NATIONAL LAW INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY,

BHOPAL

In partial fulfilment of the requirement of the project on the subject of English-III of B.A.,
L.L.B (Hons.), Third Trimester

Submitted on 25th March 2015

INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC

Submitted to:
Prof. Mukesh Shrivastava
(Professor of English)

Submitted by:
Udyan Arya Shrivastava
(2014 BALLB 98)

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PREFACE
I feel great pleasure in presenting this project. I hope that readers will find the project
interesting and insightful. The project contains investigative study of elements of Indian
spirituality in Western popular music.
Every effort is made to keep the project error free. I would gratefully acknowledge any
suggestions to improve the project to make it more useful.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
On completion of this Project it is my present privilege to acknowledge my profound
gratitude and indebtedness towards my teachers for their valuable suggestions and
constructive criticism. Their precious guidance and unrelenting support kept me on the right
track throughout the project. I gratefully acknowledge my deepest sense of gratitude to Prof.
Mukesh Shrivastava, who provided me with this opportunity and guided me throughout the
project work.

Udyan Arya Shrivastava

(2014 BALLB 98)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. 2
2) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... 3
3) INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 5
4) INDIAN MUSIC & PHILOSOPHY IN THE WEST: THE INITIAL YEARS ................... 6
i) Ravi Shankar and the Introduction of Indian Music in the West....................................................... 6
ii) Mahesh Yogi & the popularisation of Indian Spirituality in the West .............................................. 7
5) JOHN COLTRANE & THE INTEGRATION OF INDIAN CONCEPTS IN JAZZ .......... 9
i) Influences .......................................................................................................................................... 9
ii) Ragas in Coltranes Work: A Love Supreme & Ascension......................................................... 10
iii) Om ................................................................................................................................................ 11
6) INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN ROCK & POP: THE BEATLES......................................... 12
i) George Harrison & Ravi Shankar ................................................................................................... 12
ii) Within You, Without You .............................................................................................................. 13
iii) The Inner Light ............................................................................................................................. 14
7) CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 16
i) A Note on the Selections ................................................................................................................. 16
8) BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 17
i) Books .............................................................................................................................................. 17
ii) Articles ............................................................................................................................................ 17

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INTRODUCTION
A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in
language, or diverse in interest.
: - T.S. Eliot 1
Bob Dylan once said, All art is love and theft (also the title of his 31 st studio album, itself
borrowed from a book by Eric Lott). What he meant was that artists copy almost everything
and art is that process of reinvention. In a sense art is inspiration and reapplication, making
something new out of something old.
Popular music is also art. In its early days, the popular music of the West borrowed from
sources such as 19th Century minstrelsy music, African American music and blues, country
and folk traditions. In later phases of its evolution, even more diverse sources came to be
incorporated into the music, each creating a niche and later a genre of its own.
The Indian influence on Western popular music is also a part of this process. It came into
being when Western musicians became acquainted with Indian music and philosophy. This
was a part of a larger process by which Indian concepts were introduced in the West in the
50s and 60s.
In this project Ill look at how Indian music and philosophy came to be introduced in the
west, the peculiar way it was presented as a part of 1960s counterculture in the West and how
different musicians became a part of it. Ill limit myself to two genres, namely Rock and Jazz,
and focus on popular pieces of music from each genre, explicitly tinted with Indian influence
and infusing concepts from Indian spirituality into their mix. In the end Ill look at the wider
amalgamation of Indian spiritual concepts into Western Popular Music and what it portends
for both Indian as well as western cultures.

T.S. Eliot, Philip Massinger, The Sacred Wood, New York:

http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html on 20 March 2015.
1

Bartleby.com.

Available at

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INDIAN MUSIC & PHILOSOPHY IN THE WEST: THE INITIAL

YEARS
During colonial times Indian culture, including Indian music and philosophy, were seen as
backward and unsustainable. The ideas they expressed were inconsistent with Western ideals
and thus it was regressive to study them. The German philosopher Hegel perhaps best
summarised this position by keeping India out of his study of history as, according to him, its
history shows no progress, and has therefore nothing to teach the Western observer. 2 This
eurocentrism and contempt for alien cultures was not new and was the main reason that the
rush of Indian ideas in the West could not take place in the colonial period.
After independence, with what modern historians would identify as a post-colonial vigour,
Indian concepts, ideas, philosophy and music began to flood the West. The first generation of
Indians began to settle abroad, taking their cultures with them. Indian musicians began to tour
the West and books on Indian philosophy became increasingly popular in Western markets.
For the purpose of this project, its sufficient to describe two of these encounters. Firstly, how
Ravi Shankar, an Indian sitarist and composer, introduced Indian music in the West and
secondly, how Maharshi Mahesh Yogi introduced Indian philosophy, in the form of
Transcendental Meditation (TM), to Western audiences.
RAVI SHANKAR AND THE INTRODUCTION OF INDIAN MUSIC IN THE WEST
Ravi Shankar was one of the best-known exponents of the sitar in the second half of the 20th
century as well as a composer of Hindustani classical music. 3
Shankars first international exposure was when he performed as part of a cultural delegation
in the Soviet Union in 1954. After being critically acclaimed abroad, he resigned from AIR in
1956 to tour the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. He played for smaller
audiences and educated them about Indian music, incorporating ragas from the South Indian
Carnatic music in his performances, and recorded his first LP album Three Ragas in London,
released in 1956.

2
3

Pankaj Mishra. From the ruins of empire: The intellectuals who remade Asia. Macmillan, 2012.
"Ravi Shankar." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 22 March 2015.

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In 1958, Shankar participated in the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the United
Nations and UNESCO music festival in Paris. From 1961, he toured Europe, the United
States, and Australia, and became the first Indian to compose music for non-Indian films.
His popularity increased in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with
violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. Shankar engaged Western
music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra, and toured the world in the 1970s and
1980s, establishing himself as an important figure in World music.
MAHESH YOGI & THE POPULARISATION OF INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN THE WEST
Mahesh Prasad Varma, popularly known as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was an Indian
spiritualist who developed the Transcendental Meditation technique and was the leader and
guru of a worldwide organization that has been characterized in multiple ways, mostly as a
new religious movement.
The Maharishi's 1986 book, Thirty Years Around the World, gives a detailed account of his
world tours. He began touring the World in 1958 and visited several countries including
France, UK, USA and Germany. His 1962 world tour included visits to Europe, India,
Australia and New Zealand. In Britain, he founded a branch of the Spiritual Regeneration
Movement. The year concluded in California where the Maharishi began dictating his book
The Science of Being and Art of Living, which sold more than a million copies and was
published in fifteen languages.
In 1967, the Maharishi's fame increased and his movement gained greater prominence when
he became the "spiritual advisor to the Beatles", though he was already well-known among
young people in the UK and had already had numerous public appearances that brought him
to the Beatles' attention. They met in London in August 1967 and the Beatles went to study
with the Maharishi in Bangor, Wales, before travelling to Rishikesh, India. Although they fell
out later, his influence introduced the Beatles to Indian spirituality, which would influence
their lives and music from that point onwards.
The Maharishi is reported to have trained more than 40,000 TM teachers, taught the
Transcendental Meditation technique to "more than five million people" and founded
thousands of teaching centers and hundreds of colleges, universities and schools.

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His influence in other fields notwithstanding, hes still most widely recognised as the
Beatles Guru and is credited with popularising Indian spirituality and developing an
interest in Indian philosophy abroad.

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JOHN COLTRANE & THE INTEGRATION OF INDIAN

CONCEPTS IN JAZZ
Jazz emerged in many parts of the United States in the form of independent popular musical
styles, all linked by the common bonds of African American and European American musical
parentage with a performance orientation. 4 Jazz is very difficult to define in precise terms and
for it to be understood even faintly, it has to be experienced. There is special emphasis on
individual performance in Jazz and so the music itself sets no limits. Jazz, therefore, can also
be understood as a musical tradition.
As a genre, the scope of Jazz is very wide and encapsulates a range of diverse influences,
including Indian ones. An empirical study of all these influences is beyond the scope of this
project paper. However, since Jazz itself is a performance oriented art form, the journey of
one Jazz musician, namely John Coltrane (widely regarded as one of the greatest
saxophonists the genre has produced), should provide insight into the music and its tryst with
Indian philosophy and spirituality.
John Coltrane was at the forefront of many important directions in jazz in the 1950s and
1960s, including those that have been labelled hard bop, modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, and
world music. One interest that became an increasingly dominant focus for him in his later
years was the study of Indian music and spirituality. While Coltranes music remained firmly
rooted in jazz, this exploration was an important part of the development of Coltranes
personal style from the early 1960s to the end of his life in 1967. 5
INFLUENCES
Despite Coltranes motivation to study the music of India, this exploration would not have
been possible without the existence of some available models. The Hindustani classical
musician Ravi Shankar, who was a pivotal figure in the popularization of Indian music in the
United States in the 1960s, seems to have filled this role for Coltrane. It is unclear exactly
when Coltrane first began listening to Shankar and Indian music, but his music seems to
exhibit Indian elements as early as 1959. Ravi Shankar was performing regularly in the

Bill Kirchner. The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Carl Clements. "John Coltrane and the integration of Indian concepts in jazz improvisation." Jazz Research
Journal 2.2 (2009): 155-175. p. 1
5

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United States after 1956, and Coltrane started paying particular attention to the music of Ravi
Shankar in early 1961.6
Coltrane was introduced to Shankar in 1964, and Shankar began to teach him about Indian
music. Regarding these lessons, Shankar said: I could give just bare beginning and main
things about Indian music and he became more and more interested. 7 Coltrane had intended
to spend six months studying with Shankar in 1967, but died before this could take place.
After meeting Ravi Shankar, Coltranes curiosity about India only increased. He started
studying various books including the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda and Mohandas
Gandhi. He was even aware of the works of the South Indian spiritual teacher and
philosopher J. Krishnamurti and practiced yoga.
RAGAS IN COLTRANES WORK: A LOVE SUPREME & ASCENSION
Coltrane imbedded many Indian ideas into his music. He shared the Indian belief that specific
ragas should be played at specific times of the day or night, and could be used as media to
induce a particular state of being and uses such labels as Morning, Sad and Evening, Gay
in place of the names of the ragas. Similarly, the North Indian classical idea that music could
have quite specific effects upon its listeners was appealing to Coltrane. His ideas regarding
the magical quality of music are evident from the following statement:
I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right
away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, Id like to play a certain song and he will
be cured; [] But what are these pieces and what is the road to travel to attain a
knowledge of them that I dont know. The true powers of music are still unknown.
To be able to control them, must be, I believe, the goal of every musician. Im
passionate about understanding these forces. I would like to provoke reactions in
the listeners to my music, to create a real atmosphere. Its in that direction that I
want to commit myself and to go as far as possible.
This same concept appears in a variety of Indian stories about the power of music. In Indian
mythology when properly performed, the Raga is believed to have the power to move the

6
7

Gerry Farrell. Indian music and the West. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. p. 170
Ibid. p. 197

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elements in nature, in man and in animal. Examples of performances in which Rag Dipak
generated intense heat and Rag Megha brought on torrential rains are cited to stake this claim.
Coltranes music, therefore, is a classic example of two very distinct genres, Hindustani
Classical and Jazz, coming together. Along with pieces such as India and Om, many of his
composition titles suggest broad spiritual concepts that might be associated with Indian and
other religious thought. For example, the titles A Love Supreme, Ascension,
Selflessness, or Meditations all evoke Hindu or Buddhist imagery or concepts, though one
might also associate them with various other non-Indian mystical religions. As one observer
put it, Coltrane became a theosophist of jazz In this respect, as well as musically, he has
been a powerful influence on many musicians since 8
OM
In the piece Om, Coltranes integration of Indian religion into his music is overt. The title
refers to the sound that represents the reverberations of all creation in Hinduism. The group
recites a chant at the beginning and end of this composition that was taken from the
Bhagavad Gita. The conclusion of this chant was: I, the oblation and I the flame into which
it is offered. I am the sire of the world and this worlds mother and grandsire. I am he who
awards to each the fruit of his action. I make all things clean. I am OmOMOMOM! This
is clearly derived from verses sixteen and seventeen of the ninth discourse of the Bhagavad
Gita in which Krisna, who has revealed himself to the warrior Arjuna as the incarnation of
the god Vishnu, explains how his divine essence permeates all things.
Carl Clements writes, In a general sense, the ideas of Om may hold a key to the
understanding of much of Coltranes later work, in that he seems to be increasingly trying to
break out of the conventional boundaries of jazz to express a universal consciousness. 9

8
9

C. Clements. p. 5
Ibid. p. 6

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INDIAN SPIRITUALITY IN ROCK & POP:

THE BEATLES
The most popular form of music in the West for the last 50 years has been Rock music. It too
draws from a long list of traditions including blues, folk, country and has incorporated even
more influences since its inception in the 1950s.
With the introduction of Indian music and spirituality in the West by the 1960s, as we have
already seen, Rock music, which had become the melting pot of all kinds of music, also came
to be influenced by Indian spirituality. To study the overall Indian influence on Rock music
would be beyond the scope of this project. This impact can however, be understood by
tracing the relationship with Indian spirituality of the most popular and influential rock
group of the era, The Beatles.
The largest selling band of all time, The Beatles occupy the central position in the history of
popular music. No discussion about pop culture in the 60s can be complete without a mention
of the band. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr have become so imbedded in our
imaginations that they hardly exist as individual humans and throughout their lives the
personas they adopted as part of the band followed them.
GEORGE H ARRISON & RAVI SHANKAR
The Beatles tryst with India began much before they met the Maharishi in 1967 and
accompanied him to India in 1968. Ravi Shankar, who had already developed quite a
following in the West, was introduced to George Harrison, the bands lead guitarist, in 1964
and they had developed what was both a close friendship and teacher-student (guru-shishya)
relationship.
Shankar taught Harrison how to play the sitar and gave him basic instructions in traditional
Indian music. This only developed Harrisons interest further and he began to read
voraciously about India. This was perhaps what most influenced him and his bandmates to
follow the Maharishi to India in 1968. In fact, Harrison was so enamoured by Indian
spirituality that he converted and became a Hindu in his later life. However, even before that
the music of the Beatles was showing specific Indian influences, from the use of sitar in
Norwegian Wood, which had otherwise nothing to do with India (which is why its not
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being discussed here), to the use of other Indian instruments like tabla and tanpura in Love
You To. Similarly, in Tomorrow Never Knows a tanpura drone plays throughout the song.
A sitar-type guitar is mixed. There's also a brief Carnatic-sounding violin in the mix.
Here Ill discuss two Beatles songs which are not only inspired by and in the tradition of
Indian Classical music, but also show some appreciation of Indian spiritual concepts and
Indian philosophy. (It should be noted here that both these songs overtly have Indian
elements and thus they were selected for this study. It can be argued that other songs like
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Im the Walrus or Sexy Sadie also have elements of
Indian spirituality, they are not overtly visible.)
WITHIN YOU, WITHOUT YOU
Recorded in March 196710 and released on the Beatles most celebrated studio album, Sgt.
Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, this song was one the bands most ambitious projects.
Although only Harrison, among the Beatles plays on the track, a group of uncredited Indian
musicians based in London play the rest of the instruments.
Let us take a look at the lyrics of the song:
We were talking, about the space between us all
And the people, who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse of truth, then it's far too late, when they pass away
[]
Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small,
And life flows on within and without you
The lyrics hint to the Indian spiritual concept that the world is an illusion. The last line (also
the refrain of the song) encapsulates the message of the song that the self is part of the
spiritual whole and it pervades everywhere. Harrison wrote these lyrics after contemplating
all that he had learned so far from his study of Indian philosophy.

10

Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago: Chicago Review
Press. 2005

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Although the Beatles are often dismissed as being too commercial, it is worthwhile to note
that this song has no commercial elements whatsoever in its mix, to the extent that listeners
uninitiated in Indian music would find it hard not only to appreciate the song, but also to
listen to it.
THE INNER LIGHT
The Inner Light is one of the lesser known songs in the Beatles repertoire. Originally
released as a B-side to their hit single Lady Madonna in 1968, it is a short but deeply
spiritual song. A look at the lyrics may again be helpful:
Without going out of my door
I can know all things on Earth
Without looking out of my window
I could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows
The less one really knows

Without going out of your door

You can know all things on Earth
Without looking out of your window
You could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows
The less one really knows

Arrive without travelling

See all without looking
Do all without doing

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On first hearing the music seems borrowed from any 60s Bollywood movie, with its use of
sitar and its catchy tune. But to understand its spiritual meaning one should take a look at
how the song came to be written and composed.
In his autobiography I, Me, Mine, Harrison writes that the song was inspired by a letter from
Juan Mascar, a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge University, who sent him a copy of his book
Lamps of Fire (a wide-ranging anthology of religious writings, including some from the Tao
Te Ching and other Indian and Chinese sources) and asked him: "... might it not be interesting
to put into your music a few words of Tao, for example. Harrison states: "In the original
poem, the verse says Without stirring abroad / One can know the whole world / Without
looking out of the window / One can see the way of heaven.".' And so to prevent any
misinterpretations and also to make the song a bit longer I did repeat that as a second
verse but made it: "Without going out of your door / You can know all things on earth /
Without looking out of your window / You can know the ways of heaven" so that it included
everybody"11
It is enlightening to note how Harrison could transform such deep spiritual wisdom into a pop
song.

11

Ibid

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CONCLUSION
The basic tenets of Indian spirituality, that the world is an illusion, the concept of karma and
reincarnation, have sneaked into Western popular music to an extent that ignorant western
observers may see them as hippie concepts.
Dozens of western musicians, from the Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane to the Beatles, have
been influenced by and have incorporated Indian spirituality into their music, presenting it to
their audiences as wild exoticism or life changing Oriental wisdom.
The musicians were no doubt influenced by Indian musicians and mystics who toured the
West like the sitarist Ravi Shankar and spiritual teachers like Mahesh Yogi and Rajneesh
(later known as Osho), but the music they created was indeed original and worthy of
appreciation (and academic study) irrespective of its origins.
A NOTE ON THE SELECTIONS
In the writing of this project paper I had to resist the temptation of including many other
bands and musicians including the Rolling Stones, Pattie Boyd, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin,
Oasis, M.I.A. and many others. My selection of the Beatles and John Coltrane was perhaps
motivated by preference of their music and a deep personal appreciation of their work.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
- BOOKS Farrell, Gerry. Indian music and the West. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Available at
http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/toc/z2009_128.pdf
Kirchner, Bill. The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2005.
MacDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago:
Chicago Review Press. 2005.
Mishra, Pankaj. From the ruins of empire: The intellectuals who remade Asia. Macmillan,
2012.
- ARTICLES Clements, Carl. "John Coltrane and the integration of Indian concepts in jazz
improvisation." Jazz

Research

Journal 2.2

(2009):

155-175.

Available

at

http://indiamusicweek.org/files/coltrane.pdf
Deschnes, Bruno. "The Interest of Westerners in Non-Western Music." The World of
Music (2005): 5-15. Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/41700004
Eliot, T.S. Philip Massinger, The Sacred Wood, New York: Bartleby.com. Available at
http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html
Farrell, Gerry. "Reflecting surfaces: the use of elements from Indian music in popular
music

and

jazz."

Popular

Music

7.02

(1988):

189-205.

Available

at

http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261143000002750
"Ravi Shankar." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 22 March 2015. Available
at http://www.biography.com/people/ravi-shankar-9480456

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