeze.
The reason for all this nastiness so reminiscent of Victorian blinkered values was the taint of a most unIndian of sexual practice. Heaven forfend, this was celluloid lesbianism that Mehta was forcing, as the old gay joke goes, down people's throats. After the disruptions the junior minister for information and broadcasting, one Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, reportedly went on record, saying, "Projection of such relationships is harmful to Indian society." His rhetoric sounds suspiciously like fishing for votes and column inches - and nothing more than the dull sound of History repeating itself. It's the sort of stuff that gets a culture a very bad name. His voice is the cock-crow of the political midden. (Of course, if the surfing junior minister has been misreported and is prepared to publicly condemn violence a retraction would be imminent.)
Time to pull back with that dolly shot. Time to return to sanctimoniousness and a masking of the truth. Good Queen Victoria, Empress of the Raj, is famously reported to have found it impossible to believe that women could engage in such activities. When it comes to lesbianism the Victorian legacy persists fully laurelled in the subcontinent. Even the great guide to behaviour and etiquette, the Kama Sutra, carried no guidance on lesbian eroticism, people thought. In fact it did. It was Sir Richard Burton's abridged translation, published in 1883, which banished the section and translated lesbians as corrupt women. Indian politicians were happy to play along with the subterfuge. It was easy to ignore how the Kama Sutra was reputed for its sensitive treatment of the erotic. Peculiarly, the work's lesbian contents have come to be as little known as its primary purpose as a codification of conduct and proper sexual behaviour. The Kama Sutra should never have become a synonym for pornography, as Alain Daniélou illustrated when his excellent modern translation published as The Complete Kama Sutra in 1994.
That omission made it all the easier for Indian moralists and proselytisers to hold homosexuality up as a decadent occidental import. Destroying erotic Hindu temple sculpture - that is, erasing tangible evidence of such untoward coupling which inconveniently bore witness to homosexuality's Indian past - kept Hinduism's moral iconoclasts pretty occupied at points in the Twentieth Century. These moral guardians were intent not so much on destroying their own history as rewriting it. Khajuraho in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh with its serried ranks of stone sculpture figures bears eloquent testimony to the relevance of eroticism in Hindu worship.
Additionally, eroticism figures as one of "sentiments" that imbue all Indian arts of any substance (or those with an eye cocked on posterity). Navras is a concept basic to the subcontinent's arts. It's a compound noun simply meaning nine (nav) and juice or, figuratively speaking, emotion or sentiment (ras). These nine sentiments underpin music, dance, sculpture or the pictorial arts in the subcontinent. There have been periodic attempts to expand on the nine but they have made little headway.
Ras or rasa is a concept central to the subcontinent's aesthetic code. In a nutshell the ras concept states that each artistic creation - music, dance or drama and, in a descending scale of influence, poetry, sculpture and the visual arts - are coloured by and mirror the nine rasas.
The first of the nine expresses love, romance and eroticism and is called Shringara or, because it represents the universal creative force, Adiras from adi meaning original or first. The next is Hasya which ripples with good humour and provokes laughter and hilarity. The fourth is Karuna for compassion and consequently it expresses longing or loneliness. Raudra is anger or agitation. Veer follows, embodying the qualities of heroism, courage and majesty. Bhayanaka is fear, Vibhatsa disgust, while Adbhuta expresses wonderment, amazement and the thrill of the new. The last of the nine is Shanta meaning peace, repose and tranquillity.
Between the nine, they cup humankind's primary emotions although, applied to music, some such as Bhayanaka and Vibhatsa are comparatively rare. A combination may flavour a raga with its essential juices so a raga will be shaded with an overriding feeling of, for example, passion or heroism but, like in a cake, the flavours of other ingredients will touch the musical palette. In the case of the arts those flavours will other rasas whose presence is triggered by particular notes.
When the Indian writer, Giti Thadani completed her English-language genealogy of Indian lesbianism, Sakhiyani, a few years ago, she couldn't find a publisher who would touch it at home. The book eventually was published abroad by Cassell. Understandably Thadani was delighted that Fire had publicised a taboo and that art has restored the subject to the public forum without treating it pruriently. That is key. According to Newsweek, one member of India's board of censors was moved enough to call Fire an "important film and every Indian woman should see it."
Fire shows a far deeper appreciation of Indian culture than the steady flow of two-dimensional flicks churned out by the film industry. Deepa Mehta's film has received a great deal of attention and publicity worldwide, with the positive seeming to have outweighed the negative overall. Conservative commentators in her homeland certainly seemed happier to keep to safe ground discussing the earning ability of escapist entertainment of the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Dil Se flick kind. The second film in Mehta's sequence, Earth, has been finished and the screenplay for the last of the trilogy, Water, is under way. (There is no sign of Air making it a quartet.) One of Fire's two leading actresses, Nandita Das, is presenting a television show on the Indian arts scene. Deepa Mehta may not be out the maze but the light is in sight. Long live Shringara!
December news

Musings from the studio
The East London-based Bangladeshi group Joi has finished work on their debut for Real World. Formerly known as Joi Bangla, they were among the founding fathers of the Asian underground scene - active well before journalists got busy with their tip-tip-tapping digits and coined a term which was intended to cover the multiplicity of related scenes. (An old fart speaks: `Get a scene and somebody makes a profit.') Entitled One And One Is One, Joi's album is scheduled for March release with a single as trailer the month before. In their earlier incarnation their stuff appeared on Rhythm King in 1992 while their Bangladesh EP followed on Fun>Da<Mental's Nation label in 1996.

The Hindustani santoor maestro Shivkumar Sharma has also recorded an album for the same label, cut at the Real World studios in Wiltshire (the same southern English county as Stonehenge for Surfers with a weak grasp of English geography). The album features the maestro in the same combination as that of the Navras label's The Golden Heritage. That is, with his son, Rahul Sharma, who is following in his father's footsteps and also playing the Indian hammered dulcimer. Sampradaya, which has John Leckie as producer, is down for February release.
The American country vocalist Emmylou Harris spent time in 1998 adding vocals to the long-awaiting second Trio album in London. The trio in question is her, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. The Canadian-born, US-based producer-musician Daniel Lanois, whose work has revitalised the careers of acts such as the Neville Brothers, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, is working on U2's next album in the great, good company of Brian Eno. Their work on U2's Unforgettable Fire remains, let's be lazy adjectivally, unforgettable. By way of update, The Other Ones' live debut is to be called The Strange Remain; a two-CD set, it is due for release on 9 February. Set for same day release, is Ceili Records' Transatlantic Sessions, from sessions involving Russ Barenberg, Roseanne Cash, Michael Doucet, Jerry Douglas, Nanci Griffith, Maura O'Connell, Ricky Skaggs, Sharon White and others. (More information from bevpaul@men.com)
In preparation
A long ways off Copper Creek Records is putting together a multi-volume set of recordings from the Bluegrass mandolinist, Bill Monroe for autumn 1999 release. Entitled Live, it derives from music recorded by Steve Gebhardt for the film Bill Monroe: Father of Bluegrass Music. (More information from CopCrk@aol.com)
Departures and arrivals
Dave Mattacks, one of the stalwarts of Fairport, has formally left the group. Gerry Conway has taken over the drum chair. Mattacks had played on and off with the group since becoming their drummer after Martin Lamble's death in May 1969. He debuted on disc on Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief album, a key recording in the development of British folk rock. Mattacks proved a revelation and his playing has been consistently inventive. Mattacks' first post-Fairport release is a jazz summit. For many, his drumming helped define Fairport's sound (and time signatures). (For more information about Richard Thompson and kindred spirits check out http://www.thebeesknees.com - which also has hyperlinks to other bodies - or Flypaper, J.A.F. Box 7095, New York, NY 10116, USA.)
Deaths
The British songwriter Ian Stanton was an unusual man. Active in Britain's disability movement, he wrote and performed songs which articulated the frustration and pride of people with disabilities, a regularly overlooked area in civil rights. Or to put it more bluntly, disability rights are the Cinderella of Civil Rights beside the Ugly Sisters of Racism, Religious and Sexual Bias. Stanton was born in Oldham in Lancashire on 28 October 1950. During the 1970s he was diagnosed as having Berger's Disease which led to the loss of both his legs. His output also included journalism and there was a sense of first-person reportage - and barbed wit - in songs such as Tragic But Brave and Chip On Your Shoulder. He died aged 48 on 26 November 1998 but makes his last appearance in January as an actor in the prime time BBC television series, Casualty, in which he plays the part of an uppity, dope-smoking rebel with disabilities.
The "Elephant of Zaire", as he was warmly known, died of a heart attack on 29 November aged 46. The kwasa kwasa master, Kabasele Yampanya, better known as Pepe Kalle, was born in Kinshasa (when it was known as Leopoldville in, as it was known, the Belgian Congo) on 30 December 1950. He gravitated towards music and fell in with the rumba scene - rumba was an Afro-Cuban dance sensation all over West Africa. Early success with Orchestre Bella Bella followed his joining the band in 1972. Their Kamale 45 was a massive hit in 1973. When he left Bella Bella soon afterwards he founded Empire Bakuba and scored success with them and their song Nazoki. His popularity among Francophone music aficionados rose steadily. More than that, his rising star coincided with the rise of World Music. He acted in the rather average Zairean film La Vie Est Belle (Life is Beautiful) in which he played second fiddle to Papa Wemba. A movie career was not to be his and he stuck to what he did best which was knocking out dance music. He heart gave out - a cause of death which will come as no surprise given his nickname and jumbo size. Personally I never took to his music.
The poet-filmi lyricist who took the nom-de-plume of Pradeep died on 11 December. Born Ramchandra Narayanji Dwivedi on 6 February 1915 in Madhya Pradesh, the first Hindi film on which he worked was the 1939 movie Kangan for Bombay Talkies. (Narottam Vyer also worked on the film's songs and script.) It was a hit but Pradeep made his real mark with Bandhan the following year. It was wartime and Pradeep captured a mood of empire patriotism with Chal Chal Re Naujawan (Keep on, keep on, young soldier). His songwriting for Kismat, again for Bombay Talkies, in 1943 caught the spirit of the times equally well. On the one hand its message was ridding the subcontinent of the danger of Japanese invasion. More subversively, it functioned equally as a rallying cry for Swaraj, for self-rule. "Be off, be off, outsiders/Hindustan belongs to us," went one couplet. Its coded message did not deceive everyone and its author had to go into hiding. (The 1994 Gramophone Company of India anthology Kismat & Shaheed & Bandhan (CDF 1 20229) is recommended to give a flavour of this bygone era.) Pradeep will mainly be remembered for his patriotic songs and, almost inevitably, for his condemnation of the widespread `dumbing down' to Hindi film music.
The rocky road to World Music has been strewn with many boulders. Karl Denver did his bit to bulldoze some of the obstacles out of the way with a short spate of hits peaking between the summer of 1961 and the spring of 1962. The story goes something like this... Born Angus McKenzie in Springburn, Glasgow in Scotland on 16 December 1931, he led a colourful life. Like the finest beery tales, his life probably got more fictionalised with every retelling. While recovering from a wound obtained in the Korean War, he worked on his guitar playing. On his army discharge he made his way to the United States, jumped ship and, as an illegal alien, hunkered down in Nashville where he was doing well until the US immigration authorities caught up with him and had him deported. It was 1959. Keeping his American stage name, he formed the Karl Denver Trio and by 1961 they were appearing on British television and had a recording contract with Decca. Denver had a penchant for Americanised yodelling in the key of Slim Whitman and yodelling was big in the UK charts thanks to Frank Ifield and his smash hit I Remember You. Denver knocked out singles such as a hillbilly-tinged Mexicali Rose but his biggest was Wimoweh. Wimoweh had been a massive hit for The Weavers and the Tokens had rejigged the original Zulu lyrics to create the 1961 hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight (which took on an independent life of its own). Denver was not fazed by anyone purporting to have staked an earlier claim on the song. He gloriously claimed to have come by it in South Africa while working as a merchant seaman. The man had class - or classy chutzpah. It would have been nigh-impossible for somebody who by his own admission was so into folk and country not to have had Wimoweh planted in his skull by the US folk revival's most important act, the Weavers. The Weavers' Wimoweh had been enormous on the international folk scene in the early 1950s but Denver's version lodged itself in the UK charts for 17 weeks in 1962 and reached the Top 5. Thereafter the Karl Denver Trio was a show business commodity. Increasingly marginalised and deemed dreadful old hat beside the Beatles, Stones and others who were showing how to do it, they nevertheless remained a big draw on the cabaret and supper-club circuit. The Trio gradually faded from view although they caused a brief flicker of interest when they fell in with Manchester's late 1980s acid house scene as guests on the Happy Mondays' Lazyitis. (Stuff nobody could make up.) They even revisited Wimoweh courtesy of the Factory label. Denver died of a brain tumour aged 67 on 21 December 1998.
A reputation founded on four commercially released songs may sound like a recipe for a slim obituary but Bryan Maclean was a songwriter whose output with the Los Angeles-based group Love had an enormous impact especially in sunny Southern California and Britain. (A reluctance to tour did not help Love gain wider popularity.) Softly To Me, his first song, graced the group's debut for Elektra, Love (1966). The better Orange Skies appeared on the next, Da Capo (1967). The still better Alone Again Or (with its charming orchestral arrangement by David Angel) and Old Man appeared on Forever Changes (1968), an album sandwiched between Judy Collins' Wildflowers and the Doors' Strange Days in the Elektra catalogue. Four idiosyncratic songs on three albums seemed a precious small legacy. Only much later did it emerge how much Maclean's work had been squeezed out by the group's leader, the autocratic and increasingly erratic Arthur Lee. Lee even sang Orange Skies, a cause of friction between the two. Maclean, born in Los Angeles on 25 September 1946, was important on several reasons. Love was Elektra's first rock band - soon to be utterly eclipsed by the Doors - and early Love had touches about them reminiscent of the Byrds, for whom Maclean roadied briefly. Maclean brought a knowledge of, amongst others, western classical music, show tunes, flamenco and Indian classical music to the party. It is hard to imagine Lee's The Castle on Da Capo not being informed by Maclean's flamenco's influence. More and more marginalised by Lee, Elektra's Jac Holzman invited him to do a solo album but he judged Maclean's work to be wanting. By 1970 he had had enough and got out of the business. He found religion, wrote what he called "worship songs", wrote for his half-sister Maria McKee, had Patty Loveless score a Top 10 country hit with his Don't Toss Us Away and, most interestingly of all, found a label interested enough in his songwriting work to release an album of his songs. That album, ifyoubelievein (1997) contained Maclean's readings of songs such as Orange Skies, Alone Again Or and Old Man recorded between 1966 and 1982. The following year Holzman had his account of Elektra published. In Follow The Music, co-credited to Gavan Daws, he managed to give a potted history of Love without one reference to Maclean in the index. (Nor do I remember any mention of Maclean in the book.) Maclean died of a heart attack on 25 December 1998 in the city of his birth.
The vocalist Johnny Moore died at the age of 64 on 30 December in London. Born in Selma, Alabama in 1934, Moore sang with the Drifters from 1955 and although he never achieved the personal fame or glory of Clyde McPhatter or Ben E. King his rich voice was a distinctive one in the Drifters' sound. After national service he rejoined the group in 1963 but the group's R&B heyday years were over. Major personnel changes occurred at the behest of the band's manager, George Treadwell. Moore took over as lead vocalist after Rudy Lewis's death in 1964. The day Lewis died, they cut one of their best-ever numbers with Moore singing lead on Under The Boardwalk. They developed into a first-rate pop group with songs such as Saturday Night At The Movies, Come On Over To My Place, Kissing In The Back Row Of The Movies, Can I Take You Home Little Girl and You're More Than A Number In My Little Book to the credit. Later they made a solid living playing to audiences on revival packages pleasing lovers of nostalgia.
A death of another kind occurred on New Year's Eve when the renowned Sweetwater music cave or club (if you prefer) in Mill Valley in Marin County closed. The memorabilia-strewn club had played host to many wonderful evenings involving Californians and proxy Californians alike. Jeannie Patterson originally took the place on in 1979 with her then-husband Jay. Over the years she developed a strong rapport with John Goddard (from one of the world's great record shops, Village Music) on the basis of fair exchange being no robbery. He would steer talent her way. Among the talent presented were John Lee Hooker (whose show was filmed by the BBC for a documentary), Hot Tuna (who recorded there) and Santana (a tricky undertaking given the postage stamp-sized stage). Perhaps Sweetwater will be best-remembered for the meetings of minds it allowed. When Albert Collins played there, Ry Cooder and Carlos Santana were on stage with him. Then there was the night when the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia accompanied Elvis Costello. This December Jeannie Patterson told the San Francisco Examiner, "I hope, somehow, Sweetwater will survive all this, an owner will be found, and the tradition will continue." One can but hope. The final hogmanay billing had not emerged when this item was posted. (Updates to dissidenten@exil.de)

Ken Hunt, December1998