Comments on: "We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all."

"We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all."

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:25:09 -0800

Introduced to Western culture by the Beatles in their single Norwegian Wood, the sitar has featured prominently in North Indian classical music for centuries. Princeton-based computer scientist Ajay Kapur updates the instrument with his ESitar, an audio and video controller that uses gesture input (PDF) and machine learning algorithms to facilitate joining the computer with Ajay in his sitar performance. Undergraduate engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania work from the other direction, building RAVI-bot, an award-winning, self-playing robotic sitar (YouTube) programmed to generate music from classical Raga scales and melodies all on its own. For those in the Philadelphia area, be sure to check out a live performance of RAVI-bot at the local Klein Art Gallery.

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:29:44 -0800

Just to be clear, "Norwegian Wood" was a song on Rubber Soul, but was never released as a single (well, except for a special 1995 collection, but that doesn't count).

By: ericb

ericb — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:33:01 -0800

Let us praise the master of the sitar, Ravi Shankar who George Harrison described as the "Godfather of World Music." BTW -- He's also the father of Norah Jones.

By: acro

acro — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:48:10 -0800

"Concert for Bangladesh" with Harrison and Shankar is a great concert film.

By: supercres

supercres — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:50:46 -0800

Aw, damn. I have to compete against that robot at our engineering school's annual senior design competition, and I only helped advance a treatment for Parkinson's :-)

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:35:32 -0800

Introduced to mainstream Western popular culture...

By: jdfalk

jdfalk — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:40:11 -0800

a better RAVI-bot link: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1140 but still not enough info, alas.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:41:48 -0800

UbuRoivas, bad wording on my part, sorry.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:03:04 -0800

Blazecock Pileon: That's OK. You just inadvertently stumbled upon one of my pet hates. Here you have an instrument that has been a central part of a rich & complex classical music tradition going back centuries, in a country that has had contact with the west since Roman times, if not earlier, was colonised by the British for hundreds of years up until 1947 (with French, Portuguese & Danish settlements), and yet Beatles fans act as if four rather naive & inexperienced travellers from some bog town in northern England singlehandedly discovered an instrument that everybody else had somehow completely overlooked throughout the preceding half-millennium.

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:12:33 -0800

A few years ago, when I was over at his house outside Philadelphia, Shafaatullah Khan told me that George Harrison came first to his father, Imrat Khan, to learn the sitar. His father, he said, told George (not in these exact words) that he didn't want to get involved with such foolishness as pop music, so George then went off and tried again with Ravi Shankar. Don't know if that's true, but it is true that Shafaatullah is part of an incredible 400-year lineage of classical Indian musicians. He himself is not only a master of the sitar, but also of the tabla and surbahar, a kind of bass sitar that was developed in the early 1800s by his great-great-great grandfather Sahebdad Khan.

By: phaedon

phaedon — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:14:53 -0800

BTW -- He's also the father of Norah Jones. I could've sworn years before the Reading Room I heard about Norah struggling to make it as a sitar player, on NPR. Did anyone else hear that show?

By: papakwanz

papakwanz — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:22:48 -0800

phaedon: It could have been about Ravi's other daughter, Anoushka. She's about 26, I think, and has been studying with her father since a very young age. However, she's not that great... I mean, she's a talented player and all, but she doesn't have that spark that her father has, and I don't think she'll ever get it. I saw Ravi in 1997, I think, and it was probably the most amazing concert I've ever attended. It was the only time I ever watched another human being transcend earthly existence. It was like he was talking to God.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:34:49 -0800

lelilo: Not knowing the guy, I'd say the story is entirely plausible. Like most of the top western classical musicians, Indian classical musicians start learning at a very young age, say four or five years old. Unlike western musicians, though, there is a very strong master-disciple relationship, which often involves the student leaving his house & taking up residence with the master. Furthermore, the music is all improvised, and the oral transmission of knowledge from master to student is therefore that much more important than in the west, where sheet music can be used to learn at least the mechanics of playing. Given that context, I could understand why a serious Indian classical musician would turn his nose up at teaching George Harrison. It's not necessarily that pop music is bad per se, but that the student would simply be skating on the surface of the tradition, with the learning effort being little more than a token one, amounting to no more than some plucking & fingering techniques.

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:54:54 -0800

Indian classical musicians start learning at a very young age As did Shaafatullah. There's a photo of him on this page holding the surbahar at age eight, where the thing just dwarfs him. You wonder how he could even hold it — and I remember, from those long-lost days back in the late 60s when I saw Ravi Shankar, Alla Rahka, and that whole road show, when people used to say the first year of studying the sitar you did nothing but learn how to hold it. You didn't get to play any notes until the second year.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:01:41 -0800

That's also plausible. It reminds me of a story the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) grand master Riley Lee (born Hawaiian, now Australian; the only (?) westerner to have achieved this status) told: upon showing up in Japan & already an accomplished player, his master told him to go & stand in the icy-cold river, in the middle of winter, for some hours & play one specific single note, otherwise he would not understand the essence of the note. And so it went on for months, I think with that same note. I have heard similar kinds of stories from the Indian tradition. Basically, it's not something that some rich & famous mop-haired near-adolescent is all that likely to put up with, or probably even respect.

By: dreamsign

dreamsign — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:50:39 -0800

Great post; informative comments. Thanks!

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:57:14 -0800

Nice post, but in the best pedantic traditions of Mefi, I think that See my Friend by The Kinks, released in August 1965, is probably the first use of the sitar in western pop music, as Rubber Soul was recorded and released in late 1965. Though both Beatles and Kinks were possibly exposed to the possibility of using the sitar through the playing of Davy Graham, one of the great musical innovators of the early sixties. Though, as Martin Carthy says at the beginning of the clip, everyone was nicking from everyone, Davy was fundamentally important. You just have to listen to Led Zep, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention and a million others to hear his influence. (the above clip of Davy playing, As She Moved Through the Fair, is great)

By: davy

davy — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 01:09:25 -0800

An electronic sitar? Why?

By: Emardhi

Emardhi — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 01:12:20 -0800

Metafilter: Not Something That Some Rich & Famous Mop-Haired Near-Adolescent Is All That Likely To Put Up With

By: psmealey

psmealey — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 04:00:37 -0800

The Beatles were the Madonna of their time. Wait... What?

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:09:10 -0800

Wow, I love that RAVI-bot, I think it sounds great. It doesn't really sound especially like a sitar, which is fine. It just sounds like what it is. It's got a rather unique sound all its own, really. Nice post, Blazecock.

By: zamboni

zamboni — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 07:48:17 -0800

Awesome post. Hurray for more musical robots!

By: mike3k

mike3k — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:19:21 -0800

Cornershop (yes, the people who did "Brimful of Asha") has a great cover version of Norwegian Wood in Hindi.

By: Relay

Relay — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:37:08 -0800

I've always been impressed by Indian music.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:02:25 -0800

Speaking of "naive & inexperienced travellers from some bog town in northern England" (well, more like north London) and the sitar, whatever happened to Kula Shaker?

By: oats

oats — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:12:15 -0800

That robotic sitar link must have been the inspiration for the line "My chops are great, my tone is shit" Seriously, I have heard cigar-box guitars that sound orders of magnitude better.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:28:17 -0800

mike3k writes "Cornershop (yes, the people who did 'Brimful of Asha') has a great cover version of Norwegian Wood in Hindi." Punjabi, isn't it?

By: Twang

Twang — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:54:20 -0800

There's not enough detail on the Esitar, but the idea of gesture extraction is fur oot (possibly first seen in crude form in player piano scrolls)(but I wouldn't bet on it) @johny novak Thanks for confirming my immediate suspicion the Beatles were not the first to record pop with sitar. The Kinks, of course. And snatcherly the sitar almost synchronously appeared in the Byrds' "Eight Miles High", recorded in December 1965. For completists, "Ali Akbar Khan's album Music of India - Morning and Evening Ragas (1955) ... was the first Indian classical recording to appear in the West, and the first recording of ragas on an LP" according to this site

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:54:29 -0800

Seriously, I have heard cigar-box guitars that sound orders of magnitude better. What, are you kidding me? That RAVI-bot sounds fucken GREAT!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:57:00 -0800

And snatcherly the sitar almost synchronously appeared in the Byrds' "Eight Miles High", recorded in December 1965. Really? It must be way buried in the mix, then, cuz I've never heard a sitar in that. Very India-inspired guitar solo, but an actual sitar in that song? Hmmm...

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:27:03 -0800

Very India-inspired guitar solo, but an actual sitar in that song? Yeah -- I concur. "McGuinn's twelve string guitar playing — especially the famed introductory solo — was heavily inspired by [John] Coltrane's saxophone on "India" from his Live at the Village Vanguard album of 1961 McGuinn is very guarded of the effort that went into his approximation of Coltrane's technique to guitar. Chris Hillman's bass line drives the song, while the rhythm guitar work by Crosby and fast drumming of Michael Clarke add dramatic turbulence."^* "Eight Miles High" -- YouTube video.

By: Twang

Twang — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:28:14 -0800

Phew! Good thing, flapjax, I put that almost synchronously in there ... well, let's just agree that the Shankar/Coltrane influences embody the spirit of sitar then??

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 01:15:04 -0800

well, let's just agree Sounds good ta me!