Title: | Psychic Phenomena |
Notice: | Please read note 1.0-1.* before writing |
Moderator: | JARETH::PAINTER |
Created: | Wed Jan 22 1986 |
Last Modified: | Tue May 27 1997 |
Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
Number of topics: | 2143 |
Total number of notes: | 41773 |
T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
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918.1 | Your comments, please!? | ATSE::FLAHERTY | Imagine... | Tue Dec 06 1988 12:05 | 7 |
Hi Bruce, How was the concert? A friend and I will be attending Sunday night's performance and we're anxious to hear your thoughts. Ro | |||||
918.2 | gyuto monks trip report | HYDRA::LARU | Let's get metaphysical | Tue Dec 06 1988 13:14 | 25 |
the concert was really great.... miles is sick and didn't show, so kitaro played in his place... he and philip glass and mickey hart played a spacey-cosmic kind of intro (sort of channelling musical deities created by the monks' meditation). then the monks began their chanting prayer, creating an aura in which those who were tuned in to their vibrations can let go of fear, anger, pain, and then begin to love... meanwhile another monk created a sand mandala... which was to be on display Sunday, and then dispersed into the Atlantic on Monday... i was sitting pretty far back and couldn't see a lot, so i just tried to get into a quiet state and absorb the sound. the acoustics in the cathedral are incredible! it was an awesome experience to _feel_ the prayer of the monks (there's finally an appropriate use of "awesome"). I don't think that there is an "opening act" for the monks in Boston; at least I haven't seen any advertised. But I highly recommend the experience to anyone who can get to hear the monks. btw, they are selling records and tapes and sweatshirts... I thought that a little odd, but then again, this is a benefit tour, with proceeds going to support [gyuto monk university] /bruce | |||||
918.3 | LEDS::BATES | Sic transit Gloria | Tue Dec 06 1988 21:48 | 23 | |
Thanks to Bruce's message and my response, I was able to drive down to New York with him and experience the event. The introductory music set the scene, as it were, for what was to come - it was an 'accessible' entry into the space created by the chanting of the monks. And for me, that was the overriding feeling - that their voices created a structure of sound that was palpable, that I sensed in the center of my self. Indeed, although I was distant from the altar and could see only certain movements, the sound was all. Like Bruce, I was somewhat taken aback by the T-shirts, and as a marketing person I'm thinking of offering some free consulting time to Tibet House to suggest gentle but very effective ways to help get the monks the resources they need. I'm going again on Sunday in Boston - the positive energy I gained from the event kept me on high until Monday. When I spoke with a friend of mine in Italy on Sunday, he said that to hear them at their monastery in Dharamsala was a highpoint in his own life. Gloria | |||||
918.4 | SHRFAC::BRUNDIGE | Save the Earth, Remake yourself | Fri Dec 09 1988 15:01 | 7 | |
Where and what time in Boston? Also does anyone have an address to send to, to get tapes? If so please post it here. Russ EW | |||||
918.5 | HYDRA::LARU | Let's get metaphysical | Fri Dec 09 1988 15:22 | 4 | |
7:30 pm at the Berklee Performance Center. I think they will be selling records, tapes, and cds at the benefit. | |||||
918.6 | Tickets ???? | POOL::WEINSTEIN | Fri Dec 09 1988 17:22 | 6 | |
If anyone has one extra ticket or knows where I might get one, I would be extremely grateful. My modem is unhealthy at home so if you can help me out you can call me collect at (617)643-2461. Or at work my DTN is 881-2451. OM MANI PAD NE OM | |||||
918.7 | More on the Monks | EXIT26::SAARINEN | Mon Dec 12 1988 13:08 | 9 | |
I attended the Gyuto Monk Choir at the Berklee Performance Center, and I tell ya they warmed my soul up, on a cold Fall night in Boston. I was particularily attracted to the resonating sound that seemed to vibrate my skull, from the sound of the chants the monks sang. From the heart to all sentient beings, the Terrific Goodness evoked from the chants, was a blessing and a healing to all, even to Dukakis, I'm sure. -Arthur | |||||
918.8 | Catalog? | SHRFAC::BRUNDIGE | Save the Earth, Remake yourself | Mon Dec 12 1988 14:58 | 6 |
Since I missed the concert, does anyone know an address to send to for tapes? Catalog? Thanks, Russ EW | |||||
918.9 | published opinion | HYDRA::LARU | Let's get metaphysical | Mon Dec 12 1988 19:11 | 105 |
[from The New Yorker, 12/12/88 - quoted w/o permission] Vibration It takes a leap of the imagination to describe the chanting of the Gyuto monks as song, or even as music. Its predominant sound is a sort of deep, pebbly growling, a note and a half below the bottom of most bass ranges, approaching the frequencies of garbage disposals and earthmoving machinery. For almost five hundred years, in ceremonies in Lhasa that sometimes lasted for days the monks visualized deities like Mahakala, a six-armed demonic protector who carried a rosary of human skulls and danced in a sea of fire. It was prayer, not performance. After the Chinese suppressed the Tibetan rebellion, in 1959, most of the Gyuto monks were imprisoned or executed, and the others scattered. Roughly ninety escaped through the mountains to northern India. There, shortly before dawn one day in the fall of 1964, Huston Smith, a philosophy professor on sabbatical from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discovered that each monk was capable of singing three-part harmony by himself--a deep bass B, a well-amplified, overtonal D-sharp near middle C, and a barely audible, whirring F-sharp nearly two octaves higher. "They began with low, guttural, monotonous chanting of a type that I'd heard before," Dr. Smith told us recently. "After about an hour, I dozed off, frankly. I came to with a start and I was surrounded with heavenly choirs. I thought, This is strange--they're singing in chords. Chords are a Western invention, of course. Then the choir blanked out and the cantor sang alone. He was singing a full chord--a first, a third, and a barely audible fifth. My scalp began to tingle. My first thought was that Klaus Liepman--he was the musical director at M.I.T.--would never believe me." Early last month, twenty-one Gyuto monks flew into San Francisco from their monastery-in-exile, in Bomdila, India, to begin a small national tour (they were at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on December 3rd), and a friend of ours, a Buddhist priest named Yvonne, invited us to hear them chant in a recording studio, behind a cement plant in San Rafael, north of San Francisco. It would not be a formal performance, she explained. They were testing new microphones, and Mickey Hart, the drummer for the Grateful Dead, was going to help. "I'd always thought of Deadheads as sybarites," Yvonne said. "But this has turned out to be a meeting of sweethearts." So late one Friday afternoon we found ourself in a van filled with monks and rolling into the studio parking lot. The monks all wore maroon sarongs and robes. One had added a watch with an expandable band; another wore bright-red-and-orange striped socks; and a third wore an "I (heart) Tibet" button. Mickey Hart, a handsome man in his mid-forties with pointed, foxlike features and a wide grin, met us at the door. He was wearing Nikes, jeans, and a tie-dyed T-shirt of the type sold in parking lots before Dead concerts, and he seemed a little nonplussed when the abbot of the Gyuto monastery came up to him and draped a ceremonial white scarf around his neck. The abbot gave another scarf to the sound engineer, Dan Healy, who was tending the electronic equipment with his own kind of devotion. "Just let the monks vibrate for a while and get used to it in here," Mr. Hart said to Mr. Healy as the two men went over to the mixing board. Someone had thoughtfully wedged a stick of burning incense behind a length of conduit. The monks, surrounded by speaker boxes, sat down on rugs on the concrete floor and unpacked their instruments. They screwed big barrel drums into red carved stands, and pulled out jointed brass trumpets that expanded like telescopes to a length of five feet. They laid out curved yellow bamboo drumsticks that looked like giant carpetbeaters. "Matrix out, one and two," Mr. Healy said. "Set patterns to omni." "Figure eight?" asked an assistant with long blond hair. "Circle and no pad, no roll-off," Mr. Healy said. Below the mixing board, a tall monk with big biceps was unwrapping cymbals from an Indian newspaper. "We will actually do our religious practice, not just for the microphone," he said, and then introduced himself as Tubten Jigme. "We will visualize Mahakala in front of us. When we go to touch him, there's nothing, but we can see him." Tubten Jigme sat down cross-legged and put his cymbals in front of him. The monks formed two rows, facing inward. The monk with the "I (heart) Tibet" button handed around a tin of Ricola cough drops. "This is the hardest thing in the world to deal with acoustically," said Mr. Healy, behind the mixing board. "Compared to a rock concert? No comparison. An electric guitar is so much louder than anything around it that you just have to be somewhere in the ballpark and you're O.K. But, with the monks, their loud sounds are very loud, and their softest sounds are very soft. The air-conditioning in the hall and the rustling of their robes may be louder than some of the sounds they're making." "I'm throwing in my rig for the tour," Mr. Hart said, indicating the mixing board, a thirty-two-track affair bristling with dials and switches, which he uses for his drums at Grateful Dead concerts. "This is space-age. This could take the monks into the twenty-first century. We want the music to sound to the audience the way it sounds to the monks. It should shake your insides and vibrate your inner core. Every day, they wipe their slates clean. They chant at seventy cycles per second--the lowest range of the human voice. They're used to resonating in a courtyard, but at St. John's there will be five thousand people. So we found these special microphones that hook over the ears." He picked up a headset that looked as though it belonged on a bomber pilot. "I just want to make sure they'll be comfortable with them. I've tried one myself, but I'm not a monk." Then Mr. Hart excused himself, saying, "I want to dig the monks. I want to hang out with the monks." All the monks put on headsets. They looked like a double line of medieval telephone operators. "All right," Mr. Hart said. "Are we ready to rock 'n' roll?" The chant master, Sonam Thargyal, closed his eyes and pushed his head forward until the sinews stood out on his neck. He let out a low "oooooooh,uuuuuuuaaaaaaa." The other monks pushed their heads forward, and an avalanche of deep, guttural chanting began. Then the words stopped, and we heard drawn-out vowels, a bass woodwind note married to a high sound like whirring mosquitoes. Cymbals clattered like waves breaking on a beach, and horns wailed like trumpeting elephants. The monks swayed back and forth with their eyes closed. When the monks put down their instruments, two hours later, nobody spoke. The blond-haired sound engineer simply stood with his eyes shut. Mickey Hart nodded twice. The monk with the "I (heart) Tibet" button handed around cans of soda. Sonam Thargyal had a Classic Coke, and Tubten Jigme had a Sprite. "It's good, it's good," said Mickey Hart. "See how loud it sounds? No feedback." | |||||
918.10 | record info at end | HYDRA::LARU | Let's get metaphysical | Mon Dec 12 1988 19:13 | 49 |
From a press release about the tour: To encounter the chants of the Dalai Lama's personal choir, the Gyuto Monks, is to confront a ritual beyond music, beyond ceremony or conventional religion -- it is to experience something at the innermost core of what it means to be human. Contrary to our every-day assumptions that a single voice cannot sing a multi-note chord, each Gyuto Monk does so. And when 20 monks sing these chords in unison, the result is a transcendental mix of melody, rhythms, and overtones that is quite literally unearthly. The monks' 1988 visit represents a unique opportunity for Americans to witness a world imaginably far from what we know.... Producer Mickey Hart once described his own band as being in the transportation rather than the entertainment business -- 'we move minds.' The Gyuto Monks are the ultimate model for this point of view. Their sound will indeed move you to an authentically new place. It is not entertainment but a prayer for the salvation of all mankind, and an experience that should not be missed. The monks last toured the United States in 1985. During this tour, Mickey Hart met the monks and produced an album of their chanting. He is helping to promote the upcoming fall tour. Twelve monks were involved on the 1985 tour - eleven monks who chanted and the abbott. The abbott is a spiritual leader for the monks and plays the dhamaru, a drum made out of two human skulls joined at the cranium. This recording, The Gyuto Monks: Tibetan Tantric Choir, is available on the Windham Hill label, WT-2001. (Windham Hill, P.O. Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305). It consists of two prayers, each about 28 minutes long. About side 1, Bob Thurmond says "It is a doorway in sound into the Mandala realm of the ESOTERIC COMMUNION of the GUHVASAMAJA. The listener can imagine it as a heavenly realm of the great bliss of selfless ecstasy, a realm of the "Esoteric Communion" between all enlightened beings of the multiverse. It is an architechture of exaltation, a royal environment forged from the love and joy enfolded right here in matter, as "strong force" of the atoms of this world.....'' You get the idea. Side 2 is an invocation for Mahakala, a fierce angel who carries things such as a rosary of skulls and a flaming dagger. The liner notes for this recording are excellent, and give more background about the monks and the music. The proceeds from this tour, as with the proceeds from the recording, go to Tibetan refugees and the Gyuto Monastery in Bomdila, India. The monks are trying to raise funds to build a monastery in Nepal, so that they can move out of the restricted area that they're at in India. | |||||
918.11 | Another Gyuto Monks tape | LEDS::BATES | Sic transit Gloria | Mon Dec 12 1988 19:51 | 31 |
After last night's concert, I was able to purchase a tape entitled "Chants Secrets des Lamas Tibetains", which consists of the following chants (my translations) Donje Jigjed - chant for the initiation of the Yamantaka mandala Sangwa Dupai Tsagyud - the Sri Guhyasamaja Mahatantra Raja, chant of all sources of richness, encompassing the very essence of all Tantra Zambu Chuwo - chant of offering to the Universe Tenching Drelchen - chant of offering to Mahakala The recording consists simply of voices of the monks, without instruments. It is outstanding. The address of the production company: La Boutique Tibetaine du Marais 15/17 rue de Turenne 75004 Paris Tel (1)42-78-05-04 I include the latter information for those European Dejavu readers who may want to discover what we're raving about... Gloria | |||||
918.12 | VITAL::KEEFE | Bill Keefe - 223-1837 - MLO21-4 | Mon Dec 12 1988 20:35 | 6 | |
The "The Gyuto Monks: Tibetan Tantric Choir" album is available from the producer, Windam Hill by calling 800-888-8544 from 8-6 weekdays Pacific time. - Bill | |||||
918.13 | in the "Explorer" series | IJSAPL::ELSENAAR | Fractal of the universe | Tue Dec 13 1988 05:58 | 12 |
I do not have the number at hand, but I have a record of the Gyoto monks for about 15 years now. It was released in the "Explorer" series. I don't know how well-known this series is, but it is a collection of music from all over the world. One of the other records of the series that will appeal to the Dejavu community is one from Bali, containing the "Ketjak" ("ape dance"). Don't know whether the "Explorer" series is still available, but since everything that has been previously released on LP is now beginning to appear on CD, I expect a CD of it any moment now ;-) Arie | |||||
918.14 | Why sleep as long as we can chant our way into oblivion? | WRO8A::WARDFR | Going HOME--as an Adventurer | Mon Dec 19 1988 15:27 | 17 |
re: all Thanks for the provocative descriptions. As a result of all this dialog (and a brief view of the monks on television) I will be going to their concert in Marin County tomorrow night. My girlfriend and I will be taking (as Christmas presents to them) some friends who spent several years in India who were neighbors of the monks during their time there. Sounds fairly intriguing. (I am now prepared to purchase an album or tape, too! Thanks for the notices.) Frederick (who isn't going to get by with lots of sleep this week..."poor me") | |||||
918.15 | another CD | HYDRA::LARU | Surfin' the Zuvuya | Mon Dec 19 1988 15:34 | 11 |
918.16 | Next: USA Today? | LEDS::BATES | Acqua nel deserto | Tue Dec 20 1988 16:12 | 13 |
Popculture note: The December 19 issue of People (!) includes a photograph of the Gyuto monks with the performers from the New York event. The caption reads: "Richard Gere, doing his Tibetan thing, joined bearded musician Kitaro, composer Philip Glass, and monks at a Tibet House benefit. The skeleton belongs to Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, who also performed." Gloria | |||||
918.17 | Reminded me of my OMing circle days. | WRO8A::WARDFR | Going HOME--as an Adventurer | Wed Dec 21 1988 15:39 | 34 |
I attended their showing last night at the Marin Community Center (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) with about 2,000 others and truly enjoyed the performed ceremonies. I don't think it's something I would want to spend my lifetime doing, but it really is amazing to hear the multi-leveled sounds these guys make. I especially like the deep bass (sort of reminds me of Sen. Inouye or the Indian chief in the Peter Pan cartoon movie.) Incidentally, my friend John, who spent a decade living virtually next door to these monks, can also chant in multi-level sounds (he demonstrated it last night.) He has just turned over a documentary film he made to the Smithsonian Institution which will be touring the country with it (a film about Tibetan monks in India, which I saw earlier this year.) Anyway, he says that Gyoto is pronounced "Jue-tu" with the "tu" pronounced sharply. This isn't how the music professor from the University of Santa Cruz who introduced them pronounced the name...but I'd put my money on John's pronounciation. I purchased a tape (mentioned in someone's earlier note) but haven't listened to it yet. They didn't have any tee-shirts at this concert. (Darn! ;-) ) John said that being amplified as these guys were makes the experience more overt and he thought that that was a pretty neat idea. At the end (I was surprised at the subdued applause) they took something from the 'Dead guy, put it around the "head" monk's neck, took it off and put it back on his neck...while the other monks applauded along with the crowd. Anyway, I'm glad I went, even if I only got four hours sleep last night. I recommend the experience, at least once, to virtually everyone. Frederick | |||||
918.18 | People can be in harmony, even with different sets. | WRO8A::WARDFR | Going HOME--as an Adventurer | Tue Dec 27 1988 17:19 | 24 |
Yesterday a couple of Tibetan lamas came over to my girlfriend's house in Sonoma and we spent most of the day with them (they are brothers and their brother, who died last year, was married to a French friend of my girlfriend.) Anyway, we played the tape we bought last week of the Gyuto monks (they knew they were here but didn't go to see them) and they really seemed to enjoy them. The oldest brother chanted along with one of the prayers on the tape, so apparently it's a fairly common one. They indicated that very few Tibetans can chant the way the Gyutos do (my understanding is that there are only two Tibetan monastic groups that do.) It was a fun day for us...the younger brother lives in Berkeley and the oldest lives in Switzerland and was just here for a visit (his first time in the U.S.) It was nice to show him the beautiful side of Sonoma (up in the cool hills/mountains)...they are all (the Tibetan community) very happy that Americans have finally seemingly recognized them and their plights. Letitia (the Frenchwoman) mentioned that Richard Gere had recently contacted her in an effort to purchase some mandalas that her deceased spouse/lama had painted. She said she turned him down, to instead sometime give them to her Tibetan/French daughter. They are a gentle people, troubled mostly by their problems with the Chinese. Frederick |