A true mixing of west and east.
South Indian and western crossover music, fusion, using both traditional and electronic instruments; Indian ragas and rhythms and western harmonic structures.
RagaPhonia juxtaposes South Indian classical music with western jazz, rock and electronic music to forge a new sound.
Story behind the song
Robert had a song half-written, and brought it to Shuba. We brought in texts from the Bhaghavad Gita, and ragas from South India.
Lyrics
In the night of all beings, the wise man
Sees only the radiance of the Self;
but the sense-world where all beings wake
for him is as dark as night.
Stumbling through the door, crumbling Troubadour
Coat black like a nun, eyes like cardamom
His goal’s a mountain to climb down
His ink’s a fountain underground.
His paper’s Kon-Tiki icebound.
The whole world becomes a slave
to its own activity, Arjuna;
if you want to be truly free,
perform all actions as worship.
Cast another line, alcohol and brine
Taste the chanterelle, rusty vesper bells
Next door are newlyweds quarreling
Candle-flame shadows are whirling
Eels in a fish tank are swirling
Marble-slab tables are curling...
Crowned with fire, wrapped
in pure light, with celestial fragrance,
he stood forth as the infinite
God, composed of all wonders,
If a thousand suns were to rise,
fixed high in the noon sky, blazing,
the brilliance of that cruel bloom
would appear as Khrishna's being..
This evening will have been solved
Perspective will have been evolved
Tension will have been dissolved...
Grace...
A draft through the window finds his moist forehead
Fingernails reflect in a plastic bedstead
The Troubadour swears in sleep,
and falls from dream to dream.
I am the beginning and the end,
origin and dissolution,
refuge, home, soul's friend,
womb and indestructable seed.
I am atom heat from the sun.
I withhold the rain and let showers come;
I am the dead, and the deathless,
and all that is or is not, Arjuna!.
