Baroque Bhajan: Jaya Kali, Jaya Tara

In terms of baroque dance, this bhajan is “bourrée-ish”; the characteristic pickup enters in the second phrase.

In this arrangement I wrote out a lightly-varied repeat, mainly in order to achieve more convenient page turns in a printed collection of five bhajans.  Inserting a blank page would have done the trick but why leave a page blank when one can ornament?  I wonder how many structural or notational choices in other works have their origins in such practicalities!

When I took my pile of loose pages to the print shop, the woman who was helping me made one copy to check before making more.  All was fine except that two pages appeared upside down.  Kali, Tara, and Durga were doing headstands!  And they were a very determined group of goddesses.  The photocopy clerk was flummoxed at why the machine kept rotating just these two pages when the rest of the booklet was right-way up.  Eventually Tara showed her compassion and convinced her friends to come down.  Jaya!

I Have Nothing to Offer Thee, part 1

One of the things I learned at Yasodhara Ashram was that I have the power to create and destroy worlds!  Sometimes, though, it felt that I was not so much creating my world as having it trail after me in the manner of Pigpen’s cloud.  While I was sitting in Satsang at the ashram, singing or playing the harmonium, a few of the bhajans clicked into places that were already established in my mind.  From the first time I encountered I Have Nothing to Offer Thee, it was simply impossible not to hear it as a gigue.

A gigue was one of the most common types of Baroque dances.  A lively dance, the gigue is related to the English folkdance the jig.  Gigues were often also included in music that was not intended for actual dancing.  For example, they typically provide a lively ending to a keyboard suite.

The movements of a suite have sections that are repeated.  In the Baroque period, it was common practice for performers to add ornaments or improvise small variations when repeating a section.   In this bhajan arrangement, I wrote out an ornamented repeat.  Initially this was a discipline, a way to help me keep up the ornamentation through the entire repeat.  All too often I start off a repeat with a flurry of trills and then default to the unadorned notated version when my hands get tired or my concentration wavers.  I decided to include the written-out repeat in the typeset version in order to share it with players who may be similarly distractible or who might not be accustomed to adding their own ornamentation.

Baroque Bhajans

The first few pieces that I post will be my most recent work, scores from the very top of my big cardboard box of compositions.

During 2015-2016, I spent several months at the Yasodhara Ashram in BC.  One of the tangible things that I brought with me from the ashram was a copy of the Yasodhara Ashram Devotional Songbook.   The largest section of the songbook contains bhajans or devotional songs.    What is written down are the words, melodies, and chord symbols.  For some of the songs, the composer or source is identified but many songs are anonymous.  For a few, there is a little bit of explanatory text about the meaning or significance of the song.  The songbooks are used every evening at Satsang. 

When a bhajan is sung at a Satsang, it is normally sung several times over.  It might be repeated to last as long as a ritual which it accompanies and that will vary, depending on the number of people present.  Or a bhajan might go on just as long as people are enjoying singing and playing it.  Most of the singers use books that contain only the words and not any musical notation.  Instrumental accompaniment is optional and if there are instrumentalists involved, their parts are mostly improvised.  In practice this often results in continuous variation.  In some of the livelier bhajans, each repetition is sung faster than previous one until the music is "really cooking".  This is a very different musical world than the one in which I usually live and work. 

Adjusting back to life away from the ashram is taking some time.  One of the things that is helping me to re-settle is exploring how my different musical worlds might interact.  After not playing the piano for nearly a year, it felt natural to start playing with the music that was currently in my mind.  Without planning to do so, I found myself integrating the bhajans I learned at the ashram with my long-time interest in composing in eighteenth century style. 

Before I went to the ashram I let go of my old piano.  I do not currently own any instrument but I am using a digital piano kindly lent to me by a friend.  The keyboard has a number of different sounds, including a harpsichord setting which I am enjoying playing with.

So without further ado, let me introduce what may well be a brand-new musical genre:  Baroque Bhajans!