I feel similarly about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who Evan also introduced me to. He took me to see him at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It started out with harmonium and a bunch of guys with mustaches sitting on the stage, singing almost like they were not really interested, more like they were mumbling.

This went on for quite a while. I turned to Evan and said, “What the fuck, Evan? Why am I here?” as the men with mustaches sat on the stage sort of singing.

But it built and built. And then it built more. Over a long period of time, it just slowly built, and somehow you were inside it. Hypnotized by it. And then Nusrat started hitting these lines that ripped into my soul. It was like I had been transfigured.

As the proper, polite people sat there in their seats at BAM, absorbing their culture as people of their class are supposed to do, it hit me so hard that I jumped up and started screaming in approval, “Fuck you! Fuck you!! Motherfucker!! Oh!!”

These two Gnawa guys came to my room and they were just beautiful. So sweet and respectful that it broke my heart. One of them played this homemade half-bass, half-guitar instrument that had no frets, and the other one had little metal maraca-like things and sang.

They both sat on the floor and we got stoned on kif. I took out my soprano and turned on my tape recorder. The little guy with the metal clacky things sang like he had a hole in his throat. It had the warmth of your father singing you to sleep. Sometimes the other would sing a response or repeat his phrase.

What a gift this was.

The music is fairly simple and modal. But it has an imploring tone that is beautiful. It is like the music is just gently asking, “Why, God? Why?,” acknowledging suffering but without complaining.

I played with them and something happened for me. I had one of those moments. An epiphany. It was not my being influenced by what they were playing. It was the freedom and the very sweet and open vibe that they had brought that freed me up. Something changed in my playing that night and stayed changed.

It was the purity in their reason for playing that really had hit me. That was what I wanted, more than anything: to be part of a tribe that played music for the right reason.

There was a kid named Larry Wright who used to play drums on a compound bucket in Times Square. This sixteen-year-old kid could play stuff that would make you positive that there must be reincarnation, because it was shit that he just could not know about. African stuff and jazz stuff that he clearly had never heard, as he only listened to hip-hop.

What was particularly interesting and inexplicably complicated were his segues from one beat to the other. Where he was finding his next beat, that was where this stuff would come out that would just make me do a double take. “How does this kid know that?”

The History of Bones
John Lurie

From amazon reviews:

WorldTraveler
5.0 out of 5 stars Ah, the good ole days…
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2021
Verified Purchase
I was introduced to John Lurie through the 800 number. Got my “chunk” and never looked back. Seeing them in the ‘90s was one of my favorite nights of music ever in NY.
At one point in the show, there was this beautiful pause, and the the audience was just hypnotized – I was seeing through a third eye – and all of a sudden, a bottle cap was accidentally dropped, and rolled for about 20 seconds making an oddly “clear” and strangely appropriate sound. I thought I was the only person who could hear it until John stepped up to the mic and quietly said “that was interesting”, thus breaking the spell in a gentle way that let us all gently land back safely on earth.
It was magical moment and the book made me realize I wasn’t alone hearing the magic that is the Lizards.

NOTE – Book highly recommended.