Mystic Music
Musical Pairings: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Lana del Rey, Alice Coltrane
There is a field near my home, which leads to a small lake and I go there often.
Normally, I take the time to make a playlist before I leave, so my hands are free to pick flowers and pet dogs. This last time, I felt pulled to the lake in a rush, so I played from a random point several days ago in my listening history. This meant past listening sessions mixed 3 albums unlikely to be brought together otherwise.
It’s a delightful, accidental playlist. The albums are siblings in noise: they’re analogous pairings. 3 is also a beautiful number: I will share with you 3 songs from each of the 3 albums. Playlist below ( Music).
Some thoughts below.
Night Song is is an unusual album featuring ‘ambient’ electronic production and qawwali-esque vocals. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is a Pakistani singer (though, calling him a singer feels like equating an iPhone to an analog telephone). It’s difficult to find someone Pakistani who hasn’t heard his music. Michael Brook is a Canadian producer who’s done a lot of film scores (Perks of a Wallflower, Brooklyn) and some eclectic music. He’s responsible for what you could call the ‘backing’ music. Brook talks about the experience of making this album here. Night Song is the last studio album Khan worked on before his death (1997, Cromwell Hospital, London).
Astral Meditations is a compilation from Alice Coltrane’s discography. It’s been classified as ‘avant garde’ or ‘spiritual’ jazz, and sadly was pretty difficult to discover. Alice Coltrane feels like an overlooked great: an incredibly powerful musician with a life like something out of a fiction novel. Astral Meditations came out in 1999 following renewed focus on her musical work, after she spent years as spiritual director of an ashram. I wouldn’t have found her work without reading Susan Rogers “This is What it Sounds Like”.
Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel under Ocean Blvd is Lana del Rey’s ninth album. There was a beautiful mural in Camden after she dropped this (a refreshing change from Ray Ban, Starbucks and Converse’s “art” storefronts). I’m beyond excited to witness Lana live in Hyde Park this July, to me she is a living legend.
Common Ground
So, 3 radically ‘different’ albums. Or are they?
They share a meditative tone, loosely structured music and spiritual themes.
Spirituality is everywhere in this music, in so many flavors. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music is modern qawwali, while not strictly lyrically devotional, it’s drenched in Sufi mysticism. Alice Coltrane’s is spiritual jazz, including New Age Be Here Now-esque affirmations. Lana de Rey’s ninth album has not one, but two spiritual ‘interludes’ referencing the Bible.
As someone who likes to look for God in the lake and the flowers, I felt Something Outside Me put these sounds together for me that day.
It’s difficult to articulate ‘meditative’ and ‘loosely structured’. What I can say is that none of the songs I picked sound like conventional verse-verse-chorus songs: this novelty makes them highly appealing to me.
This is likely to put off to those who prefer the song structure to act as a container, but will light up for those who like abstract sounds with movement, unpredictability.
Lana del Rey says her latest album is “as if I’m typing in my mind”. The lyrics are less traditionally structured, A&W is a very long, very personal rant. Fishtail is breathy, cocksure and airy, making me feel like there’s a very humid breeze and the smell of grass in the air – and I hear Ella Fitzerald when Lana mentions her. Kintsugi is difficult to hear, even with the volume turned up. It reminds me of light peeking through a vertical blind in the afternoon.
Alice Coltrane’s album is almost empty of lyrics, leaving you with her twirling piano and the occasional sitar. Lovely Sky Boat is so euphoric, so alive and delicate that it seems to disappear and come back. This quality is something I also hear in A&W, you can lose yourself in the spoken verse, but the shape of Lana’s singing will lilt back to the same tune, like a rocking paper boat in a lake. I picked A Love Supreme because I’m not yet tired of affirmations, and I now find looking to India for enlightment endearing, not altogether misguided. I picked The Sun because it is quintessentially Alice Coltrane. I can listen to it nine times in a row but not find a pattern – something I very much like.
In Nusrat’s album, he’s “scatting” to ragas often, which feels meditative. There is so much force in his usual singing that this album is unusual (to me) in how constrained the vocals are. I find the English song titles a little infuriating because they put something that isn’t there in there – they’re not quite right. They really are very wrong. “Intoxicated” is about a dancing cloud, and love. “Lament”…is not really a lament, it’s more of a longing. It is difficult to hold distance from these songs to analyse them, because they’re almost hardwired into my brain the way Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is. I can say that they capture a certain devotional, almost foolishly stubborn emotion in a way other songs don’t.
I can say that all 3 albums pair well with grapefruit cold brew, mildly humid heat, a lake, and writing a single note in gray fineliner on 70gsm paper.
Normally, I take the time to make a playlist before I leave, so my hands are free to pick flowers and pet dogs. This last time, I felt pulled to the lake in a rush, so I played from a random point several days ago in my listening history. This meant past listening sessions mixed 3 albums unlikely to be brought together otherwise.
It’s a delightful, accidental playlist. The albums are siblings in noise: they’re analogous pairings. 3 is also a beautiful number: I will share with you 3 songs from each of the 3 albums. Playlist below ( Music).
Some thoughts below.
Background
Night Song is is an unusual album featuring ‘ambient’ electronic production and qawwali-esque vocals. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is a Pakistani singer (though, calling him a singer feels like equating an iPhone to an analog telephone). It’s difficult to find someone Pakistani who hasn’t heard his music. Michael Brook is a Canadian producer who’s done a lot of film scores (Perks of a Wallflower, Brooklyn) and some eclectic music. He’s responsible for what you could call the ‘backing’ music. Brook talks about the experience of making this album here. Night Song is the last studio album Khan worked on before his death (1997, Cromwell Hospital, London).
Astral Meditations is a compilation from Alice Coltrane’s discography. It’s been classified as ‘avant garde’ or ‘spiritual’ jazz, and sadly was pretty difficult to discover. Alice Coltrane feels like an overlooked great: an incredibly powerful musician with a life like something out of a fiction novel. Astral Meditations came out in 1999 following renewed focus on her musical work, after she spent years as spiritual director of an ashram. I wouldn’t have found her work without reading Susan Rogers “This is What it Sounds Like”.
Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel under Ocean Blvd is Lana del Rey’s ninth album. There was a beautiful mural in Camden after she dropped this (a refreshing change from Ray Ban, Starbucks and Converse’s “art” storefronts). I’m beyond excited to witness Lana live in Hyde Park this July, to me she is a living legend.
Common Ground
So, 3 radically ‘different’ albums. Or are they?
They share a meditative tone, loosely structured music and spiritual themes.
Spirituality is everywhere in this music, in so many flavors. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music is modern qawwali, while not strictly lyrically devotional, it’s drenched in Sufi mysticism. Alice Coltrane’s is spiritual jazz, including New Age Be Here Now-esque affirmations. Lana de Rey’s ninth album has not one, but two spiritual ‘interludes’ referencing the Bible.
As someone who likes to look for God in the lake and the flowers, I felt Something Outside Me put these sounds together for me that day.
It’s difficult to articulate ‘meditative’ and ‘loosely structured’. What I can say is that none of the songs I picked sound like conventional verse-verse-chorus songs: this novelty makes them highly appealing to me.
This is likely to put off to those who prefer the song structure to act as a container, but will light up for those who like abstract sounds with movement, unpredictability.
Sounds That Sway
Lana del Rey says her latest album is “as if I’m typing in my mind”. The lyrics are less traditionally structured, A&W is a very long, very personal rant. Fishtail is breathy, cocksure and airy, making me feel like there’s a very humid breeze and the smell of grass in the air – and I hear Ella Fitzerald when Lana mentions her. Kintsugi is difficult to hear, even with the volume turned up. It reminds me of light peeking through a vertical blind in the afternoon.
Alice Coltrane’s album is almost empty of lyrics, leaving you with her twirling piano and the occasional sitar. Lovely Sky Boat is so euphoric, so alive and delicate that it seems to disappear and come back. This quality is something I also hear in A&W, you can lose yourself in the spoken verse, but the shape of Lana’s singing will lilt back to the same tune, like a rocking paper boat in a lake. I picked A Love Supreme because I’m not yet tired of affirmations, and I now find looking to India for enlightment endearing, not altogether misguided. I picked The Sun because it is quintessentially Alice Coltrane. I can listen to it nine times in a row but not find a pattern – something I very much like.
In Nusrat’s album, he’s “scatting” to ragas often, which feels meditative. There is so much force in his usual singing that this album is unusual (to me) in how constrained the vocals are. I find the English song titles a little infuriating because they put something that isn’t there in there – they’re not quite right. They really are very wrong. “Intoxicated” is about a dancing cloud, and love. “Lament”…is not really a lament, it’s more of a longing. It is difficult to hold distance from these songs to analyse them, because they’re almost hardwired into my brain the way Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is. I can say that they capture a certain devotional, almost foolishly stubborn emotion in a way other songs don’t.
I can say that all 3 albums pair well with grapefruit cold brew, mildly humid heat, a lake, and writing a single note in gray fineliner on 70gsm paper.
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