This work is a celebration of the awakening of humanity that has come like a soothing rain. It is a live performance that is filled with joy, introspection and transcendent passages of brilliance. Initially, the theme was composed/improvised following the loss of my uncle, David Trelawney Nichols, in April 2020 as a celebration of the joy he brought to my life and that of so many others.

Raag Megh, a pentatonic raga, was used to generate it’s motifs and harmonic movements. Raag Megh is particularly useful for blues because it lies somewhere between major and minor. This raga derives from the Kafi Thaat, which we know in the West as the Dorian mode. Accordingly, I have used occasional passing notes for gamaka and meend (bends and ornaments) that derive from Raag Kafi.

Megh is often associated with the monsoon season, I have tried to capture the sinuous texture that I learned from observing the recordings of Ustad Bahauddin Dagar, one of the living avatars of the Dhrupad style. I cannot claim for the performance to accurately project the style of any particular gharana or school of musical practice, as I lack the years of hard training that a shishya undergoes to in order to become a pandit. I discovered in the process of composing this piece that Raag Megh can become Raag Durga using murchana (modulation) if the Ma (4th) of Megh becomes the the Sa (root) of Durga. Some of my melodic passages sound more typical of Durga, but the drone notes I used are not common practice.

My Taylor 352ce was tuned to sus2 tuning for this performance, which gives the proper drone notes for the raag. This was an early experiment with "phase tuning." The individual strings of the 6 courses of the 12 string guitar are tuned slightly off pitch with one flat and the other sharp, so they sound as the intended pitch only when played together.

Megh:
Sa Re ma Pa ni Sa
I M2 P4 P5 m7 I
C D F G Bb C D F
Durga: Sa Re ma Pa Dha Sa
I M2 P4 P5 M6 I

This an excerpt from a Facebook live video recorded with a Shure MV88+ in April . My 12 string guitar was plugged into an Effectrode Delta-Trem into a Supro 1605R. The audio has been mastered using Izotope Ozone and IK TRSuite..

Thank you! Namaste! Paz y Amor!