On An Overgrown Path

....towards a Pure Land for small string ensemble and orchestra by Jonathan Harvey describes, in the words of the composer, "a state of mind beyond suffering where there is no grasping... a model of the world to which we can aspire".  In the photo above I am interviewing Jonathan Harvey in August 2010. When the interview was finished I drove down from his house on the Sussex Downs and ate alone in a restaurant in Lewes. During my meal I listened to the interview again on headphones, and as I listened it became apparent that something rather special had been captured. This was confirmed when the interview was subsequently broadcast on Future Radio : how many contemporary composers have made the news - not arts - sections of the Guardian and the Telegraph in the same week? Very sadly, the interview was made even more special by Jonathan's untimely death two years later. Jonathan Harvey was a true Renaissance man, and in the interview he ranges from Britten, Stockhause

'The Internet I'd grown up with, the Internet that had raised me, was disappearing...The very act of going online, which had once seemed like a marvellous adventure, now seemed like a fraught ordeal. Self-expression now required such strong self-protection as to obviate its liberties and nullify its pleasures. Every communication was a matter not of creativity but of safety.... When I came to know it, the Internet was a very different thing.  It was a friend and a parent. It was a community without border or limit, one voice and millions, a common frontier that had been settled but not exploited by diverse tribes living amicably enough side by side, each member of which was free to choose their own name and history and customs.... Certainly, there was conflict, but it was outweighed by goodwill and good feelings - the true pioneering spirit.... You will understand, then, when I say that the Internet of today is unrecognizable ' - Edward Snowden Permanent Record 'I

For many children of the sixties a 'journey to the East' was a mandatory rite of passage. As a result one of the lasting impacts of the counterculture was the assimilation into Western culture of esoteric religions. The embrace of Vedanta and Zen Buddhism is well-documented, as is the music that it produced ranging from the Beatles' Indian period to John Cage's 4' 33". Less celebrated is the counterculture's engagement with the esoteric strand of Islam known as Sufism, an involvement that also produced important but overlooked music. Given the current preoccupation with Islam it is puzzling that more attention has not been paid to the green shoots of Sufism - a tradition with a benign history - that appeared in the West in the late 1960s. Earlier this year the film Blessed are the Strangers directed by young director Ahmed Peerbux premiered. But this film is selective in its coverage of 1960s Sufism, so this post attempts to fill in some conspicuous and