Within You and Without Understanding

I woke up today to tend a pukey son...and (both things are, I assure you, completely unrelated!) to Dauber's Facebook status about The Beatles song 'Baby You're a Rich Man'...surely one of their least known (and therefore amongst the least 'loved') songs. In fact I had to play it to remember exactly how it went (I can internalise most of the group's work without actually playing it).

Like 'Hey Bulldog' (prior to the reissue of Yellow Submarine a few years ago when it was restored to the movie), 'Bad Boy', 'Old Brown Shoe' and a few other B-sides it is one of the tracks that just don't get played too often by most fans...

...But they are still not the LEAST played, nor the least understood...those honours go, undoubtedly, to George's 'Indian' tracks. I know that many 'fans' skip those whenever they encounter them! There's 'Love You To' from Revolver, 'The Inner Light' (B-side of Lady Madonna) and, of course 'Within You, Without You' now track 8 of 'Pepper' but, for so long, the first song on side two and easy to skip even on LP!

When I first discovered The Beatles I thought these were 'funny' songs...I used to listen to them all together after dressing up in robes, wearing a wig and beads, lighting joss-sticks and sometimes even cooking a curry! But there is a serious parallel here with a problem I encountered many times later in life when I became a teacher...most people (and it is especially true for young ones) LIKE what they UNDERSTAND and tend to shun or mock what they don't!

My ambivalence towards these songs (I neither particularly liked them nor dislliked them...they just were...) was not helped by the reference book I trusted in those days to teach me about The Beatles: I had (on almost permanent loan from the library, then my own copy) a rather useful LP sized tome called 'An Illustrated Record' by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler. This book told the group's story in chronlogical order, listed the recordings (including who sang what - useful until I was able to tell by myself every time!) and it reviewed the albums song by song. Carr and Tyler's bias against George Harrison was evident to me even when I was a lad...but, in retrospect, it truly is appalling! Having given half a page to A-side 'Lady Madoona' they dismiss George's flip-side with a single line - the highlight of which is made up of three words: 'feeble, trancendental tune'. Their treatment of George throughout the rest of the book is rarely much better!

I had to teach Indian Music as part of the National Curriculum (the proscribed set of orders given by the British Parliament to its schoolteachers) and, of course, it was only when I studied it myself in order to teach it that I began to UNDERSTAND it...and George's three songs began to make musical sense to me!

In brief (and this is a very simplified precis, so don't jump down my throat!) Indian music consists of four elements:

• a drone - much the same as in bagpipes or hurdy-gurdy. The drone is played on an instrument called the tambura (or tanpura, depending on which book you read). The tambura is very similar to a sitar (the main melodic instrument in much Indian music). The main difference between the two is that, because the tambura only plays the drone, it is not decorated and made an ornate object of beauty as its more illustrious sister is! The drone usually consists of three alternating notes - in our parlance the key-note (tonic), the fifth above it and the next tonic a fourth above that...back to the fifth and then the first note again to repeat the pattern (so, in C it would be C-G-C1-G-C-G-C1-G etc). Well, that's a rough idea anyway!

(TRY IT - if you have an instrument handy try playing that pattern - letting the notes 'ring' so they overlap works best)

• a raga - this roughly equates to our scale but, in reality, is so much more. Whereas we have major, harmonic minor and melodic minor (and modes from a bygone era) there are some 350 different ragas in Indian Music - each related to a time of day, mood, colour or feeling. You would not play a morning raga in the evening, for instance - it just wouldn't happen traditionally! Indian melodies are made up of the notes in the chosen raga, usually beginning with a straght series (scale) up and down and getting more and more complex as the peice develops.

(TRY IT - if you have that instrument handy try playing an afternoon raga - marwa:

C Db E F# A B C then down C B A F# E Db C (put it with the drone!)

• a tala (or tal) - tala is made up from 2 Indian words meaning clap and dance...and there are some 280 or so talas you can choose from. Each is a rhythm pattern (or cycle) of different lengths and with accented 'beats' and 'silent' ones. The most cmmonly used tala by far is Tintal - a 16 beat tala with accents on 1st, 5th and 13th beats and a 'wave' or silent beat on the 9th. Although the tala traditionally stays the same throughout a single piece the music does get faster and faster!
• improvisation - yes, all Indian music is traditionally improvised! You choose an appropriate raga, choose a rhythm cycle, add a drone and...off you go (within 'form advising' guidelines). So, no two performances should ever be identical! (In these days of worldwide recording it is hard for artists to adhere to this tradition - if an audience wants to hear something they are familiar with through previous listening then 'the audience knows best' is the oft-followed maxim!)

Listen for these elements not just in the next Indian Music you hear (probably over a Lamb Bhoona in the local Tandoori House) but also in George's songs - they are there to some extent! We had 'Pepper' on in the car today and 'Within You, Without You' is a good example in which to hear some, if not all, of these elements.

(If you still have that instrument handy use the same drone as before while improvising with a 'scale' of E F G A Bb C D Eb. I have no idea if this is a 'real' raga...but most of our 'modes' are also ragas and there are 350 of them so it's 'quite likely' it is! Oh look...you're playing 'Within You, Without You'!!!)

I sincerely hope I haven't gone over the heads of 'non-muso' readers today, that was not my intention. My original aim in writing this blog is not just to entertain and edify but also to educate - something my general health now prevents me from doing as I once did. So, if I lost you somewhere above, please forgive me...and do come back again! If you had that instrument handy I hope you had fun - bet you never thought you'd be improvising authentic Indian music in about 5 minutes! But there you are.

Maybe Roy Carr and Tony Tyler should have tried it - they may understood poor George a bit better - or maybe they could have created something a little better than his 'feeble, trancendental tune'!