David Lewiston Interview
from "The World of Sound & Spirit"
Ellen Kushner spoke with David Lewiston about many things; only a portion of their conversation could be included in the program.You can read a transcript of Additional Comments that were not in the radio interview.
David Lewiston: I was here working in New York as a financial editor, bored me stiff. The editor was a really nice guy and he said, "Sure you can take your three weeks of vacation and a leave of absence." So I took off for seven whole weeks. You can imagine what that's like, having a regular job here in NY, being that loose for seven weeks.
Sound & Spirit host Ellen Kushner: Tell me about your first trip to the Tibetan monasteries.
DL: In '71, I went to hear a Tibetan Lama speak here in NY, his name was (Chogyam) Trungpa, I'd never met anyone like him, he had extraordinary energy; and when I tried to describe it to myself it's as though he emanates compassion impartially and that experience was so powerful that after more contact in the following year, in '72, I said, "well I'm just going to save everything I have, walk away from this dreary editing job and take off for the Western Himalaya and see what other remarkable Tibetans I can find". When I got to India in '72, it proved not to be a problem at all I was able to meet a number of remarkable beings. I think of spirituality as hedonism you know, sheer pleasure...
EK: Do you consider yourself a student of Tibetan Buddhism?
DL: I'm not really a student of anything I enjoy hanging out with people who have remarkable energy.
EK: What do you get from it?
DL: Pleasure.
EK: What kind?
DL: There's a special kind of joy being around people of this kind. It's a joy that can't be described in words, you need to experience it to know what that feels like.
EK: Can one experience it through listening to the music at all?
DL: I can only speak for myself--Yes--each of us needs to decide that for oneself.
EK: In April '98, you were at another Tibetan monastery...
DL: Yes, I was back at Khampagar. I returned because one of the wonderful things that happens there every spring is a festival of sacred dance that commemorates the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet by Padmasambhava in the 8th century. So this ritual of dance goes on for a whole week with different dances on each day.
EK: I'd like to listen to the tape you've brought back from the recent festival.
DL: What we're going to hear now is part of the orchestral music which accompanies the end of one of these, the segments of the mandala of Dorje Phurba.
MUSIC
EK: Now what are we hearing?
DL: The instruments of that ensemble all follow the cymbals; whoever holds the cymbals is the director of the ensemble. Because while the dancers dance it's the pattern of the cymbals which reminds the dancers of what they should be doing. So the lama who has the symbols is directing everything including the dancers.
EK: How much of what we're listening to is performance and how much of it's ritual? And where does the line blur?
DL: I have yet to get a straight answer on that. From time to time I'll ask one of the lamas, "Rimpoche, please explain to me about the ritual orchestra", and he'll say "it is an offering". Over the years I began to compare that to everything in Bali. For example nearly everything that's done in Bali turns out to be an offering to the gods, all of the music, all of the dance, all of the beautiful decorations of fruit and flowers that are put in the temple during a festival by the women, all of this is an offering. And it's as though in Buddhism also, there are offerings. Buddhism comes out of a Hindu base, doesn't it?
EK: Is much of what you record sacred?
DL: Not necessarily, I'm interested in quite simply music that strikes me as magic. Wherever I find magical music I'll ask, "may I record this?"
EK: But what about the difference between a people whose culture believes that the music is actually working magic and somebody who buys one of your CDs, sticks it in the stereo and yet feels some kind of FREE SOUL, or doesn't?
DL: You know, for me that's an intellectual consideration I don't really get hung up in that. For me, either music is worth recording and worth pressing as an album or it doesn't get my juices flowing and I don't want to do anything with it, it's as simple as that.
EK: So how long were you in Khampagar?
DL: Well, the dances began on the ninth day of the second Tibetan month and ended with a transmission of the energy accumulated during the dances. The transmission was then passed on to all the lay people who came to the monastery and that happened on the sixteenth day of the second Tibetan month; so it was one week.
EK: Just a week. Do you feel it changed you?
DL: I go there because I feel I can rely on being in the presence of a certain quality of energy which is very nourishing...otherwise I wouldn't go there. This whole question of change is something I don't believe in, actually. I've done a number of what could be thought of as spiritual trips in my life and at the end I've concluded "I'm the same person I was" except maybe in certain ways my energy may be a little less blocked than it was.
What I'm doing is simply saying "here's something that's really great, give it a listen".
EK: But why?
DL: I'm a musician and if I encounter music that I think is wonderful I want to share it with others...
EK: So after the Tibetan monastery, the great world tour went on to? DL: It went on to Jammu, which was very difficult. And then after that Kashmir, and I spent a week there. Big problem: Kashmir is in the middle of a civil war, so working with musicians and recording there was very difficult. So then I left, came back down to India and then moved on to Istanbul and then to Morocco for a month.
EK: In Morocco, David Lewiston encountered followers of Shaikh Hamza al Qadiri (Ka-diri) - a Sufi who tells his followers: "All I'm concerned about is your heart. My mission is to mend broken hearts. If the heart is healed the rest will follow. Only the fire of Love can burn the rust of mundane existence...This is the sort of love mankind needs today."
Through a ceremony called a zikr, the Shaikh leads his followers to experience al-hadra, the presence of the Divine. The zikr combines beautiful devotional songs with a congregation repeating the names of the Divine accompanied by sacred movement.
DL: There are some men who have been chosen to sing the devotional songs which are used during the zikr, they're invited to come, so you hear those men singing, and the other qadiri who've have come to take part in the zikr, are first of all sitting and listening to these devotional songs and then at a certain point the sheik who is leading the zikr will motion, and they'll get up, stand in a circle and begin al hadra which is invoking the presence of the divine.
EK: One of the eeriest moments is when they start making that grunting, breathing sound, what's going on?
DL: They're simply reciting the names of Allah.
EK: And hyperventilating.
DL: Possibly, and of course there are some body movements, it is a kind of dance.
EK: Because in some points it reminds me of children, what they do with their bodies, getting themselves in an altered state and spinning.
DL: Absolutely...that no doubt is where it all come from...everything is in childhood, right?
EK: I think so...You go around the world recording people doing wonderful music that has enormous heart and an enormous place in their lives...are you always standing and watching?
DL: Well yes, that's the problem with my role as musical tourist because I'm not really part of the culture. And so I find that although I'm received with warmth, I'm not really part of the culture, I'm outside it. I'm a witness of what's going on.
EK: Have you ever been tempted to join in, have you ever been invited to join in?
DL: Sure, sure and sometimes I do, but not very much of the time. Difficult to switch roles like that...it is...
EK: That's music recorded in the field by David Lewiston in June, 1998 - from Qadiri (Ka-Diri) Sufis of Morocco. David Lewiston's tour continued through Istanbul to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Before he arrived, David had struck up an e-mail correspondence with a gifted young American musician, Carl Linich, who has become a respected singer of Georgian folksongs, and is very much part of the musical community in Georgia.
DL: And we began to discuss the possibilities, and he suggested we go to Megrelia, which is in the northwest of Georgia. I didn't have the foggiest notion of what I was going into so I said, "let's do it!" And he set up a ten day tour of Megrelia through his friends there. What I didn't realize is that I was going into an area that had been dreadfully battered in the war with the neighboring breakaway republic of Abkhasia to the north of Megrelia. And when we got there, to the town of Zugdidi, which is just on the Georgian side of the ceasefire line, we found that the town was full of refugees from Abkhasia having a desperate time making ends meet and the people there are in dire straits, to 80% unemployment, so it's a terrible situation there. But what I think amazed both of us was the wonderful music we found there. In the space of four days Carl was able to arrange the recording of five wonderful choirs.
EK: How formal are these choirs?
DL: They're organized, with meticulous rehearsal, and each has a fine choirmaster, who rehearses them until he's satisfied, and the people who are chosen to direct these choirs are all extremely respected singers themselves. And very often they're not only choirmasters themselves, but they are the sons of choirmasters, and the grandsons, their grandfathers were also choirmasters, it's a long tradition.
EK: How much of it is folk music?
DL: This is all folk music.
EK: Because one doesn't usually think of a formal rehearsed choir as folk music.
DL: That's right. But that's what it needs because these folk songs are polyphonic. Georgian folksongs are created in three parts, so there's an upper part, a lower part and a middle part, and to get that sort of thing to sound well, it has to be well rehearsed and the balances made meticulously.
EK: Some Americans and some Sound & Spirit listeners are familiar with the sound of the Georgian men's voices, but I had never heard Georgian women before I heard your recordings.
DL: I'm really glad that when we got to the town of Senaki that the choirmaster said there "oh we have a women's trio, are you interested?" Of course we said "of course!" so in addition to recording the men's choir we recorded this trio of women. They're playing an instrument called the chonguri--all three are playing chonguri; it's a four-stringed instrument with a unique tuning which is particularly well suited to the traditional music.
EK: You managed to track down a man who is really steeped in the oldest traditions of Georgian choral singing.
DL: Carl was asking around to find out who are the best musicians, he was told, "oh there's Polikarpe Khubulava and when we met him, we realized, here's the great authority on the music of Megrelia. The wonderful thing about Polikarpe is that the choir he directs maintains the old Georgian intonation. In other words, it isn't the perfect intonation, that we expect today, so if it sounds out of tune to you, IT ISN'T. It's old Georgian intonation, this is what music would have sounded like in Georgia at the turn of this century. The smoother intonation you've heard in the other examples is what has happened to Georgian music in the second half of this century.
EK: Because they've been exposed to radio and recording, you think...It takes some getting used to.
DL: Yes it does but it has great heart.
EK: I'm taking your word on it that this is all intentional. How do they know?
DL: Because members of this choir are all older people. The youngest is in his mid-fifties, and many are in their sixties, and Polykarpe, the director, is seventy-four. So they remember how music used to be when they were young.
EK: What advice would you offer a young person?
DL: Save your pennies, it'll cost a bundle. You not only need money for travel, you need really good equipment and that is not cheap. So work hard, save your pennies, and then maybe you too one day can take off and say "to hell with this boring job I've got." And never ever again do it for the rest of your life.
EK: David Lewiston, thank you so much.
DL: My pleasure.
EK: David Lewiston's most recent release is THE DIAMOND PATH: Rituals of Tibetan Buddhism (recorded at Khampagar Monastery)... on the Shanachie label. I'll be keeping an eye out in the future to see which of the field recordings that we've heard on this week's Sound & Spirit make it onto the next of David Lewiston's world music releases.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
[not included in the radio interview above]:After the Tibetan monastery...
EK: So after the Tibetan monastery, the great world tour went on to ?
DL: It went on to Jammu which was very difficult. I spent ten days in Jammu...
EK: I don't know where that is..
DL: OK, more or less due north from Delhi three or four hundred miles. A rail line goes up and the last place on the rail line in the plains is Jammu. Now if you want to go to Himatral Pradesh in the western Himalaya where I recorded at Khampagar Monastery, you get off the train a little bit before Jammu and hop in a taxi and go to the monastery. So to get to Jammu I had a cab ride back to Patankar on the rail line, and then I had to get on the train for another three hours and go north to Jammu. It's a really slow train, distances are nothing. Jammu is not the nicest place to be in the middle of April because it's still in India's plains. It's very hot and dry and dusty. And it was very difficult this year because the students had proclaimed a bandh, a bandh is a strike, a general strike. So the stores in Jammu were closed for the week I was there.
EK: Oh dear, did you record there?
DL: Yes. Luckily, I had established contact with the gentleman responsible for culture in Jammu and he made sure I met some of the better musicians....
And then after that Kashmir, and I spent a week there, big problem, Kashmir is in the middle of a civil war so working with musicians and recording there was very difficult...and after ten days I concluded that I wouldn't be able to get anything usable...So then I left, came back down to India and then moved on to Istanbul and then to Morocco for a month.
EK: A month in Morocco.
DL: Ya.
EK: Wow, that must have been great, was it the first time you'd been in Morocco?
DL: Very first. Always wanted to, and thought "well, now's the time, you know, it's act out fantasy year."
EK: What did you get? What did you record there?
DL: Well I went to Fes...I'd been having telephone conversations...It's really nice to sit in one's condo in Maui just calling all over the world having interesting conversations. And I'd been introduced by another Sufi gentleman to Dr. Costas, he teaches in Fes. And he said, yes he thought it would be a good idea to record the Sufi music of Fes, and if I came, he would help me. So I went there at the time of the World Festival of Spiritual Music which takes place in Fes in late May and then stayed in Fes after the festival and Dr Costas arranged several recording sessions. Costas is closely related to the qadiri which is a dervish order which is experiencing a renewal in Morocco, thanks to a Qadiri sheik who is giving juice to a lot of people there.
And more about Georgia...
DL: I'd always wanted to visit Georgia because when I was very young I spent twenty years in the Gurdjieff work. I had the good luck to study with Thomas DeHaten who'd been Gurdjieff's musician and so I really wanted to find out about the music of Gurdjieff's milieu, which of course meant going to Georgia.
EK: Which is where he was from?
DL: Well, he was really from Caas, what is now called Gumrie in Armenia. Then called Alexandrapol but he must have spent quite a lot of time in the Caucasian Mountains. So through the magic of e-mail I was able to make the e-mail acquaintance of a truly gifted young American singer Carl Linick who not only has a huge repertoire of the polyphonic Georgian folk songs, Carl knows all three voice parts for over 300 of the Georgian songs which is enough in Georgia to win him the title choirmaster....
EK: So what did you want to get on tape that hadn't been got already? Well, some gorgeous music unknown in other countries. And so Carl and I discussed this in e-mail and he said yes you know he'd be willing to make arrangements. So when I got to Tbilisi and actually met him - Carl is a very sweet, 31-year old man - turns out he speaks fluent Georgian, is able to write Georgian, which is even more impressive, because Georgian has a unique script, I mean the language is unique, the script is unique, and he's found a delightful young lady to marry there, and they have a baby.
EK: So he lives there now.
DL: Yes, he lives there.
EK: He's an American living in Georgia.
DL: Major time.
EK: Well that's handy.
DL: And coming back from time to time to repair his financial situation.
And more about wine and song in Georgia...
DL: ...You can't have a Georgian feast without these songs because one of the important uses of these songs is as table songs during feasts. So there will be copious quantities of wine, and also of vodka and arac, which is really village vodka. Some of the most delicious village arac I had was distilled from persimmons.
EK: Persimmons.
DL: It was divine, simply delicious.
EK: I hear that village wine is something special, too.
DL: Yes. There are two qualities of wine in Georgia, generally speaking. There are what are called the factory wines, we call them winery wines, and they're pretty good, but then there's village wine which is made in the old traditional way in huge clay pots set in the ground. And those wines are simply incredible. They are the best wines in the world without doubt. EK: Really, strong stuff.
DL: No. The young wines, the grape juice is not totally fermented. You'll have what tastes like a dry wine, but with an undernote of sweetness. I remember one young wine we had, it was perfect with food, it wasn't really sweet, but it had an undernote of honey. Simply amazing, you know, simply delicious.
EK: That's wonderful....
Check out our Discography of David Lewiston's recordings.For more of Ellen's conversations check Interviews in the section Above and Beyond.
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