English III

NATIONAL LAW INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY,

BHOPAL

In partial fulfilment of the requirement of the project on the subject of English-III of B.A.,

L.L.B (Hons.), Third Trimester

Submitted on 25th March 2015

INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC

Submitted by:

Udyan Arya Shrivastava

(2014 BALLB 98)

Submitted to:

Prof. Mukesh Shrivastava

(Professor of English)

ENGLISH-III NATIONAL LAW INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY, BHOPAL

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-------- INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC --------

PREFACE

I feel great pleasure in presenting this project. I hope that readers will find the project

interesting and insightful. The project contains investigative study of elements of Indian

spirituality in Western popular music.

Every effort is made to keep the project error free. I would gratefully acknowledge any

suggestions to improve the project to make it more useful.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On completion of this Project it is my present privilege to acknowledge my profound

gratitude and indebtedness towards my teachers for their valuable suggestions and

constructive criticism. Their precious guidance and unrelenting support kept me on the right

track throughout the project. I gratefully acknowledge my deepest sense of gratitude to Prof.

Mukesh Shrivastava, who provided me with this opportunity and guided me throughout the

project work.

Udyan Arya Shrivastava

(2014 BALLB 98)


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. 2

2) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... 3

3) INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 5

4) INDIAN MUSIC & PHILOSOPHY IN THE WEST: THE INITIAL YEARS ................... 6

i) Ravi Shankar and the Introduction of Indian Music in the West....................................................... 6

ii) Mahesh Yogi & the popularisation of Indian Spirituality in the West .............................................. 7

5) JOHN COLTRANE & THE INTEGRATION OF INDIAN CONCEPTS IN JAZZ .......... 9

i) Influences .......................................................................................................................................... 9

ii) Ragas in Coltrane’s Work: ‘A Love Supreme’ & ‘Ascension’ ......................................................... 10

iii) ‘Om’ ................................................................................................................................................ 11

6) INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN ROCK & POP: THE BEATLES......................................... 12

i) George Harrison & Ravi Shankar ................................................................................................... 12

ii) ‘Within You, Without You’ .............................................................................................................. 13

iii) ‘The Inner Light’ ............................................................................................................................. 14

7) CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 16

i) A Note on the Selections ................................................................................................................. 16

8) BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 17

i) Books .............................................................................................................................................. 17

ii) Articles ............................................................................................................................................ 17


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INTRODUCTION

“A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in

language, or diverse in interest.”

: - T.S. Eliot1

Bob Dylan once said, “All art is love and theft” (also the title of his 31st studio album, itself

borrowed from a book by Eric Lott). What he meant was that artists copy almost everything

and art is that process of reinvention. In a sense art is inspiration and reapplication, making

something new out of something old.

Popular music is also art. In its early days, the popular music of the West borrowed from

sources such as 19th Century minstrelsy music, African American music and blues, country

and folk traditions. In later phases of its evolution, even more diverse sources came to be

incorporated into the music, each creating a niche and later a genre of its own.

The Indian influence on Western popular music is also a part of this process. It came into

being when Western musicians became acquainted with Indian music and philosophy. This

was a part of a larger process by which Indian concepts were introduced in the West in the

50s and 60s.

In this project I’ll look at how Indian music and philosophy came to be introduced in the

west, the peculiar way it was presented as a part of 1960s counterculture in the West and how

different musicians became a part of it. I’ll limit myself to two genres, namely Rock and Jazz,

and focus on popular pieces of music from each genre, explicitly tinted with Indian influence

and infusing concepts from Indian spirituality into their mix. In the end I’ll look at the wider

amalgamation of Indian spiritual concepts into Western Popular Music and what it portends

for both Indian as well as western cultures.

1 T.S. Eliot, “Philip Massinger,” The Sacred Wood, New York: Bartleby.com. Available at

http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html on 20 March 2015.

http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html


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INDIAN MUSIC & PHILOSOPHY IN THE WEST: THE INITIAL

YEARS

During colonial times Indian culture, including Indian music and philosophy, were seen as

backward and unsustainable. The ideas they expressed were inconsistent with Western ideals

and thus it was regressive to study them. The German philosopher Hegel perhaps best

summarised this position by keeping India out of his study of history as, according to him, its

history shows no progress, and has therefore nothing to teach the Western observer.2 This

eurocentrism and contempt for alien cultures was not new and was the main reason that the

rush of Indian ideas in the West could not take place in the colonial period.

After independence, with what modern historians would identify as a “post-colonial vigour”,

Indian concepts, ideas, philosophy and music began to flood the West. The first generation of

Indians began to settle abroad, taking their cultures with them. Indian musicians began to tour

the West and books on Indian philosophy became increasingly “popular” in Western markets.

For the purpose of this project, it’s sufficient to describe two of these encounters. Firstly, how

Ravi Shankar, an Indian sitarist and composer, introduced Indian music in the West and

secondly, how Maharshi Mahesh Yogi introduced Indian philosophy, in the form of

Transcendental Meditation (TM), to Western audiences.

RAVI SHANKAR AND THE INTRODUCTION OF INDIAN MUSIC IN THE WEST

Ravi Shankar was one of the best-known exponents of the sitar in the second half of the 20th

century as well as a composer of Hindustani classical music.3

Shankar’s first international exposure was when he performed as part of a cultural delegation

in the Soviet Union in 1954. After being critically acclaimed abroad, he resigned from AIR in

1956 to tour the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. He played for smaller

audiences and educated them about Indian music, incorporating ragas from the South Indian

Carnatic music in his performances, and recorded his first LP album Three Ragas in London,

released in 1956.

2 Pankaj Mishra. From the ruins of empire: The intellectuals who remade Asia. Macmillan, 2012. 3 "Ravi Shankar." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 22 March 2015.


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In 1958, Shankar participated in the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the United

Nations and UNESCO music festival in Paris. From 1961, he toured Europe, the United

States, and Australia, and became the first Indian to compose music for non-Indian films.

His popularity increased in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with

violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. Shankar engaged Western

music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra, and toured the world in the 1970s and

1980s, establishing himself as an important figure in World music.

MAHESH YOGI & THE POPULARISATION OF INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN THE WEST

Mahesh Prasad Varma, popularly known as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was an Indian

spiritualist who developed the Transcendental Meditation technique and was the leader and

guru of a worldwide organization that has been characterized in multiple ways, mostly as a

new religious movement.

The Maharishi's 1986 book, Thirty Years Around the World, gives a detailed account of his

world tours. He began touring the World in 1958 and visited several countries including

France, UK, USA and Germany. His 1962 world tour included visits to Europe, India,

Australia and New Zealand. In Britain, he founded a branch of the Spiritual Regeneration

Movement. The year concluded in California where the Maharishi began dictating his book

The Science of Being and Art of Living, which sold more than a million copies and was

published in fifteen languages.

In 1967, the Maharishi's fame increased and his movement gained greater prominence when

he became the "spiritual advisor to the Beatles", though he was already well-known among

young people in the UK and had already had numerous public appearances that brought him

to the Beatles' attention. They met in London in August 1967 and the Beatles went to study

with the Maharishi in Bangor, Wales, before travelling to Rishikesh, India. Although they fell

out later, his influence introduced the Beatles to Indian spirituality, which would influence

their lives and music from that point onwards.

The Maharishi is reported to have trained more than 40,000 TM teachers, taught the

Transcendental Meditation technique to "more than five million people" and founded

thousands of teaching centers and hundreds of colleges, universities and schools.


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His influence in other fields notwithstanding, he’s still most widely recognised as the

“Beatles’ Guru” and is credited with popularising Indian spirituality and developing an

interest in Indian philosophy abroad.


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JOHN COLTRANE & THE INTEGRATION OF INDIAN

CONCEPTS IN JAZZ

Jazz emerged in many parts of the United States in the form of independent popular musical

styles, all linked by the common bonds of African American and European American musical

parentage with a performance orientation.4 Jazz is very difficult to define in precise terms and

for it to be understood even faintly, it has to be experienced. There is special emphasis on

individual performance in Jazz and so the music itself sets no limits. Jazz, therefore, can also

be understood as a musical tradition.

As a genre, the scope of Jazz is very wide and encapsulates a range of diverse influences,

including Indian ones. An empirical study of all these influences is beyond the scope of this

project paper. However, since Jazz itself is a performance oriented art form, the journey of

one Jazz musician, namely John Coltrane (widely regarded as one of the greatest

saxophonists the genre has produced), should provide insight into the music and its tryst with

Indian philosophy and spirituality.

John Coltrane was at the forefront of many important directions in jazz in the 1950s and

1960s, including those that have been labelled hard bop, modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, and

world music. One interest that became an increasingly dominant focus for him in his later

years was the study of Indian music and spirituality. While Coltrane’s music remained firmly

rooted in jazz, this exploration was an important part of the development of Coltrane’s

personal style from the early 1960s to the end of his life in 1967.5

INFLUENCES

Despite Coltrane’s motivation to study the music of India, this exploration would not have

been possible without the existence of some available models. The Hindustani classical

musician Ravi Shankar, who was a pivotal figure in the popularization of Indian music in the

United States in the 1960s, seems to have filled this role for Coltrane. It is unclear exactly

when Coltrane first began listening to Shankar and Indian music, but his music seems to

exhibit Indian elements as early as 1959. Ravi Shankar was performing regularly in the

4 Bill Kirchner. The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2005. 5 Carl Clements. "John Coltrane and the integration of Indian concepts in jazz improvisation." Jazz Research

Journal 2.2 (2009): 155-175. p. 1


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United States after 1956, and Coltrane started paying particular attention to the music of Ravi

Shankar in early 1961.6

Coltrane was introduced to Shankar in 1964, and Shankar began to teach him about Indian

music. Regarding these lessons, Shankar said: ‘I could give just bare beginning and main

things about Indian music and he became more and more interested’.7 Coltrane had intended

to spend six months studying with Shankar in 1967, but died before this could take place.

After meeting Ravi Shankar, Coltrane’s curiosity about India only increased. He started

studying various books including the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda and Mohandas

Gandhi. He was even aware of the works of the South Indian spiritual teacher and

philosopher J. Krishnamurti and practiced yoga.

RAGAS IN COLTRANE’S WORK: ‘A LOVE SUPREME’ & ‘ASCENSION’

Coltrane imbedded many Indian ideas into his music. He shared the Indian belief that specific

ragas should be played at specific times of the day or night, and could be used as media to

induce a particular state of being and uses such labels as ‘Morning, Sad’ and ‘Evening, Gay’

in place of the names of the ragas. Similarly, the North Indian classical idea ‘that music could

have quite specific effects upon its listeners’ was appealing to Coltrane. His ideas regarding

the magical quality of music are evident from the following statement:

“I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right

away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I’d like to play a certain song and he will

be cured; [] But what are these pieces and what is the road to travel to attain a

knowledge of them that I don’t know. The true powers of music are still unknown.

To be able to control them, must be, I believe, the goal of every musician. I’m

passionate about understanding these forces. I would like to provoke reactions in

the listeners to my music, to create a real atmosphere. It’s in that direction that I

want to commit myself and to go as far as possible.”

This same concept appears in a variety of Indian stories about the power of music. In Indian

mythology when properly performed, the Raga is believed to have the power to move the

6 Gerry Farrell. Indian music and the West. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. p. 170 7 Ibid. p. 197


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elements in nature, in man and in animal. Examples of performances in which Rag Dipak

generated intense heat and Rag Megha brought on torrential rains are cited to stake this claim.

Coltrane’s music, therefore, is a classic example of two very distinct genres, Hindustani

Classical and Jazz, coming together. Along with pieces such as ‘India’ and ‘Om’, many of his

composition titles suggest broad spiritual concepts that might be associated with Indian and

other religious thought. For example, the titles ‘A Love Supreme’, ‘Ascension’,

‘Selflessness’, or ‘Meditations’ all evoke Hindu or Buddhist imagery or concepts, though one

might also associate them with various other non-Indian mystical religions. As one observer

put it, ‘Coltrane became a theosophist of jazz… In this respect, as well as musically, he has

been a powerful influence on many musicians since’8

‘OM’

In the piece ‘Om’, Coltrane’s integration of Indian religion into his music is overt. The title

refers to ‘the sound that represents the reverberations of all creation in Hinduism’. The group

recites a chant at the beginning and end of this composition that was taken from the

Bhagavad Gita. The conclusion of this chant was: ‘I, the oblation and I the flame into which

it is offered. I am the sire of the world and this world’s mother and grandsire. I am he who

awards to each the fruit of his action. I make all things clean. I am Om–OM–OM–OM!’ This

is clearly derived from verses sixteen and seventeen of the ninth discourse of the Bhagavad

Gita in which Krisna, who has revealed himself to the warrior Arjuna as the incarnation of

the god Vishnu, explains how his divine essence permeates all things.

Carl Clements writes, “In a general sense, the ideas of ‘Om’ may hold a key to the

understanding of much of Coltrane’s later work, in that he seems to be increasingly trying to

break out of the conventional boundaries of jazz to express a universal consciousness.”9

8 C. Clements. p. 5 9 Ibid. p. 6


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INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN ROCK & POP:

THE BEATLES

The most popular form of music in the West for the last 50 years has been Rock music. It too

draws from a long list of traditions including blues, folk, country and has incorporated even

more influences since its inception in the 1950s.

With the introduction of Indian music and spirituality in the West by the 1960s, as we have

already seen, Rock music, which had become the melting pot of all kinds of music, also came

to be influenced by Indian spirituality. To study the overall Indian influence on Rock music

would be beyond the scope of this project. This impact can however, be understood by

tracing the relationship with Indian spirituality of the most popular and influential rock

group of the era, The Beatles.

The largest selling band of all time, The Beatles occupy the central position in the history of

popular music. No discussion about pop culture in the 60s can be complete without a mention

of the band. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr have become so imbedded in our

imaginations that they hardly exist as individual humans and throughout their lives the

personas they adopted as part of the band followed them.

GEORGE HARRISON & RAVI SHANKAR

The Beatles tryst with India began much before they met the Maharishi in 1967 and

accompanied him to India in 1968. Ravi Shankar, who had already developed quite a

following in the West, was introduced to George Harrison, the band’s lead guitarist, in 1964

and they had developed what was both a close friendship and teacher-student (guru-shishya)

relationship.

Shankar taught Harrison how to play the sitar and gave him basic instructions in traditional

Indian music. This only developed Harrison’s interest further and he began to read

voraciously about India. This was perhaps what most influenced him and his bandmates to

follow the Maharishi to India in 1968. In fact, Harrison was so enamoured by Indian

spirituality that he converted and became a Hindu in his later life. However, even before that

the music of the Beatles was showing specific Indian influences, from the use of sitar in

‘Norwegian Wood’, which had otherwise nothing to do with India (which is why it’s not


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being discussed here), to the use of other Indian instruments like tabla and tanpura in ‘Love

You To’. Similarly, in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ a tanpura drone plays throughout the song.

A sitar-type guitar is mixed. There's also a brief Carnatic-sounding violin in the mix.

Here I’ll discuss two Beatles songs which are not only inspired by and in the tradition of

Indian Classical music, but also show some appreciation of Indian spiritual concepts and

Indian philosophy. (It should be noted here that both these songs overtly have Indian

elements and thus they were selected for this study. It can be argued that other songs like

‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘I’m the Walrus’ or ‘Sexy Sadie’ also have elements of

Indian spirituality, they are not overtly visible.)

‘WITHIN YOU, WITHOUT YOU’

Recorded in March 196710 and released on the Beatles most celebrated studio album, Sgt.

Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band, this song was one the band’s most ambitious projects.

Although only Harrison, among the Beatles plays on the track, a group of uncredited Indian

musicians based in London play the rest of the instruments.

Let us take a look at the lyrics of the song:

We were talking, about the space between us all

And the people, who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion

Never glimpse of truth, then it's far too late, when they pass away

[…]

Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change

And to see you're really only very small,

And life flows on within and without you

The lyrics hint to the Indian spiritual concept that the world is an illusion. The last line (also

the refrain of the song) encapsulates the message of the song that the self is part of the

spiritual whole and it pervades everywhere. Harrison wrote these lyrics after contemplating

all that he had learned so far from his study of Indian philosophy.

10 Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago: Chicago Review

Press. 2005


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Although the Beatles are often dismissed as being too commercial, it is worthwhile to note

that this song has no commercial elements whatsoever in its mix, to the extent that listeners

uninitiated in Indian music would find it hard not only to appreciate the song, but also to

listen to it.

‘THE INNER LIGHT’

“The Inner Light” is one of the lesser known songs in the Beatles repertoire. Originally

released as a B-side to their hit single “Lady Madonna” in 1968, it is a short but deeply

spiritual song. A look at the lyrics may again be helpful:

Without going out of my door

I can know all things on Earth

Without looking out of my window

I could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows

The less one really knows

Without going out of your door

You can know all things on Earth

Without looking out of your window

You could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows

The less one really knows

Arrive without travelling

See all without looking

Do all without doing


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On first hearing the music seems borrowed from any 60s Bollywood movie, with its use of

sitar and its catchy tune. But to understand its spiritual meaning one should take a look at

how the song came to be written and composed.

In his autobiography I, Me, Mine, Harrison writes that the song was inspired by a letter from

Juan Mascaró, a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge University, who sent him a copy of his book

Lamps of Fire (a wide-ranging anthology of religious writings, including some from the Tao

Te Ching and other Indian and Chinese sources) and asked him: "... might it not be interesting

to put into your music a few words of Tao, for example.” Harrison states: "In the original

poem, the verse says ‘Without stirring abroad / One can know the whole world / Without

looking out of the window / One can see the way of heaven.".' And so to prevent any

misinterpretations — and also to make the song a bit longer — I did repeat that as a second

verse but made it: "Without going out of your door / You can know all things on earth /

Without looking out of your window / You can know the ways of heaven" — so that it included

everybody"11

It is enlightening to note how Harrison could transform such deep spiritual wisdom into a pop

song.

11 Ibid


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CONCLUSION

The basic tenets of Indian spirituality, that the world is an illusion, the concept of karma and

reincarnation, have sneaked into Western popular music to an extent that ignorant western

observers may see them as ‘hippie concepts’.

Dozens of western musicians, from the Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane to the Beatles, have

been influenced by and have incorporated Indian spirituality into their music, presenting it to

their audiences as wild exoticism or life changing Oriental wisdom.

The musicians were no doubt influenced by Indian musicians and mystics who toured the

West like the sitarist Ravi Shankar and spiritual teachers like Mahesh Yogi and Rajneesh

(later known as Osho), but the music they created was indeed original and worthy of

appreciation (and academic study) irrespective of its origins.

A NOTE ON THE SELECTIONS

In the writing of this project paper I had to resist the temptation of including many other

bands and musicians including the Rolling Stones, Pattie Boyd, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin,

Oasis, M.I.A. and many others. My selection of the Beatles and John Coltrane was perhaps

motivated by preference of their music and a deep personal appreciation of their work.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

- BOOKS -

Farrell, Gerry. Indian music and the West. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Available at

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/toc/z2009_128.pdf

Kirchner, Bill. The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2005.

MacDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago:

Chicago Review Press. 2005.

Mishra, Pankaj. From the ruins of empire: The intellectuals who remade Asia. Macmillan,

2012.

- ARTICLES -

Clements, Carl. "John Coltrane and the integration of Indian concepts in jazz

improvisation." Jazz Research Journal 2.2 (2009): 155-175. Available at

http://indiamusicweek.org/files/coltrane.pdf

Deschênes, Bruno. "The Interest of Westerners in Non-Western Music." The World of

Music (2005): 5-15. Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/41700004

Eliot, T.S. “Philip Massinger,” The Sacred Wood, New York: Bartleby.com. Available at


Farrell, Gerry. "Reflecting surfaces: the use of elements from Indian music in popular

music and jazz." Popular Music 7.02 (1988): 189-205. Available at

http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261143000002750

"Ravi Shankar." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 22 March 2015. Available

at http://www.biography.com/people/ravi-shankar-9480456

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/toc/z2009_128.pdf

http://indiamusicweek.org/files/coltrane.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41700004


http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261143000002750

http://www.biography.com/people/ravi-shankar-9480456

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