RIP Hari Georgeson

When George Harrison died in late 2001, there was a somewhat belated acknowledgement in the various music press of his status as a pioneer of what has come to to be called "world" music (although that widely used term reeks of Americo-Eurocentrism), in the form of his forays into the vast riches of the North Indian (or Hindustani) musical tradition and the ways in which he assimilated what he learned into his own integral style.

Certainly, as for for many others of my generation and after, he was my first exposure to the music of the subcontinent, through his apprenticeship with Panditji ("Dear Teacher") Ravi Shankar. (My dad bringing home a "Ravi Shankar Live in San Francisco" LP sometime around 1968 was my subsequent first direct exposure to the pure classical tradition.)

His film score LP "Wonderwall Music" in particular made a big impression on me, with its variety of hired Hindustani hands... That was the first time I heard santoor (the trapezoidal hammered dulcimer found in many cultures - for instance the cimbalom of Hungary, which was probably introduced by Gypsies, who originated in Rajasthan, in India's northwest), tabla tarang (a semi-circle of tabla drums tuned to different pitches of a scale), and sarode (the lutelike, metal fingerboarded fretless instrument played by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Panditji's brother-in-law; they both studied at the feet of Khansahib's father Ustad Allauddin Khan.)

In a way, George is ultimately responsible for the fact that I now play fretless electric guitar, tuned sitar style (Sa Pa Sa Pa Sa Ma, ascending, with a C# Sa, for those who know the nomenclature), and played sarode style, with the fingernails of the index and middle fingers stopping the strings.

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