Hey Chuck,

Welcome to the group!

It's an interesting question, I personally don't know whether either
of them ever saw or knew of Basho. I'm from a different time and place
altogether from California in the 60s, and am not that well read on
the Byrds, but there's no harm in asking them... maybe that's worth a
try??

Basho's own synthesis of Eastern culture was very often absorbed
through more mediated channels than, say, straight from Ali Akbar
Khan, which also happened. Even in one song, it's often frame as a
journeying to the East, mediated by so-called Irish culture or
whatever. He said of the Meher Baba following that it was 'Zen with a
face', and I think in many other respects he was receptive to
similarly mediated forms for his route to the East.

With that in mind, it's certainly possible that the Byrds'
introduction and synthesis of Eastern music was mediated to them
indirectly, so to speak, and Basho would certainly be an option here.

However, I believe it's important not to underestimate the power
simple, superficial, passing encounters with Eastern-derived culture
(for example) have to legitimate one's own flights of fancy. That's
perhaps why pioneers are often so separate in their fields from
subsequent innovators... which is all to say that probably the mere
awareness that there was this guy named Basho doing Eastern stuff on
the guitar was influence enough, without having to have any further
encounter or even understanding. This is perhaps partly because, I
think, 'raga' as it has become known is not really that esoteric or
exotic an idea; to me, there's nothing particularly odd about moving
up and down the neck in a given scale with given melodic motives, and
some drone to ground it all, which is probably something like how I'd
define it.

But then again, perhaps it is notable for disrupting the strictly
chordal approach to the steel-string that had preceded it in the West.

Nevertheless, I agree with you that the omission from the book you
mention is disappointing. It's just another example that illustrates
the extent to which even recent histories are selective and
constructed, and that many simply ignore alternative but equally
notable threads of culture. Having grown up in this age of the CD
reissue, with half an eye on music of the recent LP past, I'm
constantly reminded of the selective, constructive, distortive
processes that reissue companies are engaged in, guided in parts both
by retrospection and economic consideration. The reissue era can, of
course, do other things than merely omit the past; it can bring to
prominence things that were never seen or heard in their time, or at
least very little. The New Age's All Around LP and the Brazilian group
Satwa come to mind.

As with all complex issues it seems to go without saying that the
problem is both cyclical and paradoxical. For Basho to be better
known, and thus feature in these histories, he needs to be heard, and
to be heard he first needs people to know about him as to be willing
to invest in his records, and he can't be known until he's heard, and
so on. As Glenn Jones has stated, this process is probably underway. A
few years following his death he might have been forgotten, if it
wasn't in part for Fantasy's reissuing of his first record on CD,
followed by a compilation, then another. Still, with the current
climate, chances of further reissues are pretty distant, I would say.

I'm saying all this with the blind assumption that simply knowing
Basho's music, and understanding it, would ensure his presence in a
history of Indian music in the West. I personally think his engagement
with it was deep and serious and significant, especially so because of
the intense, critical way he tried to adapt what he had received from
the East for America. As he said in a radio interview from the 70s:

"the music I hear today is, you know, ruffing their fingers through
the grass on the surface and nobody's gotten to the depths of this
country and I think we should before everything goes."

and:

"Oh lord we need a Layla in this country. You know, Persia they have
Majnun and Layla, here we have Frankie and Johnny and I'm so damn
tired of Frankie and [Johnny], you know, that knock 'em down, sock 'em
type of thing and this country's made of better stuff than that."

A was kind of shocked by a recent, similar omission in a 3 part, 3
hour long BBC documentary on the history of the Guitar, presented by
the Alan Yentob. The whole things was this weird lazy amble through
guitar fashion, with no mention whatsoever of John Fahey, let alone
Robbie Basho, and I can't even remember any reference to Jansch or
Renbourn, but maybe there was a little on Davy Graham, I'm not sure.
Kind of shocking when you consider Fahey's and Basho's aim to
establish the steel-string as a concert instrument in North America,
and its achievement.

Lastly, thanks for the pointer towards this book. I'll be looking it
up right away.


Robbie


--- In robbiebasho_forum@yahoogroups.com, "cmconliff" <cmclaw2001@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi, everyone,
>
> My name is Chuck. I've enjoyed the music of Robbie Basho for about
> 25 years, which is around the same time I've played 12 string
> guitar. Heard of him through articles about Kottke and Fahey, and
> located a few of his albums (Art of the Acoustic Steel String
> Guitar, the Guitar Soli compilation).
>
> I have been reading Peter Lavezzoli's book, The Dawn of Indian Music
> in the West - Bhairavi (NY: Continuum, 2006 -- ISBN 0-8264-1815-
> 5). Although it is very informative and meticulously researched,
> I'm disappointed that Basho seems to have been excluded. The book
> prominently features Indian musicians Ali Akbar Khan, Ravi Shankar,
> Alla Rakha, Zakir Hussain; rock musicians including David Crosby and
> Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead and
> George Harrison; jazz pioneers John Coltrane and John McLaughlin;
> and advant-garde composers Philip Glass and Terry Riley. I am
> finding the chapter, Nada Brahma: The Way of the Raga, a basic
> theory of Indian music, particularly insightful.
>
> As much as I love the Byrds, though, I'm disappointed by the
> exclusion of Basho, vis-a-vis Lavezzolli's comments, such as:
>
> "But in spite of the Yardbirds, Kinks and Beatles dabbling with
> sitar and drone in 1965, these elements were solely intended to
> provide decorative color for songs that otherwise remained within
> the normal parameters of pop music, while the Byrds' 'Eight Miles
> High' b/w 'Why' single -- first recorded in December 1965 and
> completed in January 1966 -- remains teh first example of pop songs
> that were specifically conceived as vehicles for extended modal
> improvisations." (page 155).
>
> Does anyone know if Crosby and McGuinn ever saw Basho perform in
> Berkley circa 1964 to 1965?
>
> Chuck
>