This is a combination of different interviews and a concert review from the same time period. I first met Tabla player Sandip (pronounced San-deep) Burman when he played a local show with his Hybrid fusion group, East Meets Jazz. This was an all-star ensemble put together by the little known, but determined Calcutta, India native. The band featured drummer Steve Smith, violinist Jerry Goodman (Mahavishnu Orchestra), keyboard/harmonica player & arranger Howard Levy (Bela Fleck), saxophonist Dave Pietro (Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra), and bassist Victor Bailey (Weather Report). How Sandip managed to put together this ensemble is a story of determination.

Steve Smith needs no introduction to the drumming community. Known for his years with Journey, and his own group, Vital Information, Steve is also a dedicated student of Indian music and rhythms. Besides working with Sandip, he has worked with the esteemed tabla Master, Zakir Hussain, and South Indian Tavil master, Karuna Murthy.

Sandip Burman’s “East Meets Jazz”

It’s impossible to not be affected by tabla player Sandip Burman’s energy. Much like his drumming, the Calcutta, India native speaks at a brisk pace, punctuated by hearty laughter. Sandip began formal study of the tabla drums at the age of six with Pandit Shyamal Bose of Calcutta, one of India’s distinguished tabla maestros. While still not well known in America, he has come a long way from his impoverished boyhood in Durgapur, to playing tabla alongside some of India’s most prominent Classical musicians (including Pandit Ravi Shankar and Pandit Hari Prasad Cahurasia), as well as the jazz and fusion elite. His warmth and sincerity has opened doors and won over musicians who at first asked, “Sandip who?”

   “I came all the way from Calcutta to this country,” he says. “I came via transcendental meditation and Guru Maharishi Yogi’s sponsorship. People helped me out, to live in somebody’s house. I started from scratch man. When I came here I didn’t know English. Now I say, ‘What’s up man?’ I’ve played from an Indian restaurant all the way to the Kennedy Center. That’s a pretty big jump! I played at the restaurant, where I got paid fifty dollars, or even thirty-five maybe, all the way up to $2,500, or even paid $5,000 for the Telluride Bluegrass (Festival). I got a chance, got a blessing to work on stage, sharing with all these Indian giants and all the way to Jack DeJohnette, Bela Fleck, Victor Wooten, Paul McCandless, Andy Narrell, Howard Levy, and Glen Velez. So that’s how I started man.”

   The culmination of his dreams is his “East Meets Jazz” ensemble that will be touring coast to coast during August and September (2001). The all-star group features such musicians as Howard Levy (Bela Fleck), Steve Smith (Journey, Vital Information), Victor Bailey (Weather Report), Jerry Goodman (Mahavishnu Orchestra), and Randy Brecker (The Brecker Brothers).

    I spoke with Sandip about how he came to put together a band of such well-known musicians. “Every year I wanted to create something new, you know, like Shakti or the Mahavishnu Orchestra, like that kind, but a little different obviously. I wanted to do my idea of a rhythmic thing. Then I just started to basically knock on doors. I’d call and say, ‘Hey, you wanna play?’ 

   The response was, ‘Who the hell are you?’

   ‘This is Sandip Burman from India, Calcutta. I want to play’

   They’d say, ‘OK, what do you do?’

   ‘I play tabla.’

   ‘Well, do you have a record?’

   ‘No, I don’t have one.’

   ‘Can you come here?’

   I said, ‘I don’t drive.’

   ‘Well, who do you play with?’

   Then I said who.

   ‘Well, you must be a serious player. OK, we’ll do it. What are we doing?’

   I said, ‘I don’t know. Let’s do it.’

   So Jack DeJohnette said, ‘OK. Let’s do it.’

   So I called up Bela Fleck and said, ‘Let’s play.’ I knocked on the door to Stanley Clarke. He said, ‘Who? What do you want?’ So I think people got tired of putting up with me and said, ‘Let’s play with this guy and shut him up.’ (laughs)

   After coming to America with nothing, knocking on doors and making contact with these musicians was the only thing to do. “You know the (Hindu Holy) book Bahgavad Gita? I said something from it, ‘Activity is better than inertia. Act, but with self-control. If you aren’t living, you can’t even sustain your own body.’ That means it’s better to play gigs than starve to death. So go, move your body and play some gigs man! So I called Randy Brecker and said, ‘This is Sandip. You want to do some gigs?’

   He said, ‘You have to talk to my agent.’

   I said, ‘I’m not going to talk to your agent.’

   He said, ‘OK, OK. Send me the fax. What music?’

   ‘I don’t know’

   ‘Wait a minute. Is it written?’

   ‘In my Indian notation.’

   ‘That’s not gonna work.’

   I sent it to Howard Levy in my Indian notation. He called me back, ‘What the hell is that? Is this the Sanskrit language or what?’

   Then my friend Jerry Allan transposed everything. I called Jerry Goodman and he didn’t return the call. (laughs) Then I met Howard and he said, ‘That’s complicated stuff.’ Then I was looking for a drummer. I talked to Howard and Jerry because Jack couldn’t do it and I needed a good drummer. So Jerry suggested Steve Smith and I called him on his cell phone, ‘This is Sandip Burman.’

   ‘OK, what do you want?”

   ‘Steve, I’m not from the phone company. I’m not trying to sell pizza. I’m trying to sell a gig playing Indian stuff.’

   He said, ‘Oh yeah, I love Indian stuff.’

   I said, ‘That works for me.’

   So then I talked to Randy and then I needed a bass player. I had toured with Victor Wooten, but he was busy with the Flecktones. So then I called Stanley and he couldn’t do it. Then he introduced me to Victor Bailey. His people told him I was a legitimate guy. So that’s how the whole group happened. We’re going to rehearse and then start playing on the 19th.”

    With this combination of Indian music meeting Western jazz players, I asked what we could expect. “Wildness.” He then went through some of the various time signatures the music was in and sang out some of the tunes while clapping, including a wild version of the “Mission Impossible” theme in 8 1/2. “KVS Vinay, a  violinist, helped me arrange the music. I flew to Boston and met with him. It would be hard to do this without him.”

   Sandip’s energy and enthusiasm is contagious. How else could he just call up these musicians and convince them to tour playing his music? As he says, “I’m enjoying this life man. It’s better to do work than to not do anything.”

Sandip Explains It All

Sandip: [Learning tabla] In India, you have to stay in Guru’s house. The Guru is very respected. I was six years old when I started. My parents wanted me to play. In India it’s a very disciplined life and you go through your parents. You respect Guru.

I came here in 1989 and was sponsored in this country by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I go back and forth between here and India. I go to Mexico City and teach. I join with different people.

Discipline and practice. You have to eat it, drink it, dream it. There is nothing in the short way. Don’t learn it because you want to be a star. Get your ego out and give yourself to that. Act, but with self-control. This will sustain you. You have to work hard. be very disciplined. Learn, practice, learn -- that’s the way I learned. There is no “why,’ why I am doing this. You just follow the Guru and you will find the answers.

So I started to play with a lot of people. I didn’t learn tabla because I wanted to. I didn’t know I would come to America, or Paris, or to Mexico City. Or have students in Mexico City, San Diego, or Tampa. Or playing with all these people. You do your duty, you know? You don’t do it because you are going to get a gig. Get rid of all your attachments. Lord Krishna said, “Who are you? You are nothing.” Get yourself out of the attachments, like saying, “Oh, I’m playing good.” No, it’s not going to happen. You don’t have to find Carnegie hall, Carnegie Hall will find you. I didn’t know these people, only Howard. They are all much bigger than me. Did I think that I was going to do it here? Definitely no. You come into your world and do your duty.

I’ve played with a lot of Indian artists. I met Bela Fleck at a concert and then we started to play. Then I was on his record. [This is not a hobby, like, “Oh, I play tabla.”] You have to bow down to your Guru.

Steve Smith Explains It All

The first two gigs went well under the circumstances. There are some cultural differences between us. There was not enough rehearsal. We had only one five hour rehearsal. Sandip thought we would grasp it easier. The music is very difficult for western musicians to play. It’s incredibly complex rhythmically and hard work for all of us. Right now we’re really concentrating on reading (the charts) and getting comfortable with the music. So it would have been nice to have at least four days of rehearsal. I got to Howard Levy’s house a day and a half early and we went over the music. Then Jerry Goodman came over at the end of the second day. So we had a bit of a head start. Most of the tunes we saw for the first time at rehearsal. Some we saw four or five days before.

Back in the Mahavishnu Orchestra, they would play (an odd note grouping) and change the downbeat. In the Indian style, which I’m just learning, it’s more or less played over a steady pulse. So it’s like what we call displacement, because every time it drops a beat. This song is in 5 1/4. That’s like 5/4 plus a 16th note. So five times four 16th notes is 20, plus the extra 16th is 21.

We did our best with the music so far and it will slowly develop. We’re all still reading charts. It would have been nice to have four days of rehearsal. The first time we saw some of the charts was at the rehearsal. Howard wrote out the charts in Western notation.

Because of studying with Gary Chaffee [at Berklee] I learned a lot about rhythms, subdivisions, and groupings, and raw materials that make up the rhythmic stuff of Indian music. So I can relate to it on that level of beats, rhythms, phrases and phrasing over four or odd times. I don’t understand how Sandip arrived at the rhythms. It’s been very serious process with a lot of math involved, and interpretation in there. There are math equations where he’s tried to expand one thing and contract another. It all has to make sense in a mathematical way. There’s symmetry to the music. So it’s real different from how we think of rhythm. It’s been very educational so far, and it’s only been a few days. It’s like going back to school.

As long as we’re close enough together and I play soft enough, it feels pretty good and locks up. He doesn’t have the sort of Western concept of “grooving hard.” He doesn’t necessarily have a strong pulse like if I was to play with an Afro-Cuban player. It feels a little more ethereal. So I have to be very sensitive and try to play underneath him, because it’s a very delicate sound. I try to play a real supportive role and get underneath as much as I can because he’s playing so much on top. It’s interesting to listen to a lot of the things we play because he’s playing things that are hundreds and thousands of years old. It reminds me of Billy Cobham with Mahavishnu, fusion type of drumming. I can hear where a lot of that came from. Sandip really gets a lot of momentum going, this forward motion, and then some nice phrases that he plays with ease, no matter what the time signature.

I altered my set up so I could have the right sounds. And I’m having a ball with the other guys. I had recorded with Jerry and Howard (with bassist Oteil Burbridge) for Tone center. The CD is The Stranger’s Hand. I had worked for years with Victor Bailey in Steps. I just met David and love his playing. Later in the tour, Randy Brecker is playing and I’ve played with him.

It’s a very different for all of us. The main attraction is the novelty and the opportunity to learn something new. Because it’s not like it’s paying a bunch of bucks. We’re just doing it because we love the music; love to play with each other, like to learn -- the whole experience of it. It’s pretty genuine.

Backstage Before the Show

Steve Smith: Howard’s the guy who figured this stuff out. He deserves a medal or a Grammy.

Howard Levy: I wrote the charts. This was really a bitch man.

SS: This song is in 5 1/4. That’s like 5/4 plus a 16th note. So five times four 16th notes is 20, plus the extra 16th is 21. That’s if you think of it in 16th notes, it’s actually written in 8th notes.

HL: It’s actually in 21/2. I wrote it in 8th notes to be legible. I had to make all these decisions of like, which subdivisions to notate it in. So I tried doing the one that looked most like it sounded.

SS: Most of the basic pulse doesn’t change. But for us to write it like that, it doesn’t identify the phrasing that we need to interpret. So to get the phrasing, he had to write it so it looks like reading a Frank Zappa chart upside down!

HL: That one was the trickiest one to write out. (Sings the rhythmic melody while clapping a straight pulse) I stayed up until four in the morning writing that out, practically having anxiety attacks until I figured out how to do that. I couldn’t write the tune out until I could do that, because I realized that was the essence of it. You have to be able to feel this as much as possible. At a certain point I gave up trying to write it one way because the cross-bar timing structures were so strong. It’s funny, because at one point it’s like a “Partita Alto” rhythm. Sandip’s hearing them as groups of seven: 1-2-123, 1-2-123, 1-2-1-2-123, etc. He’s hearing them as sevens, nines, fives -- a lot of these things are just math. You hear them in a lot of cultures and they call them different things. That one lick we all play together is like a James Brown funk lick. (sings it) Or like Junior walker’s “Shotgun.”

Howard Levy

Jerry Goodman: The drumming aspect of this band has overtaken the lives of everybody in the band. The drum rhythms are vital to all aspects of the tonalities. And how they apply to the rhythms is so academic at times that you have to not even think of the melody and play the melody rhythmically.

SS: Even playing the melodies it’s still like playing the drums because the tunes are written around the drum rhythms. In western music there’s usually a pulse going on underneath that everything flows over. But the way Sandip’s written this music they’re one and the same. The melody was written from the drum rhythms. So you can’t skate. (laughs)

JG: However, we have been on thin ice. (big laughs all around)

Question: Do you feel you had a head start with these types of rhythms because you were in the Mahavishnu Orchestra?

JG: Not really. It’s quite a different style. Although Mahavishnu played in odd meters, it grooved differently. It sat somewhere for a while, for long periods of time. This just keeps moving along.

HL: One of the reasons why is a lot of this rhythmic stuff is South Indian. It’s very much into extended compositions with lots of mathematical permutations.

SS: And melody and rhythm being one.

HL: Whereas the North Indian stuff is more like the sitar and tabla stuff we’re used to hearing.

Sandip Burman: I’ll let Steve explain what we do. [Working with Steve] It’s fantastic, it’s good. He plays a groove, I play a groove. Sometimes he plays a melody, then I play a melody.

The Concert

This was the third date of their four-week tour. The band had met in Sandip’s American base in Chicago for one day of intense rehearsals. “It’s like going back to school,” said Steve Smith, “you can’t just groove.” Howard Levy had written Sandip’s music out in Western notation for the band and they were all reading from charts onstage. “It’s a challenge,” said bassist Bailey.

 

The first song had the band members keeping close eye contact with head and arm cues bringing in different sections. If they needed more rehearsal, it didn’t show. Bailey and Smith locked into the odd meter groove and propelled the band. Goodman’s violin, whether playing slow melodies or lightning fast runs, soared across the music. Peitro stood center stage and threw himself headfirst into the music, dancing and swaying. Levy blew a mean harmonica. Bending notes and playing in between the notes, he sounded like a cross between the blues and an Indian Raga. His solo burned and showed him to be one of the masters of the harmonica. On top of this, Sandip wove his intricate rhythms. Seated amid five small tabla drums, his fingers and hands were often a blur as he shook his head and smiled. After the song, he looked up and remarked, “I just learned a new word, groove. Right?”

 

Up next was Peitro’s composition, “Phoenix Rising.” Starting with a gentle piano/sax intro, Peitro built up the intensity. Having played in India, his sound was mournful and reminiscent of an Indian snake charmer. The band then came in with a lush rhythmic feel in five. Bailey’s slinky bass slid along on top of the percussion. A poignant moment came when the band dropped out, leaving the tabla and violin alone. Goodman’s gorgeous violin floated on top of the melodic pitched rhythms of Burman.

 

Smith then delivered a tasteful drum solo played with mallets on his small, four-piece Sonor “Jungle Kit.” His shifting rhythmic phrases added texture and density to his playing, showing he had already absorbed plenty of the eastern rhythmic concepts. Sandip started the next song off by singing rhythmic syllables. This is not “new age” music, but is rhythmically complex and based on Indian musical traditions going back hundreds, even thousands of years. Often all the instruments are playing the same rhythm in unison. The rhythm becomes the melody - the melody becomes the rhythm. Peitro and Burnam worked through a series of breakneck stops and starts, furiously flying through the different rhythmic changes.

 

Even with all the musical density, this is often very delicate music. The mostly acoustic band was amplified just enough to balance the instruments and allow the subtle nuances to be heard by the audience. Even Smith played most of the night with brushes or special sticks to keep the volume down. “I have to play underneath him (Sandip),” he explained. The tablas themselves are generally a set of two small drums. The “dayan” is played with the right hand. It is cylindrical and carved out of a solid piece of hard wood with a single head of about 5 1/2 inches in diameter. The “bayan” is played with the left hand. It is a hemispherical bowl shaped drum usually made of copper, brass, or bronze with a single head approximately 9 inches in diameter. Burman had one bayan and four dayan in different tunings that he would switch for different songs. At times, he used all five drums to play delicate melodic passages.

 

The second set started with a song called “5 1/4.” As Sandip explained, “That’s 5+5+5+5+one extra beat to make 21.”  This is music that is different than we are used to hearing. Accents fall in strange places and the downbeat shifts. It’s unlike the normal “groove” we hear on the radio. But in the hands of such master musicians as these, it doesn’t seem so foreign to your ears.

 

Victor Bailey pulled his stool up front next and said, “This is what we do in Philly, not what they do in India.” He was just 19 years old when he replaced the late Jaco Pastorius in Weather Report. Jaco had set the standard for the electric bass and was the young Bailey’s idol. Playing only his bass, he sang an amazing “vocalese” dedicated to Pastorius. Based on Jaco’s famous solo, “Continuum,” he called it “Do You Know Who He was?” With a soulful voice, the song was both touching and humorous.

 

Next, Smith came up front with just his drum stool and hi-hat cymbals. He too paid tribute, this time to the great jazz drummer Max Roach. Playing Roach’s “Mr. Hi-Hat” (which was Roach’s own tribute to the masterful drumming of the late Papa Joe Jones), he demonstrated amazing dexterity and command of the drum sticks. He played both on top and underneath the cymbals, with his sticks whirling and twirling, drawing out the different tones and nuances to form a complete musical statement.

 

Howard and Sandip then performed “Lips and Fingertips,” a duet that Levy had written for their past duo performances. All eyes were focused on Levy as he once again showed his harmonica mastery. He then sat down and played piano with his left hand while still playing harmonica. Burman joined in, fingers dancing across the drum heads. He amply showed why he is the rhythmic center for the band. The tablas are capable of a rich variety of tones based on where the finger strikes and pressure from the heel of the hand. His playing was both rhythmic and melodic.

 

For the encore, Burman came out alone and gave a short explanation of the Indian rhythmic system of “reduction and expansion.” This is a system where a rhythmic phrase is either shortened or lengthened each time it is played. This creates a sense of tension and release within the music itself. He then proceeded to once again display his prowess, as his fingers were a whirlwind, blurring across the drums, leaving the audience spellbound.

After the show

Victor Bailey: It’s a challenge (to play this music). You can’t relax.

Steve Smith: It’s hard to find people who want to play (challenging music), not just smooth jazz.

David Pietro: Indian rhythm is the most sophisticated in the world. Serious musicians all over the world are interested in it. As a saxophonist, in the West the rhythm is subservient to the melody and harmony. In India, the melody and harmony - well there really is no harmony - the rhythm is primary. It’s a completely different way of organizing music that I find very fascinating. I do a lot of jazz workshops at schools and I always teach that out of the three elements of harmony, melody, and rhythm, rhythm is the most important. I think that gets lost a lot of times. I find a lot of students today can play this altered chord over this chord, and they can play all the patterns, but if the rhythm is not there.... that for me is what it’s about.

All I really listen to is Indian and Brazilian music. I’m studying pandero and things from that side. I haven’t formally gone to a teacher for the Indian stuff. But I’ve done a lot of listening, toured India twice with Sandip and taken some lessons from musicians there. I’d like to study. I lived with a drummer for six years and we used to do duets all the time. So for me that rhythmic element of the music is there.

After Thought

The tour was cut short by the tragic events of 9/11. With all flights grounded, the band was stranded out on the East coast in Virginia. Steve tells a crazy story of renting a van and driving all the way back to his then home, north of San Francisco, on his own website.

Photos © Crystal G. Trowbridge & Michael Bettine (top photo of Steve, Jerry & Steve, Victor)