Conversation "Two"

                        ABBREVIATED VERSION OF CONVERSATIONS ON SINGING “RAGHOOPATI RAAGHAVA”

CONVERSATION 2:  JR & Kristin Rao – Gandhi Memorial Center on February 7, 2009  

KR:  What is it like to sing “Raghoopati Raaghava” at Gandhi Jayanti?   

 JR:  . . . It’s a feeling of reverence, a feeling of devotion, and also a sense of being together with other people creating something beautiful.  And it’s always been moving to me to be able to come together with people from another culture and sing music with them. . . . When I first started singing . . . I found that I was really getting to know people better because I was making music with them even though . . . [the] words [were] in another language and I didn’t always connect the translation in my mind. I could sing the words and share the feeling. And I also found that I [could] really . . . get into the experience of singing the way people traditionally learned the “Raam Dhoon” . . . by listening even though . . . [our choir director] would . . . write the words out for us and write out [the] . . . musical notes. . . . I found that actually listening and watching the Indian ladies and singing with them I could get more into . . . their style of singing. . . . It was really connecting with other people and sharing another culture, another language, with other people . . . [including] the people that I’ve almost grown up with here at the church. . . .  [The] blending of sound in that experience . . . is . . . very beautiful—just to have your voice blending in with other peoples’ voices. . . .

KR:   What was it like to have the instruments there?

JR:   . . . Very inspirational just to feel the rhythms. I found that I . . . could never just sit still being up on the stage or . . . in the audience.

KR:  How many years have you been doing it?

JR:  Probably about 30, not that I sang at every single one of the Gandhi Jayantis, but from the beginning of the Gandhi Center. . . .  There’s also a vibration [in that place.]  . . . I’ve been attending that church for probably 45 years from the time I was quite young and was able to attend services with Swami Premananda who founded the church and just to be able to walk up onto the altar where he gave so many talks, and inspired me, and guided my life . . . [gives me]  a feeling of . . . the purity of what Kamalaji is now continuing, . . . the truth of absolute monism or Advaita Vedanta.

KR:  What is this absolute monism exactly?

 JR:  Advaita Vedanta is I believe the highest philosophy . . . from India . . . that is universal,  non-sectarian, . . . the idea that Truth is One; men call it by various names.

There’s a security about singing with others. Where I would be nervous about singing by myself or even singing a line in harmony with other people, carrying just that one line by myself, when I’m singing with others I feel like I can sing out more openly.  My voice can blend with other peoples’ and I . . . can be a lot more expressive when the attention isn’t just on me or my voice.