04:42it was the mid 80s a few years
04:45after i had moved to the united states
04:49i was giving a performance at the
04:50university of california irvine
04:52and the tamir padam was one of the
04:56at the end of the performance i
05:00was approached by a gentleman
05:04who asked was that brindama
05:08i was taken aback because first of all
05:12of indian origin secondly he referred to
05:16her as brindama so obviously he knew her
05:19and the system of music well
05:22it was actually my aunt sundaram
05:27a prime disciple of brindama
05:31that's began my friendship
05:34with dr garfield who has been a mentor
05:38and supported me through this journey of
05:41dance in southern california in the last
05:47welcome dr garfield i know it's
05:49customary in america to call
05:52everybody by their first name but having
05:56it is really hard for me to refer to
05:58somebody who is so much senior to me
06:01in knowledge and wisdom and age by their
06:04so if you don't mind i'm going to refer
06:06to you as dr garfield
06:08welcome again and thank you so much for
06:10being a part of this
06:11uh series uh which will be a
06:15indian dance in southern california
06:17thank you a kind of oral history
06:20i just wanted to say i don't i don't i
06:23don't mind a little respect
06:24thank you very much it's okay go ahead
06:29it's refreshing so um
06:34i just recalled uh my first encounter
06:39um and i was wondering uh if you
06:42uh occasion and what you remember of it
06:47well of course my reaction to that was
06:51i mean it wasn't the first time i had
06:52seen indian dance or heard south indian
06:56uh and so out of that context i came and
07:00wow i was prepared to see okay there's
07:04in southern california who's doing
07:05bharatanatyam and i've seen
07:08quite a few but i was quite impressed
07:11right from the start but of course
07:13hearing that voice that was another
07:15thing i'm so familiar
07:17with the interpretation of the patterns
07:21and and and brynda and the
07:24recordings of vega also brindama and
07:28where that had that in my bones so i
07:32heard that it was like
07:34where wow what is this this is a
07:37but quite apart from that i was
07:40really impressed with the thorough
07:42grounding in tradition that i saw in the
07:46i have traveled extensively in mexico
07:49like india the arts traditional arts
07:53particularly are embedded
07:55in the everyday life of the people um
07:58you migrated or your parents migrated
08:03right my mother was from mexico city
08:07she came as a very young girl and
08:11eventually got to the point where she
08:13almost spoke no spanish at all
08:15and then she relearned it again when she
08:17married my father so
08:19my father came later in the 1920s
08:22uh from to juan tepec in southern part
08:26the state of oaxaca very tropical
08:28coastal region by the coast the pacific
08:31and he spoke mostly spanish his
08:34education was all in spanish
08:36so the long and short of it is that i
08:39grew up in a household where we spoke
08:41only spanish at home not much english
08:44really until public school so were they
08:48inclined or were they practicing artists
08:53no not at all um neither one of my
08:56father was very artistic he played a
08:59little music he wrote poetry he had
09:01beautiful calligraphy absolutely
09:03gorgeous calligraphy and
09:05he worked with an airbrush and did some
09:08a cabinet maker he made fine fine
09:12uh but an artist but he worked he had to
09:16manual labor because it was important
09:19the situation for mexicans was very
09:22well it still is but even then it was
09:25so he had to work at manual labor he
09:27couldn't work at his real
09:29his craft ever i knew you were born in
09:32san francisco and raised in the bay area
09:34um and san francisco is much more
09:39than southern california but what kind
09:43were you exposed to as a child because
09:46spotify or youtube or itunes in those
09:50that's right that's right it was very
09:54difficult actually we knew
09:55very little of what was going on in the
09:57world you see world war ii
10:00i came my education was mostly after
10:03ii during and after world war ii but
10:06travel became easier after world war ii
10:10at the same time we started hearing true
10:14i grew up in san francisco and i think
10:16perhaps the first thing i started with
10:18was listening to chinese opera
10:20on the radio i heard it and i was quite
10:23shocked by the sound of it but i decided
10:26try to figure it out and read books
10:30whenever i could hear about some kind of
10:32foreign music concerts i would go
10:34to chinese music or japanese music or
10:37whatever there was but there was very
10:39still in those days it it wasn't too
10:42and i sort of got interested in world
10:46before the discipline of ethnomusicology
10:51when i went to graduate school at ucla
10:54they had formally started a program and
10:56i was one of the first graduates
10:58in ethnic musicology to go there and
11:01i was interested to know what triggered
11:05in pursuing a career in music um in the
11:09indian diaspora even today uh a career
11:13not looked upon very favorably because
11:16uh either it's not lucrative enough
11:18or it's very competitive and
11:21um so i was wondering how your family or
11:26allowed you to pursue a career in those
11:28days several decades
11:30no i think it was a fluke i think i
11:33think i was encouraged in whatever i
11:36i remember we went on a visit to mexico
11:39when i was 12 years old
11:41and when we came back my mother decided
11:44that i should learn the guitar
11:46and she found in san francisco and they
11:49very rare she found a classical guitar
11:53teacher who actually spot
11:54taught the old spanish classical guitar
11:56and that was very there was no
11:58john williams or nobody knew anything
12:00about that it was very very rare
12:03uh so that was an interesting thing and
12:06i got to school and since my father had
12:10i took it to school and played that in
12:12the band and then i started composing
12:15i was into music somehow rather already
12:17by junior high school i was quite
12:19that's what i was focusing on
12:23but how i got into the musicology i i
12:27uh one of the things that might have
12:33the year i graduated from high school
12:37i got a job playing on one of the ocean
12:40and in those days it wasn't the love
12:43big cruise ships it was the way most
12:46people travel back and forth across the
12:49and for the first class passengers on
12:51these big liners they had a band
12:53band that played for dances at night so
12:56i got a job on the band
12:57and i went to japan and to hong kong and
13:02and i was quite impressed by what i saw
13:05primarily i was impressed by the design
13:07the inside of a japanese house
13:09i had never seen anything like that so
13:13then i got really interested in it this
13:17college and getting into graduate school
13:20that came long after
13:21so the interest started there it's all
13:23kind of a fluke though it's hard to
13:26you kind of answered my question but um
13:30know that you've done extensive work and
13:32research in japanese music and in fact
13:36uh the order of the rising sun from the
13:40so my question was why okinawan music
13:44well japanese court music is what i
13:46really specialized in
13:48the the music of the imperial palace has
13:50played in the court for the emperor
13:53and that's one of the really oldest
13:56continuous traditions in the world i
13:58that we actually know father the sun
14:00going back at least a thousand years
14:03maybe longer we can document who taught
14:06and and the notation although the
14:08performance is different the notation is
14:11so that was an accident
14:14by the way i should add that when i
14:17received the medal from the emperor
14:20i was expecting he would say for your
14:22service to japan and the arts
14:24no he said for your service to humanity
14:27so it was much bigger so i was very
14:30proud i was very nice
14:32uh how i got into it you know at that
14:35time in the 50s when i
14:36entered graduate school in
14:38ethnomusicology i wanted to do
14:40everything i wanted to go to africa i
14:42wanted to go to india i had met ravi
14:44shankar and ali akbar khan
14:46and of course they there were no people
14:48who here in the united states who knew
14:50anything about indian music
14:52so we became friends immediately they
14:54loved us because we were interested in
14:55the music and asked all these questions
14:58would go to dinner and talk so i knew
15:00about indian music and i'd heard
15:01really gorgeous recordings not much
15:04south indian musicals then still
15:06mostly north indian music so i wanted to
15:08go everywhere africa
15:10latin america and my professor said well
15:13you did a little work on japanese music
15:15while you were in san francisco maybe
15:16you want to pursue that and i said fine
15:19so he he encouraged me to work on
15:21japanese court music and that's how that
15:24but i certainly became fascinated and
15:27in this in a small way knowledgeable
15:29about japan there's a lot to know
15:31so is that court music played only in
15:35elsewhere it's it's not played
15:38it's played a certain shrines and
15:42uh for example it's played new year's
15:45day on the first broadcast of the radio
15:48it's brought and now on television it
15:50would be broadcast japanese court music
15:52as a kind of ceremonial beginning of the
15:56most people in japan know it but they
15:58very few people listen to it it's very
16:00interesting that many western composers
16:05miss aeon and hovanes and stravinsky was
16:11in japanese court music it's called gaga
16:14elegant music it's a very interesting
16:16orchestral tradition
16:18but the interest by japanese is not
16:21popular like kabuki or
16:26and and then you did go on to uh
16:30other forms of music like from turkey
16:32and south korea as well
16:35well i did filming and recording in
16:39uh and and in the philippines it was a i
16:42got a grant from the
16:43jdr third fund which was john d
16:46rockefeller the third's private fund
16:49mostly for asian culture and arts and at
16:52that time it was during the cold war and
16:54they really were supporting
16:56both the philippines and the republic of
16:58the philippines and the republic of
17:00so they asked me to do to do a
17:04uh to set up national archives for the
17:06philippines and for korea
17:08so that's what i did back in the 60s and
17:12amazingly just last year the koreans
17:14recognized that they invited me back to
17:17and they had a one-day conference with
17:19specialists from all over they analyzed
17:22and talked about the recordings and
17:24asked a lot of questions and they
17:26published four books
17:27about my work and one of them was a long
17:29a long history of my life which is
17:33i've worked in many countries yes i did
17:35field work in romania
17:37i worked with romanian gypsies and then
17:39i worked on turkish ottoman classical
17:42i did several field trips to various
17:46places in latin america all over mexico
17:50i did work in zimbabwe and mozambique
17:53in burma i was the first american to be
17:56allowed to enter burma i spent a year in
17:58burma studying burmese classical music
18:01and then most recently then i went
18:04i started studying okinawan music
18:07because i already speak japanese i
18:09i've always been interested in okinawa
18:11so i went there yes so this is the
18:14reason i wanted to talk to you dr garcia
18:17well it doesn't make sense does it i so
18:19it's good you asked me
18:21i you know i've known you for so many
18:22years but i had not known
18:25about all the work that you've done you
18:27know over your lifetime so
18:29this is really fascinating for me um you
18:32know that i grew up in mylapore which is
18:35heart of madras which is now called
18:39and mylapore is kind of a bubble for
18:42carnatic music and bharatanatyam and my
18:47was very closely connected to the
18:51of who the descendants of whom were
19:09we don't hear much about it anymore yeah
19:12all of them and in as you know that my
19:14aunt was the prime disciple of bindama
19:17and one of my cousins had a
19:20under the guidance of balama and i have
19:24uh perform and uh heard them sing as
19:28um at many events formal and informal
19:31events that my family
19:33at on you know different occasions in my
19:37so when i came here as you said when i
19:40came here and i first
19:41met you i was kind of taken aback that
19:45even knew about this special style of
19:49um and then of course i worked
19:52extensively with rusty gillette
19:54who uh was a disciple of ranga
19:57and uh also you know dr brown
20:00uh introduced me to the center of world
20:02music and i have been performing there
20:05for the last uh almost three decades so
20:08all san diego meeting yeah in san diego
20:12meeting all of you was like quite uh you
20:15pleasant surprise for me um and you had
20:19as you mentioned you had kind of front
20:22to the introduction of this kind of
20:24music and dance to america
20:26and this was in the 50s right in
20:29uh actually in the 60s uh
20:36vishwa he was on a fulbright uh
20:39studying at ucla at that time i was in
20:43but i came back and for a week we met
20:45and we really bonded because
20:47you know when i found out he was coming
20:50i had a grant to go to japan to work on
20:53japanese court music
20:54i really wanted to stay and study with
20:59and and i i can't i have this grant and
21:01so my path is laid out so i went to
21:04but we met for a week and we really
21:08and then in 1960 i was invited back to
21:11japan for a conference 61.
21:14and then bala and her whole troop came
21:16so that was the first time i saw bala in
21:18india well being a friend of vishwas
21:20bala accepted me as a friend of the
21:23and that's when i got to know know all
21:25of them we hung out together in japan
21:27and i took them everywhere because i
21:29spoke japanese of course
21:31but later i went to india i think my
21:35india was in 1964 and
21:39bala introduced me to her great friend
21:41amir khan who was the famous
21:44uh cal singer from north india and you
21:47many people have said nazir jarrazboy
21:52and she was also friends of abdul kareem
21:56had been dead but for some time by then
22:00that amongst the south indian musicians
22:03bala and her family were
22:04people who also appreciated a really
22:08north indian music so through bala i met
22:11amir khan and we went to a concert
22:14and bala i sat next to bala and amir
22:17khan dedicated his whole concert to her
22:19looking at her constantly everything he
22:22every time he sang something so so it
22:25how shall i say it knowing bala and her
22:27family was also an introduction to
22:30all these other musicians ali akbar khan
22:33ravi shankar who had met before but now
22:35in the context of bala they were she
22:38was sort of an opening to it and it's
22:42so i had a a kind of an insider outside
22:45when i heard your concert your dance
22:49recital i saw something
22:51this is this is not the usual kind of
22:54like imitation of bharatanatyam or i
22:56don't know what to call those things but
22:58i felt this was close to the core uh and
23:01i recognized it immediately and
23:03certainly the singing of somebody who
23:05sounded just like brindama
23:06sealed it for me completely as i
23:10that you had the front proceeds to the
23:12introduction of south indian music and
23:16at wesleyan and wesleyan was is probably
23:20university offering studies in carnatic
23:24right i think so yes yes
23:27i was not never resident there but i
23:30went there often to visit
23:32ranga and bishra and and i had other
23:35friends of course the whole
23:36ethnomusicology program bob brown
23:38he started the program at wesley and i
23:41started program at the university of
23:43and we were sort of parallel so i knew
23:45about what was going on there but i
23:48period of time studying there it was a
23:50rounded one to many concerts there
23:53so branga also was at cal arts teaching
23:56in right here in l.a yes
23:59so so you were at the at the university
24:02of washington as the dean of the school
24:05of ethnomusicology well no i was just
24:07the head of ethnomusicology
24:10i much 15 15 of the 20 years the last
24:15i was in university administration i was
24:19but i continued to be involved in the
24:21ethnic ecology program and we had many
24:23visiting artists bala came and
24:26and lakshmi and bishop everything they
24:29a number of times um
24:32so yeah i was i was involved but i was
24:36up there while they were down by vlisha
24:37and ranga were down here at cal arts
24:40we'd come down to see them we were
24:41connected so you know
24:43vishwa started back in 1958
24:47teaching me of them in hamza bundy
24:50and uh every time we met we'd do a
24:54little bit more and a little bit more
24:56and finally i spent a summer with him
24:58while he was they were all teaching at
25:00mills college as part of the asea
25:03and he gave me a room there to stay
25:05close to them and so
25:06we played every day but you know it's
25:11long distance it didn't work i i never
25:13finished the bottom line
25:15unfortunately because basically i'm a
25:17flute player so yeah
25:18very attractive too yeah i've heard you
25:23yes so um what was the uh
25:26response from the audience's
25:29uh mainstream audiences there must have
25:31been only mainstream at that time there
25:34uh diaspora uh indian diaspora in the
25:38early sixties um so what was the
25:40response from the audiences because this
25:43must have been very unique and new to
25:47of indian music you mean yeah
25:49particularly south american music
25:52yeah it's funny because gradually there
25:56started to be these insiders
25:57all these crazy american kids wanted to
25:59learn south indian music i think a lot
26:02charisma of vishwa and raga
26:05you know all those people who studied
26:07drumming with ranga so many all over the
26:10and uh and so they all so it at the
26:13concerts i remember this
26:15the ones who knew something about indian
26:17music would be keeping tala
26:19during the concerts and people would say
26:22stop that don't do that
26:24because they didn't the americans didn't
26:26realize i mean you really need to keep
26:28up with the mathematics to figure out
26:29what's going on so what was it that kind
26:33yeah but for a lot of americans the
26:37music sounded beautiful
26:38you see indian music is like you go and
26:40you see you look at that or you hear
26:44wow they really know what they're doing
26:45i don't know what they're doing i can't
26:47understand it but obviously they're
26:49doing something very complicated
26:51and then people start to study it and
26:52then they get into the technicality they
26:54begin to enjoy it even more deeply
26:57but even for an outsider you can't deny
27:00very impressive and very expressive
27:04you know i was remembering this morning
27:06uh thinking about talking to you today
27:10that beautiful you created a piece
27:13and i thought this young woman is really
27:15quite quite amazing she
27:33on that cd that's the one that attracted
27:36and then you did this beautiful pieces
27:38we must have been on the same wavelength
27:40or something like that but how how for
27:44i know enough i've learned enough about
27:46indian music and hearing great
27:48musicians to appreciate what happens
27:54that particular raga to understand that
27:59and sorrowful but it's kind of hopeful
28:01at the same time it's a very unusual
28:04i've heard the video
28:08khan playing a long 30-minute all up and
28:10shore and java they're beautiful
28:14so i have from experience i've learned
28:16to appreciate it a little bit
28:17nothing like what an indian musician
28:22who's really trained us but enough to
28:25so i appreciate it very much
28:29and sometimes it's not enough to know
28:33sometimes it's you don't need to know
28:34the music you just need to feel the
28:37experience it um it's very
28:41but it's also very possible to hear
28:44bilashka nitori and not feel a thing
28:46because you don't know it you don't you
28:48you have to get into it
28:49in a certain degree i mean yes to to us
28:52to you and i it seems perfectly natural
28:56but to a lot of people you have to get
28:58to a certain stage before you appreciate
29:00what's the difference between today and
29:07um that you know the dhanamal family
29:10probably the royal family of traditional
29:15they call it hereditary musicians who've
29:19practiced um and performed um
29:26even today a conversation and a
29:29controversy about how
29:30many of these artists have been
29:32marginalized and their arts have been
29:35in your conversations and in you know
29:38meetings with the family
29:40what was their feeling or what what did
29:44that at that time because that
29:46controversy is continuing
29:48or i should say has been reignited in
29:51has it has it really well
29:54i the whole time i knew them there was
29:56always some comment about
29:58bother wouldn't bala wouldn't dwell on
30:02mar remark about people who had insulted
30:05and mistreated her and and said you know
30:09and uh some people said you know this
30:13terror we can't let her go overseas
30:15she's terrible they want to send
30:17somebody who was beautiful small and
30:19smiling and something
30:21uh but nevertheless some people knew
30:24appreciate enough to appreciate her so
30:27there was always a conflict there were
30:30really knew and appreciated her and she
30:33she was buffered by those
30:35uh but i think they were aware of the
30:38i mean even bishop from time to time
30:40would get quite frustrated with the
30:43music academy in madras i still call it
30:50yeah they had their share of it but i
30:52think they transcended it they
30:54they certainly had a lot of admirers
30:58who who were not of that particular
31:01genre generation or something so uh
31:04they were aware of it very much aware of
31:07i think they transcended it so
31:11uh talking about music academy you did
31:13present a paper there
31:14right it wasn't in the 70s i think two
31:17two or three times i did two or three
31:19the uh dr raghavan yes
31:22who he was such an open kind of person
31:26he was interested in everything he was
31:28open and welcoming and
31:30and uh so he would let me i once gave a
31:32talk on burmese music uh
31:34because he just he said oh you've been
31:35to burma let's talk about it please come
31:38but after he left and that seemed to be
31:40no interest anymore you know
31:42very it was much more narrow i guess
31:46so um i don't know does it go does it go
31:49yes yes it goes on very much um and um
31:52in fact the festival in chennai today uh
31:56october and doesn't end till february so
32:01i mean it's it's really overdose of
32:04in chennai it's kind of it's good
32:07vibrant with the arts but also it's
32:11and sometimes a little too much to
32:14in such as you know uh in the in the
32:17within that time there's literally
32:19thousands of concerts i mean living in
32:23you know you you can't even like uh
32:26wrap your brain around that because we
32:28have hardly any arts uh
32:30here uh but yeah that's so in a way i'm
32:34proud to be from a city
32:36uh that is so uh you know uh rich
32:39culturally and artistically but at the
32:40same time it is also
32:43a little too much at times yeah well i
32:47there's no denying it's happening all
32:50uh sometimes uh i talk about the fact
32:54those old recordings those 78 rpm
32:57recordings that were made before world
32:59ii all over the world those are some of
33:02the best performances
33:04the best performances of japanese court
33:07in terms of perform are still those
33:1178s technology improves
33:14but i don't think the performance
33:18i mean i love the old tumulties of abdul
33:21karim khan the new kind of
33:25too many singers this the technology of
33:28the recording is better
33:30i don't get quite as excited or i don't
33:34but in a sense it's all over the world i
33:37use this term all the time
33:39as a matter of fact the last paper i
33:41wrote very recently was on the demise of
33:44the guru kulu system
33:45well i'm not talking only about india
33:47i'm using this term to mean the way
33:49everybody was taught in the old days the
33:52one-on-one that's the way people
33:57and now it more and more it's becoming
33:59conservatories i suppose
34:00less in india but everywhere else in
34:04and thailand in indonesia in turkey even
34:09mass a large group one teacher in a
34:13large group i think it's just
34:14it changes even in iran they're saying
34:16the the young students are
34:18learning the technology they know what's
34:21called the radiif that the body of
34:24but they don't have that they don't know
34:26how to improvise they don't know the
34:28of the music so they can't increase it
34:30so something has changed
34:32maybe it's a sad note of modernity new
34:35technology i don't know
34:37but it's happening everywhere in the
34:38world all over yeah i know i know
34:42uh but i guess that's what you would
34:45you know yes progress progress
34:48but uh i think as you get older one
34:52with nostalgia at the good old times
34:54when we would spend hours
34:56and i always tell my students it's not
34:58just the hour i spent
35:00learning but the many hours i spent
35:02afterwards just observing her teach
35:05others and i learned as much from
35:07observation as i did from learning
35:10and most students don't have the time
35:14to just you know linger and and just
35:17uh observe and also nowadays even in
35:21there is no learning from osmosis
35:24everything has changed you know uh you
35:28um i grew up uh you know my neighbor's
35:30house first thing in the morning at five
35:33carnatic music would start blaring um
35:36whether you wanted to hear it or not you
35:38didn't have a choice you
35:39you know you heard it and you kind of uh
35:43you know abs absorbed through osmosis
35:46but it doesn't happen anymore
35:47yeah you know everybody is quieting
35:50you know bish vishwanathan told me
35:55that when he started to study with
35:58he went to his house and he was kind of
36:00servant he wanted to
36:02sweep and clean and he didn't play
36:05for two two years i think before he
36:08played but by then he had to absorb the
36:11the japanese court musicians they would
36:15the singing the singing of the
36:17instrumental part there's a
36:18vocalization you do of the instrumental
36:21see they would have to sing that every
36:23morning as the father laid in bed the
36:27and he only after he had sung the entire
36:30repertoire and memorized it then they
36:34so they would it was absorbing a lot
36:37before they even began to touch it
36:39but this other things that happened well
36:43in 1959 the japanese court musicians
36:47were invited by the un by doug
36:50to come and give a performance in the in
36:54and on the basis of that invitation then
36:57they arranged a tour of the united
36:59well i was a student in the palace at
37:01that time in the palace music department
37:04so they invited me to go with them what
37:06a wonderful experience so i
37:07toured the united states with these
37:11and i would just play this one funny
37:14i played the key which is the small
37:16double reed instruments very small
37:18and it has seven finger holes and
37:22just holes nothing there's no keys or
37:26when you hear the court musicians play
37:28when they go between one note and
37:30there's a little they make a little
37:32click it's almost like a
37:34like a mechanical you hear a little
37:37there's no way i could do it i just blew
37:39the note was one note after another
37:41after i had toured with them for two
37:44months across the united states and i
37:46heard them play every day
37:48i was starting to make that little click
37:50i could make it too and i don't know
37:52i don't know how it happened but i had
37:54absorbed the sound so much
37:56that now i could reproduce it so some
37:59things you just learned by just this by
38:01osmosis by being there all the time and
38:06i was just remembering when when i was
38:08at the university of washington in the
38:11of course they expected me to teach
38:14we got all the instruments and that went
38:18years until i finally got onto other
38:20things and stuff got too busy to do it
38:22the regular routine of teaching i had to
38:26player on every different instrument and
38:29i found that one of the things that i
38:31was trying to instill was respect and i
38:33had to think about it
38:35it's not respect for me no it's respect
38:39for the honor you don't don't just be
38:42silly and clown no when you're
38:44doing this you do it this way you do it
38:47formally and you know
38:48maintain your dignity it was hard thing
38:51to get across and i began to think
38:52am i trying to force them to respect me
38:54as a teacher and no that wasn't it at
38:57all i was trying to get them to
38:59that this is a serious tradition it's
39:01over a thousand years old
39:02so you have to treat it with a certain
39:04respect when you when you enter into
39:07uh you have to have a certain attitude
39:10actually when i started teaching i was
39:12pretty young and i wouldn't like my
39:14uh you know we would bow you know on the
39:17floor we'd fall on the floor and bow to
39:19our teachers before we start
39:21and at the end of the class and um i i
39:24didn't ask my students to do that
39:26because i was you know embarrassed
39:28and not comfortable and when my teacher
39:31ask me why aren't they doing that and i
39:34and she said no no no it's not about you
39:37it's about respect for the art
39:39so take yourself out of it and they have
39:42to do it otherwise they won't learn
39:44uh learn the art properly and they need
39:46to respect the art so
39:48uh you know there are certain uh uh
39:52in in traditional uh cultures
39:55which are meaningful and i think in
39:57america sometimes we
39:58uh we drop them we drop them
40:02yeah just call me joe you know that's
40:05yeah yeah now uh the japanese have a pro
40:11they have a national award for the arts
40:14and when we created the national
40:16heritage award nea i remember i
40:18very specifically kept encouraging to
40:22it's called the in japan is called
40:26this the intangible cultural property it
40:31like you're honoring something that is
40:35it's not the person it's the tradition
40:39in that person it's what that person
40:42the spirit that represents many
40:45generations past so you're honoring the
40:48not the performer of course the artist
40:52recognizing the tradition that it comes
40:55and that's very hard for americans to
40:57get across sometimes we had a lot of
41:00difficulty with that at time to time at
41:03that was the spirit of it in korea they
41:06have it too the same idea
41:08so um dr garfield you served on the
41:12right for the arts yes and what was the
41:15mission of the council well the council
41:18the purpose of the council
41:20is to advise the president on all of the
41:24that come through from the national
41:26endowment from the on the arts
41:28so we would go we went through after all
41:31the panels that served we would review
41:35mostly past simply pass them on but
41:37sometimes there were
41:38there were budgetary problems or we had
41:41um and then we also advise the president
41:44on the national medals of the art
41:46that's the big prize that the president
41:50for for artists great artists in the
41:53country so we would advise
41:54recommend to the president on those and
41:57it was very busy during the 10 years i
42:01served we would have at least four
42:05meetings a year that lasted three or
42:08but sometimes i was going back to
42:10washington once a month and this was all
42:12in addition to teaching
42:14that in in terms of teaching it didn't
42:15count at all it was just called public
42:18service but but it was a
42:19big deal and getting to meet the
42:21president the president was always a
42:24yeah and you served uh from you said
42:27to ronald reagan right he was
42:31he appointed me and uh i would say was
42:34his great mistake because i was
42:36not the typical reagan republican but it
42:39was in his second year and so he was a
42:41little bit looser about
42:43accepting people and then
42:46with bush the father and then finally
42:50and i think it was in 1991 that i went
42:55when we had the meeting uh about
42:57classical arts right
42:59yes right wow that's that was that was
43:03that was the subtitle of the folk arts
43:07program i think i can't remember exactly
43:10i was doing a lot of those just going
43:12yeah dr robert browning was there
43:15and uh yes right there were so many
43:19rick chamillos i think was there too
43:22yes yes i met him last year
43:25in hawaii after so many years yes
43:28yes oh good um and so um
43:32i wanted to ask you also since you've
43:35different forms of music
43:39um what do you think uh is similar
43:42in all the forms with say carnatic music
43:46very distinct in your opinion about
43:49south korean music well you know the odd
43:53and this it sounds terrible to say this
43:56but what i found is that every musical
44:00has its own aesthetics has its own
44:04values uh things that are go tuning is
44:08intonation is very different from place
44:12uh and the the whole concept of
44:15very different in different cultures
44:18couldn't find anything that was
44:20universal from one place to another now
44:22of course we can talk about
44:24great parallels between north indian
44:26music and south indian music and on
44:28into the middle east and central asia
44:31generically connected and so you can
44:34find certain commonalities
44:36but a lot of differences the only really
44:39common thread i have found everywhere is
44:42a sense of spontaneity
44:44in the performance that performance has
44:47even that you're playing from music it's
44:49gonna sound like you're playing it from
44:51from your inside from inside of you from
44:54not read from music or not recorded and
45:00that is a common feature i found
45:02everywhere everybody wants
45:04every performance wants to sound
45:10the fascinating thing about south indian
45:12carnatic music is that it is unique i
45:15certain threats with north indian music
45:19people you have to take a deep breath
45:23hear south indian music and make that a
45:26and and because it's just separate and
45:30the aesthetic of south is very different
45:32from the north even though there are
45:33many many connections
45:35i think it's unique yeah yeah
45:38i i i particularly like uh
45:41music which has maybe because i'm an uh
45:44and with a with the deep interest in
45:46abhinav for me music with bhavam
45:49or what you said now from the heart is
45:53uh important and that's the kind of
45:56rather than technical music you know
45:58which becomes too much about the math
46:00i mean that's all interesting and uh for
46:04and after that i just don't want to be
46:06uh caught up with the technique or the
46:09math of it but more the soul of the
46:13and how much but you know yes that's
46:14true but you have to have done the other
46:17you have to have that before you can do
46:21uh you can't do it entirely only
46:25people used to say about bala because i
46:27would travel and people say oh you're
46:29from india are they oh i know all about
46:32and she only does aminitis that's all
46:34she does that's not true
46:36i mean and i've seen that that she does
46:38it's beautiful i mean it's
46:40very powerful yes of course they have
46:42naya that she does the problems and
46:43javanese it's nothing like it it's very
46:45very special that doesn't mean she
46:47doesn't do the other and that that is
46:50so there's a balance i mean i think you
46:52do need to have that no i
46:54what i mean yeah no what i mean is i'm
46:57not saying rita is not important but i'm
47:00i'm saying that um uh even in music i
47:04want music which is soulful
47:06and not just technique you know and a
47:10particularly today uh with everybody's
47:13attention span being so limited
47:16artists tend to go for like grab you by
47:19two minutes you know and uh and keep you
47:22excited and and kind of raise the
47:25intention being to raise your blood
47:27not to calm you down you know well
47:32you know i don't know where it's all
47:33going i i i don't you probably don't
47:36follow jazz but there was a very
47:38jazz recording it came out in 1960 with
47:42called kind of blue and people have said
47:46is probably one of the most well sold
47:50jazz records of all and a magical
47:53combination of the the six musicians
47:58a couple of years ago there was a group
48:02it called the name of the group is
48:05somebody else does the killing that's
48:07the name of the group if you can imagine
48:09anyhow they took this record
48:12note for note and played it again
48:16the solos the improvised solos they
48:18played them note for note
48:20like the original and it's uncanny it
48:23disturbed me very much because
48:26we have the original and at that time it
48:29now they have gone back and recreated
48:34what was a spontaneous performance and
48:38and but it's so perfect it i can't
48:42deny that it sounds good but i'm very
48:46it's just this is this what we do now we
48:49old performances we've run out of new
48:54it's a very interesting yeah
48:57i wanted to say that i do listen to jazz
48:59we love jazz harish and i
49:01and in more recent years we're listening
49:03to more jazz because our son
49:06is training to be a musician and he was
49:09and uh playing jazz and listening to a
49:12lot of jazz in new york of course
49:14so yeah and he's home now thanks to
49:17kovitz so we do end up listening to a
49:20jazz by default because music is playing
49:2224 hours a day in our house
49:25yes so well you know it's interesting i
49:29said this to marcy maybe it was about
49:32years ago i got i finally got a good
49:33saxophone and she said
49:36what is this i said you know in my
49:39i'm an ethnomusicologist i'm known as an
49:41ethnomusicologist specialist in japanese
49:43music and some other things
49:45but in my soul i still think of myself
49:49that's what i did for years and years
49:51and that sort of defined my personality
49:53and so i'm still listening to a lot of
49:56jazz i still it's very much a part of me
49:58so we look forward to your uh saxophone
50:01yeah no you won't but it doesn't sound
50:05as good as it used to i was practicing
50:06the other day in march i tried to
50:08practice when she's not home
50:10and she called came to home and says gee
50:12that sounded pretty good and i said well
50:14it doesn't sound as good as it used to
50:16or maybe i was never really as good as i
50:20it's not where it used to be but you
50:23know it's truly inspiring dr garfield is
50:26uh you know the story goes that my
50:30when he was i mean this was in the 50s
50:33sick and he was bedridden and he started
50:37at 80 um and so i keep telling myself i
50:41to maybe learn spanish and that's one of
50:45my goal is to be able to speak spanish
50:48uh if not fluently at least
50:52please remember 80 is not old it used to
50:5680 i you know ought to be 80 again
51:01so um anything else you'd like to share
51:03with us uh dr garfield and also wanted
51:07um share your thoughts on you've been
51:10here now for 30 years almost right
51:12in irvine right yes and uh more than 30
51:17and your impressions and your thoughts
51:20indian dance and music your observations
51:23in southern california i
51:27you know i'm so impressed by
51:30what you have done and all really
51:34all these young women that you have
51:37you've had such an influence on their
51:39lives so maybe they don't
51:40bow down the way they're supposed to be
51:42i think you should it
51:43wouldn't be a bad thing to have them
51:48again because it's respect for the
51:50tradition that you represent
51:52but nevertheless it's clear that you
51:56something incredible to all these young
51:58women it's not just the tradition of
52:03what what's not just what you have
52:05taught them but it's
52:06uh something more about life that
52:10as i said once before i uh i've known
52:13a number of them who've come and studied
52:17at the university of california irvine
52:20and i've talked to them and they're very
52:23some of them don't won't go to
52:25university that they've been invited to
52:27because they want to stay
52:28and finish their out engagement i'm very
52:32by that and so i've only met a few
52:35but several and they're all
52:38strong professional young women who've
52:41other things with their lives but this
52:44is the basis that it's a
52:45very powerful strong basis i'm also
52:50that not all the people young women who
52:53with you are south indians they're not
52:56nothing from they're not from south
52:58there's a lot of north indians and so
53:02the carnatic tradition as a solid
53:04cultural classic tradition from which to
53:07discipline wonderful i i think it's
53:10absolutely wonderful it's a real gem and
53:12i'm glad it continues
53:14thanks to you thank you and you also
53:17come to see many of our productions and
53:20truly appreciate um your support and
53:24um you know being a friendship
53:28i have been completely knocked out by
53:31put together a performance
53:36and involve all all of them the
53:39beginners and the advanced students
53:41and they they all get to perform at
53:44but it blends it's not just that it's
53:47what do you call it a talent show for
53:49the end of the year now
53:50everybody plays a part that fits into
53:53the hole and there's a
53:54great imagination and strongly based on
54:01and dr garfield it's particularly
54:03meaningful coming from you because
54:06as i said before and as you've shared
54:09hour um all the you know the
54:13the uh the observations and the exposure
54:17to you know great uh artists like balama
54:20uh brindama and vishwa and all of them
54:23you know they are the very essence of
54:25south indian music and dance and so
54:28having been exposed to them uh to be
54:31uh considered anywhere close to them for
54:34me is is a big big honor so
54:36um like i said before i was really
54:38pleasantly surprised and i'm really
54:41and grateful to you for being a part of
54:44that i've had um in southern california
54:48well you have certainly for me made
54:51southern california in orange county a
54:53lot more pleasant and interesting thank
