___ _ __ __
___/ (_)_________(_)___/ /__ ____ / /_
/ __ / / ___/ ___/ / __ / _ \/ __ \/ __/
/ /_/ / (__ |__ ) / /_/ / __/ / / / /_
\__,_/_/____/____/_/\__,_/\___/_/ /_/\__/
d i s s i d e n t
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a r t i s t : Pandit Pran Nath
t i t l e : Midnight / Raga Malkauns
d a t e : 2003
l a b e l : Just Dreams
g e n r e : Other
r l s. d a t e : Jan/2004
t r a c k s : 02
b i t r a t e : 192kbps
s i z e : 148,5 MB
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A long-awaited release from La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's archives
featuring two hour-long ragas by one of India's most important singers
of the 20th century, Pandit Pran Nath. Born in 1918, Pandit Pran Nath
began seriously studying the raga at the age of six. Possessed with a
prodigious memory, he would literally spend hours a day singing and
learning hundreds of raga compositions and poems, frequently outdoors in
forests or in the middle of rivers. He spent several years living in the
caves of Tapkeshwar as a holy ascetic, clothed only in ash, singing for
hours at a time amidst the other devotees.
The recordings presented here feature Riley, Young, and Zazeela as
accompanists, and were made in 1971 and 1977; they are the only
available performances on CD at this time. Pandit Pran Nath tended to
primarily focus on the alap portion of the raga (which is the more
meditative beginning section), often stretching it out to forty or more
minutes. That he did so is important in that the qualities that figure
prominently in the alap -- the drone and the infinitely subtle pitch
relationships between notes -- were what resonated so sharply with the
American minimalist composers.
Pandit Pran Nath seems like a force of nature on these performances; you
can actually feel his voice in your chest as the ragas unfold. His
ability to sustain a note for what seems an eternity, and then continue
to provide endless variations in pitch are time disorienting and mind
melting. For Pandit Pran Nath, music was the force of god made manifest.
That he believed so shows in these tour de force performances which I
can't recommend highly enough.
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Midnight
01-4 VIII 71 SF Raga Malkauns [46:15]
Raga Malkauns
01-21 VIII 76 NYC Raga Malkauns [61:53]
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108:0
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