My History of Visiting India

Currently in the midst of my seventeenth visit to India, I am often asked: Why? Why do I travel to India year after year? This blog will describe my series of India visits and answer why I love traveling here. MY INDIA TRAVEL HISTORY BRIEFLY TOLD My first trip to India was in 1971 when I was 23 years old. I was told how proud Indian people are of their acceptance of different religions. “Hindu temples are next to mosques, which are next to Christian churches and Jewish synagogues.� This was an idealistic claim, since at times India has suffered from “communal violence,� primarily conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, with Muslims losing the most since Hindus greatly outnumber them. My second trip to India was in 1982. I was part of Kathak dancer Chitresh Das’s American dance troupe. We started the tour in Calcutta (now named Kolkata), which was plagued by air pollution. (It is much better now.) I had a film camera before our cell phone cameras. Our tour ended in Bombay (now named Mumbai). When I got back home to Marin County, California, and developed my film, I was puzzled. The streets of Calcutta were completely clean. But Bombay’s streets were dirty with trash. Upon reflection, I realized that the people were so poor in Calcutta that every piece of paper, trash, and even cow dung was collected by children to be used as fuel for cooking or heating. But Bombay was richer, so the trash was left uncollected. I photographed people in the slums of Calcutta. Upon developing the film, I realized that the people I photographed in the Indian slums showed more joy and happiness in their expressions than the average Americans did, even though the Americans were much richer and secure materially than the poor Indians. That was when I realized that Indians may be poor materially, but they were rich spiritually. They survived their poverty through the strength of their communities and their spiritual beliefs. This spiritual positivity existed even despite the lingering caste system, which is technically illegal but exists in practice and tradition to this day. MY TRAVEL HISTORY FROM GERMANY TO SWEDEN TO INDIA I enjoy traveling. I’ve traveled more than the average American. It began when I moved to Germany in 1969 at age 21 to study for a year in Kiel, Germany. I am still reasonably fluent in the German language. That was the time of the civic turmoil caused by the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War protests reached their worst chapter when the US military opened fire on protestors demonstrating at Kent State University, killing four students. Hopefully, Trump’s military show of force in putting soldiers in American cities won’t lead to a similar tragedy. I didn’t want to return to the US as long as the Vietnam War was raging. I left Germany and relocated for seven months to Stockholm, Sweden. I enrolled in a course in Swedish for Immigrants. It was a total immersion situation since most of the students were from countries that spoke languages other than English. I will always admire Sweden for its role as a global refuge for political refugees from anywhere in the world. One of my friends was an American who had served one tour in Vietnam. When he received orders to return to Vietnam, he decided to move to Sweden. His parents paid for his plane ticket because they didn’t want their son to risk his life again in the Vietnam War. I’m still very close to friends that I met during my time in Germany and Sweden. These friendships have endured for over fifty years. During the early 1970s, there was “the hippie trail,� which was identified as “hippies� (mostly Americans) traveling overland to India. Since I smoked pot and had long hair, I qualified as a hippie. Together with my dear German friend Gert, we flew on cheap student airline tickets from Berlin to Istanbul. From Istanbul, we traveled overland through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, to Bombay, India. That was the trip in which I discovered the beautiful Indian bamboo flute, the bansuri. Thus began my lifelong affection for India and its music. HOW I CAME TO STUDY INDIAN MUSIC When the Vietnam War ended, President Jimmy Carter offered amnesty to Vietnam War evaders. I had been out of the country for three and a half years. So I was never “served� with a formal draft notice. So I was not in any legal danger. I returned to my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. A friend of my father’s owned the Bekins Moving Van Company franchise in Columbus. I had worked for him during the summers during my high school years. He offered me a job as a long-distance van driver. I drove thirty thousand miles in five months. But the driving was the easy part. The hardest work was loading and unloading the furniture we moved. I earned more money than I had ever earned before. But I also decided that I would prefer to be a poor musician than a rich truck driver. With money from my Bekins job, I bought a Volkswagen van and my first soprano saxophone. With some friends, we drove down through Mexico to Guatemala. Instead of returning to Georgia, I drove up the west coast of Mexico to California. I immediately liked California more than Georgia. Then, when I learned that there was a college for learning Indian music: Ali Akbar College of Music in Marin County, California, I decided that I would move to California. I enrolled in AACM in January of 1975. I’ve been a West Coast resident ever since. Having classes with music master Ali Akbar Khan was like having classes with Beethoven (or some comparable great master). The late, great tabla master Zakir Hussain was my rhythm class teacher. I joined the musicians playing for Kathak dancer Chitresh Das. My second trip to India was with Chitresh and his lovely dancers in 1982, which I described above. When the dancers’ tour brought us to Bombay, Zakir was there. He introduced me to Louiz Banks, the “Godfather of Indian Jazz.� Thus began my continuing engagement with Indian jazz and classical musicians. Louiz is now 84 years old. I will be performing with him this October 31 at the Blue Bop Jazz Club in Mumbai. Having a strong musical bond creates a strong and lifelong friendship with Louiz. NO INDIA TRIPS FROM 1983-2002 That musical bond is particularly strong with my wife, Susan. We met in 1984 through the record company that had released my first solo album, Stellar Voyage. Susan and I pursued our music careers together, which included a stint with the great jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. We founded our company, Healing Healthcare Systems (www.healinghealth.com), in 1982. That was our full-time occupation for thirty years. One result of that work was that there was a nineteen-year gap between my third trip to India in 1983 and my fourth trip in 2002 with Susan. MYNTA I had joined the Swedish jazz band Mynta (Swedish word for mint) in 1984 for a tour in Sweden. At that point, Mynta was a typical jazz-fusion band. But between 1984 and 2002 (my next trip to Sweden), Mynta had transformed itself into an Indian-Jazz-Fusion band. One of its members was Fazal Qureshi, Zakir Hussain’s younger brother, whom I had met in Bombay in 1982. In 2005, the Swedish flutist-saxophonist left the band Mynta, which led to my being invited to join Mynta. I was a member of Mynta for ten years, 2005-2015. Besides touring Sweden every year, we toured India for a few weeks every year for ten years. Our Indian manager, Manish, booked Mynta into jazz clubs and large festivals. I’ll never forget when Mynta was booked into a large festival in Calcutta (my first visit to Calcutta since 1982), and in the taxi on the way to our hotel, there was a large billboard with our group picture advertising the festival. I felt like we had “made it.� We were stars in India! INDIA VISITS 2016 TO 2025 Mynta ceased touring when its leader began to suffer from poor health. Because I loved visiting India, I continued to travel to Bombay to play with my musician friends there. Chief among them is an American bass player, Dee, who has lived in India for many years. Through Dee and his musician friends, I’ve continued to play in jazz clubs and restaurants around Bombay every year when I visit, including this year. There is a good music scene for jazz musicians in Bombay. But like in so many industries, it’s “who you know� that creates the opportunities to perform. I’ve been very fortunate to know enough musicians over the years that I’ve come back to India many times. This year is my seventeenth time playing music in India. I feel blessed to have been able to do this for so many years.