Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar Passages

Philp Glass & Ravi Shankar - Passages

mp3 224 kbits

-------- Tracks -----------
01 Offering
02 Sadhanipa
03 Channels and Winds
04 Ragas In Mminor Scale
05 Meetings Along The Edge
06 Prashanti

"Philip Glass' collaboration with sitar player Ravi Shankar in Passages (1990) was not the minimalist composer's first experiment with non-Western sounds in music.
In Powaqqatsi (1987), the second of what would eventually become a trilogy of film scores done for director Godfrey Reggio, Glass incorporated musical elements drawn from African, Indian, and South American cultures.
In Passages, however, Glass doesn't simply manipulate non-Western music; he actually shares the compositional credit with a non-Western musician, Ravi Shankar. Each composer supplied the other with some basic thematic material (a melody or rhythmic pattern) from which were created three sections per composer.
These six sections were then crafted together into the final work. The collaboration mixes Shankar's and Glass's styles in interesting ways: for example, the opening Offering (based on Shankar's theme) utilizes a raga-based melody.
A raga is a collection of notes in Indian classical music, similar to the do-re-mi scale in Western music, except arranged according to a different mathematical pattern. The pattern influences how melodies are then constructed in Indian music. However, rather than being played on an Indian instrument, the raga melody is played by a saxophone (a Western instrument).
"Channels and Winds," the third section of the work, also makes use of vocal instrumentals, or tones that are sung by human voices but which lack text (lyrics). The fast, repetitive melodic fragments in the stringed instruments imitate the chaotic wandering of the winds while the sustained, stretched out melodies of the voices soar over the other instruments.
The constant repetition and gradual increase in volume builds tension as the listener wonders what the music is striving towards. The sixth section, "Prashanti," is even more programmatic (descriptive of nonmusical events): the harmony and unity of a people is gradually disrupted by chaos.
However, within the chaos, a singer entones a Vedic prayer requesting wisdom. The harmony and peacefulness return. Overall, Glass' background in minimalism comes strongly through in the sparse texture and repetitive phrasing that characterize this work, and Shankar's own compositional contribution makes Passages a work of world music that is a delight to hear."
Sarah Cnaice Funke

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