Voice Gautam Tejas Ganeshan + Mridangam Barrel Drum Anantha R. Krishnan + Tanpura Drone Lutes Deepa Preeti Natarajan

Gautam Tejas Ganeshan is a vocalist who sings without lyrics; performing in a style with influences from South Indian music. He is the executive director of the Sangati Center, a performance hall that hosts concert level Indian Classical Music in the Mission. On Thursday nights he holds classes on Indian Classical Theory and Indian Classical Voice at Zambaleta.

I recently sat down with Gautam to talk to him about music, the robustness of Indian Classical Music in the Bay Area, and his group: New Directions in Indian Classical Music.

What is it about music that is important to you?

Music is a special art form in that it strongly features time (pitch, meter, iteration— all are essentially time-mediated), and it also strongly features human emotion, so it straddles the objective-subjective continuum gracefully.

Tell me a little bit about what you are doing with your group: New Directions in Indian Classical Music.

First off, I think our name is a bit pretentious: New Directions in Indian Classical Music. Really, I would like to just call it “Good Music That I Play.” However, that doesn’t create a very good image of what we do in the mind of someone who hasn’t heard us play, so I have settled on this pretentious name. New Directions in Indian Classical Music more or less gives an impression of what you can expect to hear at one of our shows.

The new directions are: typically I don’t use words, very often I improvise the piece or the entire concert, and there is somewhat more flexibility in form than “traditionally” found Indian music. I allow my ideas to be expressed in the music, rather than creating music according to a traditional format.

A lot of people that practice Carnatic music feel the music without necessarily knowing or understanding the original meaning. In my New Directions group we just go for that, and don’t pay any heed to whether or not we are representing the tradition of singing these particular songs. So the forms that I use definitely are related to these song forms in that they build in the same way, and the cycles happen similarly to how the poetic meter would cycle— but I treat them as pure music.

I sing “pure” music, as opposed to music+poetry, or music-that-represents. This means that it is valuable in itself, rather than referencing anything else. One important thing is that there are no words, so there are no extra-musical meanings imported into the music— all the “meaning” comes from within. So, I think anyone can hear the music and find it beautiful, regardless of acculturation.

There is a universality to my music that is intentional. I say the name is pretentious, so I am kind of disowning that, but I do intend that my music is universal in the sense that anybody who comes to it should be able to relate to it. I think that a lot of classical Indian vocal music doesn’t have that quality because it is in a different language, and it applies to certain religious beliefs that are patently not universal. Some people may have not grown up worshiping the Hindu god Rama. If you sing about Rama people are going to say, “Well, it is beautiful music— but, it is not my thing.” But I sing about… I don’t know what I sing about, but I do sing something, and I think that everyone uses their voice and so they can relate with the human cadence of a man producing sounds with his voice, it is on that level I intend for my singing to be meaningful.

Indian Classical Music is alive and well, and very robust in the United States. A surprising number of 2nd generation Indian kids born in America, like myself, take up Indian Classical Music with a real seriousness so that they can become concert performers. Sangati Center provides a platform for part time performers, and up and coming musicians who haven’t yet made a name for themselves- to be acknowledged and honored.

Music and Dance Improv Session by Faye Chao from Faye Chao on Vimeo.

The Dancer/Musician Improv is becoming a Zambaleta tradition on the first Monday of every month. For those of you who haven’t yet witnessed this unique happening, please come tonight with your instrument and your dancing shoes (or bare feet). This is a free all ages encounter of improvising musicians and dancers. The jam will start with an integrated dancer/musician warm-up at 8:30 pm. Those who come for the warm up are welcome to participate from 9:30-11. If you can’t make the warm-up then you’re welcome to join for the last hour. Please plan on being there at 8:30pm so we can set up the ideas to work from for the entire night. Or just come by to watch. The intention of the improvisation jam is to create a supportive environment in which members of the dance and music communities are invited to stretch themselves into the unknown by using under-utilized senses to drive creative choices. Both communities have much to learn from each other as improvisers. The improvisation jam provides an occasion for dancers to open their sense of hearing while improvising and for musicians to respond sonically to what they observe in movement, without the pressure of producing a finished piece, in order to learn from one another and gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between both forms of physical expression.

Photo © Shalaco Sching

Tyson Ayers is a musical inventor who is interested in the interrelationship between music and other artistic mediums. He majored in music composition, painting and writing at Whitman College. I had an opportunity to sit down with him the other day and talk to him about music and The Sound Cave, a unique musical instrument he built. The Sound Cave has been residing at Zambaleta since October.

How did you get into music?

I started playing when I was 16 after I injured my shoulder. I picked up a guitar and got really into it. At the same time I was writing and painting, and when I was in college I decided to focus on the relationship between the three of them. I majored in music composition, painting and writing, and did a four-movement Interarts symphony as my thesis.

I kept pushing further and further; working with one of Harry Partch’s disciples, I started building musical instruments. I started using just-intonation and other non-conventional tuning systems, and began creating experimental instruments with them. Shortly after that experience I started building sound sculptures for people to interact and play with.

What kind of musical instruments and installations have you built?

I first made three musical bike paths—as you ride over them they create vibrations in your body. I manipulated those vibrations through mathematical proportions to play melodies. I Co-Directed The Living Pulse Project, in which I built an orchestra of instruments from natural materials and junk including sea kelp horns, didgeridoos, woodwinds, pitched percussion, and string instruments. I was also the main renovator of the Triclops Monstrosity, the Sousaplex and a couple others as a Co-Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Fantastic Possibilities and the Elationist’s Centennial Celebration.

What is The Sound Cave?

The Sound Cave is a room-sized musical instrument—a little room built from piano parts—and when you crawl inside, you can play the walls and the ceiling. Any sound you play resonates through the 2,000 piano strings and echoes back. If you close your eyes, it feels like a 300-foot cave in every direction because of the echoes. Each of the nine boards is tuned to different scientific and mathematical principles, so it can be used as a musical instrument. It can also be used as an interactive art sculpture or a sound healing device, as well as a very unique performance stage.

You can get a feeling for The Sound Cave and its many different uses through this short video, though nothing is a substitute for the actual experience.

Sound Cave from Tyson Ayers on Vimeo.

What scale do you tune The Sound Cave to?

So now that I’ve built two Sound Caves, I have quite a few different tunings. I tune the ceiling to the natural overtone series with the fundamental tone tuned to an octave of the Schumann Resonance–the frequency the Earth emits when struck by lightning.  I tuned another board to the Fibonacci series. Then I have a 33-note chromatic scale, so between C and C, instead of 12 notes, I have 33. Basically, it’s like I stuck two extra piano notes between every key. That one sounds crazy; I created it to cast the widest net for sympathetic resonance as possible. Most of the other boards are modes of the natural overtones series. I’m playing with the seven ancient Greek modes– the Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixo-Lydian, Aeolian, and Locrian. I also bring in a 7 note ancient African scale that the blues scale is based off of.  I sometimes use notes from classical Indian music and Ayurvedic healing traditions, and also use some modes from the five elements system out of China, which relate to classical acupuncture techniques. So those are the main ones, and then I have two boards tuned to octaves of the orbits of the planets, or the music of the spheres.

So what’s next for The Sound Cave?

This summer I will be taking it on tour as The Sound Cave Roadshow. We will be installing The Sound Cave on the back of a 1967 Ford F600 flatbed truck so we can drive it to any event or town, and share it easily without needing to move nine pianos multiple times to do any event. Then we’ll be able to share it with a wider range of people as an interactive art piece, musical instrument, sound healing device and unique performance stage.

May 1st, we will be playing in San Francisco at Alchemy, and after that we will be performing at the DIY festival Maker Faire on May 21st, 22nd, 23rd. After that, we are going to try playing at Lightning in a Bottle, then hit the Northwest in July for Mutant Fest, Oregon Country Fair, and some others. Later that summer we will head across the northern part of the states, through Midwestern and Northeastern towns and some of Canada, before swinging through the South and Southwest during late September thru October.

You are cordially invited to come play with The Sound Cave over the next week and a half, before it goes on tour. It is living at Zambaleta, 2929 19th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. (415) 341-1333 Come on by and visit us for a truly unique experience.

You can find out more about The Sound Cave by visiting Soundcave.org

If you would like to experience The Sound Cave, want more information about upcoming events, are interested in performing in The Sound Cave or in having it come to your town, contact Tyson @ info [@] soundcave [dot] org.

Carnaval: a festival celebrated the world over is a jubilee that comes in many flavors. With roots in Roman and Greek celebrations, it was spread throughout the world by the Roman Catholic church and is commonly associated with lent. Wherever celebrated, its festivities share the common thread of overturning daily life through carousing and indulgence before fasting.

And that is precisely what we did at Zambaleta! There was a copious amount of music, dancing and delectable food! Old and young joined hands to twist and shout. I saw a woman, 79 years young, busting moves with the best of them.

Dave Ricketts got things started with a Gypsy Jazz Jam Session. People rocked out to music from all corners of the globe: Klezmer, Kecak, Greek & Balkan Kafana, Middle Eastern Hafla, Digital Jams. The evening was just getting warmed up with Flamenco dancing led by Dan Fries and Sandra Durand. Then the Brass Liberation Orchestra blew into the scene and it was an all out hootenanny!

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