Sri Chinmoy was born Chinmoy Ghose; Sri is an Indian title of respect, from the Sanskrit for radiance. He was born in Bengal and entered an ashram at the age of 12. He immigrated to the US, to teach, in 1964, at the age of 33. He became a celebrity guru, an internationally influential teacher with celebrity followers (and not without his detractors). He passed on in 2007, in New York.
Sri Chinmoy delivered a message of peace and tolerance through writing, drawings, and music, and he’s credited with an astounding output. He was one of the inspirations of new age music, performing hundreds of Peace Concerts around the world. This year, a free concert called Songs of the Soul: Celebrating the Music of Sri Chinmoy is on tour, and it was just presented in NYC. Singers and instrumentalists from around the world presented "classical and modern arrangements" of Sri Chinmoy’s songs, many sung in Bengali. One song, a paean to Sri Chinmoy, was written by Leonard Bernstein.
The program opened with a commanding call from three conch shells, and the enormous mantra word Om. The Achenbach String Trio (parents and daughter, apparently Austrian), with a cello and two violins, gave the songs a baroque sound unique to the evening. Eight women, billed as A Capella Singers, isolated the melodic lines.
A group led by Tapan Modak and Santanu Bhowmick gave the songs more complexity than the other musicians. They played with two strings, a woodwind, drums, piano and vibes - and a sort of shruti box (like a flat accordion). The drummer used both ends of his drumsticks, alternately, covered with what looked like fabric of different thicknesses. The drum made a dull, primal thudding sound, giving the songs a force eschewed by the other groups. I’m not partial to the sound of a shruti box (or, for that matter, the sound of an accordion), but it can create a low drone that’s a marvelous constant under the changing pitches. At times Santanu (I think it was Santanu) broke into a sort of Sanskrit scat.
Other groups included Vedic Fire, who sang in Sanskrit, and The Sri Chinmoy Bhajan Singers, a women’s ensemble.
How does a fellow write about this music? It was written to be firstly a spiritual experience, the musical expression of peace, its musical harmonies reflecting devotional harmonies. It escorts us gently to a meditative place, and we’re thankful for Sri Chinmoy’s contribution. But without any tensions whatever, these songs become bland after preliminary listening. Without dissonance, they neither reflect nor transcend human suffering; they ignore it.
- Steve Capra
August 2010
