OSHO'S HEARTBEATS - MUSIC REVIEWS

So in the interest in turning you onto delights you might have never heard, I will review and discuss all sorts of music. Some of the music will be classics, other music will be new releases. Since music is the language of peace, and meditation I'd rather be "In your ear and in your heart's".

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Sketches of Spain / Miles Davis

Shankar: Concerto For Sitar & Ocherestra / Ravi Shankar

Into The Labryrnith / Dead Can Dance

The first album is one of my all time jazz classic favorites, Sketches of Spain. This album features the first uniquely creative collaboration between Miles Davis and Gill Evans which was so powerful it was the inspiration for two other extraordinary collaborative albums - Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess, all on the Columbia Records label. Sketches of Spain has a brooding, dramatic Spanish sound and feeling throughout all the works on the album.

I believe Miles Davis has rarely, if ever, soloed with such concentration of emotion in several sections of this album particularly in "Concierto de Aranjuez" and "Saeta". What is most remarkable is the surprising authenticity of phrasing and timbre with which he plays. It is as if Miles had been born of Andalusian gypsies; but, instead of picking up the guitar, had decided to make a trumpet the expression of his cante hondo ("deep song"). Evans also shows a thorough absorption of the Spanish musical temper which he has transmuted into his own uncomprimisingly personal style. This recording took place in late 1959. I recommend this CD for easy listening, love making or just chillin' with a glass of wine watching the sunset...

You like sitar but most of the music you've heard is a little too much for your taste. What to do? Well there is an album you might really enjoy if you also happen to have a classical bent. That album is Shankar: Concerto For Sitar and Orchestra. In 1970, following a commission from the London Symphony Ochestra, Shankar began work on a concerto for sitar and orchestra. It took a little two and a half months to create and was given it's world premiere at the Royal Festival Hall in London on January 28th, 1971, by the London Symphony Orchestra under their principal conductor, Andre`Previn and recorded at Abbey Road Studios. The work is dedicated to Ravi's Guru, Ustad Allauddin Khan.

The concerto is primarily Indian style; but instead of entering the soul of East Indian music through the sounds of Tablas, or surangi, you listen to a beautiful blend of cello, violin and other classical western instruments accompanying Shankar's exquisite sitar playing. The rhythm of Indian music is immensely complex and subtle, being organized in cycles ranging from 3 to 108 beats to create certain meditative moods. The western ear unfamiliar with these rhythms usually does not enjoy the pulsing rhythms that are classic with the traditional East Indian "raga". By using traditional symphonic instruments to interpret these raga rhythms to the accompaniment of Shankar's sitar playing you get to listen to the most unusual musical blend of "East Meets West". It is almost impossible to imagine that a large orchestra of musicians untrained in Indian music would be able to follow the intricate rhythms of a raga; but, Ravi has written the music in such a truly ingenious way that he has created a marvelous flow of rhythm.

Dead Can Dance is a great name for a group whose music is so compelling that I can't listen to it without moving some part of my body if not outright standing up and dancing in the middle of my living room. There is something so profoundly fulfilling to their music that I find myself reaching for one of their albums quite often. The group has two vocalists, each with very divergent singing styles. The result is a fabulous blend of chant/melodies that incorporate ethnic backgrounds ranging from Gaelic to East Indian. I even heard a Polish phrase in one of their songs.

The lead male vocalist who reminds me of "Jim Morrison does the Moody Blues". He's got one very sexy voice that grabs you by the collar to listen to what he's saying. The lyrics are often on the humanistic side which is uplifting and encouraging - all these great messages are backdropped by the very absorbing music they create. Their album Into the Labyrinth might be a good start. This is the kind of music you don't want to play while trying to concentrate or meditate; but it's the perfect music to listen to to unwind and feel really, really great!

They formed in Melbourne, Australia, 1981. Dead Can Dance found themselves nestling comfortably alongside the soundscapes of the Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Modern English, Colourbox, the Wolfgang Press and Xmal Deutschland.

Multi-instrumentalist Brendan Perry and classically trained singer Lisa Gerrard, both of Anglo-Irish extraction, met in Melbourne at the turn of the decade and, following just one recording (for Aussie cassette magazine, Fast Forward), decided to move to London, where their extraordinary marriage of music and ethereal vocals were soon to gain the attention of a world wide audience.

When Dead Can Dance was issued early in 1984, it transpired that the name was not some facile Goth reference point but was inspired by 'the transformation from inanimacy to animacy' (Perry) - a notion illustrated by the album's cover, which depicted a ritual mask from New Guinea. Brendan Perry placed a great deal of importance on his sleeve art, and himself produced the drawing for the duo's first 12" EP, the acclaimed Garden Of The Arcane Delights (1984). As well as these releases, Dead Can Dance also contributed two tracks to the This Mortal Coil compilation It'll End In Tears, which also featured most other names on the roster. 

In 1985, a second album, Spleen And Ideal, promptly went to the top of the independent charts. The year after came Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun, a work with a more baroque feel than the earlier albums: Perry said they had 'decided to work within the form of the classical idiom, and use classical instruments, with the aid of samplers, computers - and a few books on how to score'. A more tribal feel was prevalent in Dead Can Dance's two excellent contributions to the compilation, Lonely Is An Eyesore, released in 1987. The album Serpent's Egg (1988) received a more muted critical response, with some feeling-

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that Brendan Perry was stretching credulity with his hifalutin theories. Unabashed, he presented his interest in the secular music of the early Renaissance in Aion (1990), for which reproduction Renaissance instruments were incorporated into the overall structure. The years 1991-93 saw Dead Can Dance working on numerous disparate projects across the world, including Lisa Gerrard's score for a production of Oedipus Rex, and music for the soundtrack of the film Baraka.

Into The Labyrinth, an extraordinary melange of the primitive ideas and the arcane, with tracks varying between straightforward ballads and profoundly motif-laden instrumentals. When queried as to how Dead Can Dance could realize their music in a live situation, Brendan Perry stated, 'We have a system where we introduce nodal structures which allows room for improvisation . . . You can achieve some dangerously beautiful musical moments by way of this process.' This was illustrated on the stunning 1995 release, Toward The Within, which was recorded live in Santa Monica, California. Tm his set showed Dead Can Dance at their stark best, drawing from Eastern influences, whilst maintaining their allusions to more familiar European pastoral themes.

A Passage In Time (1991; Warners). For an introduction to the extraordinary music of Dead Can Dance, look to this American import. The CD comprises a good selection of early material, as well as two tracks - "Bird" and "Spirit" - not available elsewhere.

Toward the Within (1995; 4AD). A stunning live (and largely improvised) set.