Resonant Frequencies

Gaayatri Kaundinya is a Santa Monica-based Indian American practitioner of Naad yoga, sometimes translated as the yoga of sound, or yoga through vibration. And, as a Naad Yogini, although she is a vocalist of an extremely rare sort, she shrugs her elegant shoulders at the idea of being a performer.

So call it what you will – vibrational healing, chakra activation through sound, emotional release through breath, all of the above with a steaming side of kundalini, please.  Gaayatri and three accompanists will take the stage at the Sierra Madre Playhouse at the end of August for what will be a literally historic event. The intimacy of this unique venue make it an inspired match for this precedent-setting experience.

Why it’s history-making: the genre. The tradition is known as Maihar, an Indian place-name meaning “mother’s necklace” for the moment when the har, or necklace around the neck of the divinity Mai, also called Sati, fell to the earth as her husband, Lord Shiva, carried her deceased body.

Where the Peacocks Sing

See, the story is already getting heady. In Hindu cosmology. Shiva creates the universe in the form of the dancer Nataraja, keeping the heartbeat with a drum held in one of his upper arms. As Lord Shiva dances the enchanting Tandava, he simultaneously creates and destroys, ordering the universe with rhythm and “struck” sound, as well as the “unstruck” sounds or energies emanating from within his dancing celestial body. One of the functions of Nada yoga is to align these rhythms. She laughs with delight when I mention how the twilight calls of our resident peacocks made an Indian friend homesick, adding, “The word svara refers to musical notes, and the svaras are associated the sounds of birds and animals as part of this vocal tradition.”

Some of the ancient pieces which Gaayatri will present later this month will be new to western audiences, known as the vocal music of the Rampur-Maihar Senia Gharana. This gharana or school of classical music is the most familiar Indian musical genre here in the west, thanks in no small part to the influence of sitar master Ravi Shankar during the flowering of America’s counterculture. A quick glimpse of June, 1967 footage from Monterey Pop reveals the rapt countenances of Jimi Hendrix (and young Monkee Mickey Dolenz) in the grooving crowd as Shankar and tabla master Alla Rakha build to a joyous, fevered crescendo. 

The instrumental component of this complex legacy remains vibrantly active and well-represented, but the vocal element fell silent after the 16^th century C.E. The Maihar, it seems, has been essentially unsung for seven generations, until now.

Tradition informs us that that these are divine forms which originated from sacred sources. Followers maintain that these sung ragas — sometimes spelled Raagas, since the Hindi and Sanskrit vary — carry healing powers, with specific ragas delivering specific medicinal effects. In recent times, the kriyas, or techniques for experiencing this type of sound as yogic meditation, have been largely lost, reducing the form to performance art. Gaayatri’s musical journey might seem like a bit of a stealth mission in this context, showering the unwitting listener with the balm of good, good, good vibrations in even the most westernized of settings.

Her pristine sound, at least to these ears, seems melancholy, its pleading, coaxing rise-and-fall filled with seeking and longing, at times feline, other times suggesting the beacon of a lighthouse filtering through dense fog.

Smiling broadly across a coffee-shop table over a veggie burrito in Toluca Lake, Gaayatri shrugs her bare, slender shoulders and says, “I don’t really know why the vocal element of this tradition fell out of practice for so long. The last known pure vocalists of this tradition were Mian Tansen and his daughter Saraswati,” adding that she herself began training with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan at the age of four.

She’s just returned from filming her vocals in a Palace in India, where, she explains, “…the palaces and temples were built for sonic resonance. In one temple, there are seven stone pillars that you can tap to make a specific tone. This is the seven-note scale, similar to the Solfa or Solfège, do-re-i-fa-so-la-ti-do, with the ‘do’ an octave apart, that we learn in the west.”

In fact, solmization, the practice of assigning or naming syllables for each of the tonic “steps” of the musical scale, originated — where else? — in Mother India millennia ago. Similar systems emerged in Egyptian, Chinese, Greek and Persian music. Centuries later, a Benedictine monk in Tuscany, Guido d’Arezzo (circa 995-1049 CE), created the first mnemonic system to document the previously unwritten anatomy of Christian sacred music, including Gregorian chant, to prevent generations of vocal skill and aural knowledge from being lost to the ages. D’Arezzo also invented the staff notation now commonplace in western music, and his system is now known as Guidonian.

East Meets West

Adding almond-milk to her hot tea in spite of the blistering triple-digit temperatures, Gaaytri muses, “I’m almost vegan, but giving up yogurt is still the hardest part.” She studied ethnomusicology at UCLA, and has formed a unique creative niche for herself. This reflects her dual cultural identities: she creates Indian-influenced music, blending classical Hindustani elements with commercial, pop sounds for film and television, including “Ms. Marvel,” Disney, Jr.’s “Mira Royal Detective,” “Million Dollar Arm,” “Hundred Foot Journey,” “The Lion King,” “The Jungle Book,” and “The Addams Family 2.” She has recorded live with Billie Eilish, Chris Stapleton, Justin Timberlake and Carlos Santana, and she’s the CEO of Chai Time Studios, her music production and licensing company “focused on honest diversity.”

We also popped in on Gaaytri at last month’s Festival of Tabla at the “Black Box” space at Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo.  Clad in a bodice of shimmering coins and cowrie-shells, Gaaytri explained to workshop participants the importance of “OM.” This most sacred and elemental of seed-syllables, she said, is composed of three parts: AH, OOOO, and MMM. We hummed in unison, realizing again the meaning of the word “enchanted:” to be transported by chant, by song, by sound. This notion lingers in the Romance languages to this day. In French, we say “Enchanté” when introduced to a charming someone for the first time. In Spanish, we say “Encantada,” both idioms referencing the Orpheus-like power of music to melt rocks — could there be a more graphic depiction of dissolving obstacles? — and to undo and remake us with hallowed sound.

Lifetimes ago, I wandered through a San Francisco night and was drawn to an incense-perfumed doorway by the percussive jingle of Hare Krishnas. There, a blissed-out young man from New Jersey, clad in the requisite saffron, let me know that merely chanting the chant was like “…Kirshna dancing on your tongue.” In a different but related flavor, Nichiren Buddhists maintain that their condensed Lotus Sutra chant or daimoku is literally karma-changing by its mere utterance. Connecting with our own breath to the cosmic sound and rhythm that steers the stars may bring rewards of every kind, including gut health, better sleep, and improved vitality.

In a similar way, the music presented by Gaayatri thankfully does not require academic mastery of centuries of Vedic tradition. Suffice it to say that all classical and improvisational styles contain four essences:  sruti (pitch), svara (vibration of a single note), raga (mode or melodic formulae), and tala (rhythmic cycle). I ask, for example, if Ravi Shankar’s ecstatic performances were improvised, as many westerners believe, or in fact were faithful expressions of an esteemed, formal tradition. She responds with a superbly modulated answer: “He may have been improvising, but within very well-established guidelines.”

The rhythmic patterns are as intricate as any priceless Indian textile.  To know them in a literal sense would require a lifetime of diligent study. To truly understand them beyond the literal would require 100 lifetimes, and lots of translation and memorization, starting with the oldest-known style, Dhrupad, accompanied by Dhammar, the 14-beat pattern beginning with 5-2-3-4-… and the student’s eyes begin to glaze over, swimming in Sanskrit, Urdu, Tamil. The purpose, let us remember, is to listen to inner subtle sounds which arise from the heart (anahata) chakra, to calm our mental chatter, to dislodge stagnant emotions, clear blockages, and restore balance.

She says: “I explain to people that this music is not necessarily a religious thing. In the end, it’s like gravity, you know?  You don’t have to study it. You don’t have to believe in it. It simply is.” 

DEETS

• Gaayatri, vocals
• Neelamjit Dhillon, tabla (paired small hand-drums)
• Amol Ghode, pakhawaj (double-sided barrel-drum)
• Makheer Singh, dilruba (a type of bowed sitar)
• Saturday, August 31, 2024, 2:00 PM
• Sierra Madre Playhouse
• 87 West Sierra Madre Boulevard, Sierra Madre, CA 91024
• www.sierramadreplayhouse.org
• 626-355-4318
• Tickets: $12 – $35