TANYET

This is an early and rather interesting project featuring a young Ry Cooder, Larry Knechtel, and Jim Gordon who would become Derek & the Dominos drummer, among others. Long-time Beach Boys collaborator Mike Deasy appears on sitar under the pseudonym Lybuk Hyd (as well as under his own name), and also Mike Melvoin who has appeared on album credits all over the place but covered his pension by arranging all those Partridge Family albums in the seventies.

This is supposed to be a raga album but really that only applies for the most part because of the sitars being played. The guitar tuning doesn’t sound like the modal or open tuning you’d expect in raga music, but rather is decidedly blues-based for the most part. The arrangements also have lots of western characteristics. This is to be expected because we’re talking about Ry Cooder here, but I thought this was worth pointing out.

There’s also a lot of contemporary psych influence in the arrangements, not surprising considering this was recorded in the latter sixties. The arrangements are disjointed at times, and the abruptness of some of the tempo and thematic shifts would catch most people who didn’t grow up on acid-laced music off- guard a little.

There’s almost no singing on the album which is okay with me because these are all consummate musicians in the throws of perfecting their various skills and the energy that went into these sessions is apparent even when listening to the tracks more than forty years later.

The album for the most part consists of four “ragas” that as near as I can tell are all nature (sun)-based in theme, each with multiple sub-sections that are either variations on a theme, derivatives, or simply musical equivalents of wandering off the path for a stretch. A serious musician will find plenty to analyze here, but for amateur fans like me this is simply a fun record to play once and a while for a somewhat dated breath of fresh air. Music like this isn’t made much these days.

Most people have heard the late sixties Indian-influenced records of the pop masters from the such the Beach Boys, Beatles, Manfred Mann and the like. If you want to hear how some of the more successful independent musicians incorporated those raga sounds into their own art, this is an excellent primer. Four stars for the originality, creativity and all-star cast.

peace