HERMANOS gutierrez: THE INSTRUMENTAL GUITAR THERAPY ONE NEEDS
BY PUSHKAR SANYAL
“…the music wakes me up, keeps me awake and as I walk down the shiny streets looking at faces numb, my glistening eyes shine at more than one passerby. I urge them to mystically coax the right earbud out of my ear to partake in the collective sound of its beauty.”
When I uncover my guitar and tune it in standard, my fingers drink the spirit of autonomy, caressing the strings, picking tight arpeggios, harnessing the sounds that set ablaze my mind and loins equally. I suppose the sensuality of the guitar appeals to me, a pick-me-up easy way to transform a melody into a whispery ballad, a mystical heartbreak or a sprightly sing-a-long.
Rhythm and melody notwithstanding, novel sounds elevate me. Make them piercing, arrange a repetitive but progressive harmony to the sounds and voila; I was hooked onto progressive and then its variants, house and deep house. It took the appearance of a post electronic world wherein I could appreciate the candor and earthiness of the original instruments, including the guitar. The instrument’s sound, with the same auditory aesthetic described above is a genre I truly enjoy; its intensity and gradual buildup akin to an eruption that seals the chasm between the physical and the spaces between.
Hermanos Gutierrez, a Swiss-Ecuadorian instrumental guitar duo is an enchanting illustration of this sensual proclivity for the instrument and is consequently a favorite of the Dionysiac.
At the outset, the question raises itself – why would one enjoy seemingly banal instrumental music? Contemplative music does get a battering for that, but the Gutierrez brothers transcend banality, much like they how their music transcends rational discourse. The sound of their guitars reach oblivion and beyond taking one to the depths of themselves. Their albums and songs acknowledge simple emotions, but it is the depth of each emotion which their guitars take us to, is what cements their brilliance. It is not a song or two, an album or two. Each song is conceptually and melodically novel, sometimes strangely so, almost as if they were showing off the combined spectrum of their creativity spit-balling song after song, their unique discerning prowess over sounds yielding all of them to be album-worthy.
8 Anos, their debut effort has the effect of pristine contemplation. The legacy of the guitar means that the instrument is untainted, its consumptive power resting purely with the listener. The album takes you on a personal journey, your very own background score. It is not till Mi Amor that this journey is revealed though, a head-nodding affirmation entrusted by the tapping beat of the guitar’s wood. Both El Jardin and Sueltalo plunder the depths of your soul launching one into a fever from which perhaps only a few would escape its sublime domination. The profundity of the mystery sprinkled with the lilting lead notes alluding to a long-lost love from waters far away remain etched in your chest. While Sueltalo translates to letting go, the madness of the melody means that one ironically cannot. Similar to some of Pink Floyd’s best, the rest of the album comes full circle, explicitly spanning the existentialist world, ascetism and subsequent grounding in the form of sea and flowers. 8 Anos is a product of impulsive imagination and momentary chemistry, oft-mentioned traits of debut albums of some of the greats.
The guitar in the hands of the brothers often functions like a harp, a dreamy sound to engulf one into a trance, a means to escape ordinary noise. It is escapist music seducing you with the fleeting promise of a purpose-adorned consciousness. This is not a criticism of them but an endeavor to ascertain the purpose the Gutierrez brothers feel their music serves. With very few anecdotes or interviews to verbalize their story, it would not be far-fetched to presume that their involving music might not leave any room for explanation except for what is evident to the listener. Music videos of Esperanza and the acclaimed Hijos De Sol provide the surmise that their music serves a purpose to heal. The crux of its beauty lies there. Eyes closed, head back, teeth biting the bottom lip, the physical symptoms do not do justice to the beauty of the shoreline the music casts on the anxious, the stricken, the recipient of the post-modern affliction, a condition where the world seems to cave in. Even with a stylistically simple composition, Esperanza is a new lease of life, a modern rendition of a lost ancient Dionysian ode of wine, emotions and purity.
….. the music wakes me up, keeps me awake and as I walk down the shiny streets looking at faces numb, my glistening eyes shine at more than one passerby. I urge them to mystically coax the right earbud out of my ear to partake in the collective sound of its beauty.
Raising a toast TO the ustad AND THE SOUND OF GOD'S THROAT
BY PUSHKAR SANYAL
“The amped-up drone of the shehnai seems to raise one’s own bassline, erasing a former state, priming you up for the mastery of the shehnai’s cry, enough to break you into heaps. The music breaks and heals you through sublime precision.”
Since the advent of recorded history, language and visuals have been the two major pillars to transmit and receive thought. In all inquiries including phenomenological, philosophers and thinkers have neglected the auditory sense which is handicapped ironically by its inability to be filtered. It has subsequently taken centuries of progress in civilization and technology to put sound somewhere in the periphery to these central pillars.
The idea that there could be pleasing and displeasing sounds was encountered naturally and while the last century has shed light on some of the contextual themes which have dictated this categorization, sounds and music have tended to lean towards universality in the evoking and transmitting of emotions. The late Ustad Bismillah Khan’s virtuoso rendition of the shehnai in the 20th century is a testament to this gripping universality of music.
At a juncture of our history when purity seems to be at stake, the maestro’s interpretations of Hindustani classical’s traditional ragas are to be prescribed. Lamentations, unrequited love, ascribing sacrality to a festive occasion, or simply aligning the mind-heart canal with the notes of the shehnai, one encounters these chambers and a vastitude of other such upon listening to the Ustad. One also encounters a catharsis of a very fundamental nature, an emotion tough to describe but scrumptious in the consequence for the soul. The amped-up drone of the shehnai seems to raise one’s own bassline, erasing a former state, priming you up for the mastery of the shehnai’s cry, enough to break you into heaps. The music breaks and heals you through sublime precision.
From one lens, the shehnai is a wail; of a mother, daughter, sister or a loved one, with a deeply feminine undertone to the sound. The purity of the call seizes. It seizes control of the waking consciousness percolating fast and deep, and in a collective, the effects can be tranquilizing. Suddenly the air formerly reeking of raucousness or shallow compliments is untainted with the familiarity of the shrill wafting into our senses beguiling us to be attentive to the sacred privilege of our existence.
To the traditional tenets of love espoused in Rag Madhuvanti, to the melodious lover’s cry of Tilak Kamod, the shehnai in the Ustad’s company effuses love in distinct but always intense ways. The instrument by its nature is intense, the wail of the shehnai either alluding to a pious beginning or a passionate stand-off. The Ustad though had a myriad of ideas and some of his lighter semi-classical folk song interpretations especially jugalbandi sessions with string stalwarts, Vilayat and Amjad Ali Khan are whimsical, in keeping with the original. The shehnai is not a core instrument in Indian classical music and it is only through the Ustad’s mastery over its emotional potential which has shed light on this instrument.
“People equate the Shehnai with Bismillah Khan, but it is his fingers, his control of breath, his understanding of melody which people actually appreciate. So, who am I? Bismillah Khan. Shouldn’t we appreciate his maker?”. From one of his numerous documentaries, these words spring forth his love for divinity, ethereal clairvoyance so evident in his mastery. While many have claimed the right to induce a fervor for the divine, Ustad’s claim has emerged over half a century, his dedication to the Almighty emanating from his ‘Begum’ (shehnai) to listeners all over the world. The labor of his dedication is stark yet he only appears to strain the Godly emotions residing in humans. And perhaps this is his greatest attribute. He appears as one of the countless unassuming pious men seemingly found in droves in the streets of Benaras, while his shehnai bellows out a transcending sound seemingly emanating from God’s throat. The contrast between his simplicity and his emotional spectrum is arresting and is indicative that Bismillah as he himself points out, is a medium to the divine. ‘Bismillah’ – for lack of a better word, could not be more accurate.
Meditative, tearful, joyful, contemplative, the listening potential to the Ustad’s shehnai is gigantic. The experience is personal and universal, a reminder of the emotive power of music and of the genius of Ustad Bismillah Khan.
The Dionysiac raises a toast and sheds a tear in homage to the maestro.