In the fikr - in what rhythm you began, you should continue to breathe. By losing the rhythm much is lost. Music is the miniature of life's harmony in sound in a concentrated sense. The person who has no rhythm physically cannot walk well; he often stumbles. The breath, the speech, the step, all have rhythm. The person who has no rhythm in his emotions falls easily into a spell, such as laughter, or crying, or anger, or fear. We should practice rhythm in our lives, so that we may not be so patient and yielding that everybody takes the best of us, nor so carried away by our enthusiasm and frankness that we say things that are undesirable in the world, nor so meek and mild that we fall into flattery, timidity and cowardice. Then, by and by, we may understand the rhythm of emotions, the rhythm of thoughts, then the rhythm of feeling. Then a person comes into relation with the inner rhythm which is the true meaning of the world.

• Hazrat Inayat Kahn

So to get my blood boiling, I have decided to go on a drum trip. I have had the pleasure of watching some fine drum players in my life, starting with Shivmani, A.R.Rehman's drummer back at Kharagpur many years ago. This guy had about 50 different drum/percussion instruments in a circle, his drum universe he called it and laid out rythms on top of rythms. It was just pure joy to watch him, play out the rythms in his blood.

Then a year later, I had the pleasure of watching Bikram Ghosh, a great tabla player, tear it up in a concert with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt(who by the way won a world music grammy for A Meeting By The River). He broke a finger nail, simply put on a band aid and continued beating those tablas. Rythm. Never been to an indian classical music concert like that in my life after that and perhaps never will.

Then the next time I heard some great drumming was by Jim Donovan, the Rusted Root drummer, play drum jams in concert here last year. Those are sheer ecstasy, where in one hopes the drumming never stops.

Then at the Silk Road Folk Life Festival at Washington DC, last year, I managed to get to sit in a drumming workshop wherein various drumming techniques all across the silk road were explained. That was wonderful and insightful.

After that few months ago, at a program I saw a group of African drummers, they were from Mali I think, perform. There was joy and sadness and everything else in that drumming. They even played the drum telephone for us, as drums are used in various ways to send various messages.

Perhaps in one important way Western classical music fails is by lacking a real drum section. I mean in this whole bunch of violions and such, they usually have one measly drum and a few cymbals.

For most people I realise that drumming is something they might hear on some techno or hip hop cd and forget all about it after they dance to it. This is the sad and limited part because it rarely allows the rythm to penetrate and change the stuff inside.

Now I wish someone could send me Mickey Hart's(Greatful Dead's drum guru) book, Planet Drum.

May the rythm beat strong as ever!

Rock ’n’ roll is like a drug. I don’t take very much rock ’n’ roll, but when I do rock ’n’ roll, I fuckin’ do it. But I don’t want to do it all the time ’cause it’ll kill me. When you’re singing and playing rock ’n’ roll, you’re on the leading edge of yourself. You’re tryin’ to vibrate, tryin’ to make something happen. It’s like there’s somethin’ alive and exposed.

—Neil Young

So I went again this Friday evening to get a fix of music. Even though it wasn't rock and roll but hip hop as interpreted by Wyclef Jean of the "Fugees' fame. I got there quite late, because I was sorta kept debating on to go or not to go. This mainly sometimes, as on the other Friday night when Soul Asylum played, music drives me crazy and over the edge. Sort of blows away carpaces and leaves everything exposed and raw.

But I am glad I did because sometimes, one has to drink bitter medicene to get better. The first band to begin the evening was Robert Bradley's Blackwater Suprise. Robert is a blind man who really can sing. So while there were no historincs, he came on stage, said little and sang a lot. Nice lyrics with easy sing along refrains and a good mix of soul, blues and rock and roll. I as usual was at the railing, absorbing the stuff as quickly as it was being put out.

After this there was the usual large break for the stage setting during which time I did some people watching. First there was a large and ever present section of suburban teenagers: boys in need of haircuts and girls in need of some clothes, all desperately trying to have a good time in a large herd like setting. It's not hard to read emptiness on some of their faces. And then since the bill was for hip hop, there was also a section of black folk around me. There was a mom who was standing next to me with her two little daugthers at whom I made funny faces at.

After a while the music began when a DJ started spinning some hip hop grooves. He was pretty good with the turntables doing some interesting things with them. And after a while WJ came on stage singing Marley's "No woman no cry", always a good way to begin a concert. WJ's music was much about getting chummy with the crowd(which he did very well) and less about playing some serious music (can't say he played much of that). But it was enjoyable in that "jumping up and down, a trip to an amusement park" way.

Anyway let see what the season still holds.

After fretting and feeling restless and ill for the whole of last week, the system went on a music regimen, the best and the last refuge of all sickness and fucked up states.

We began with old guitar heavy folks, like Frank Zappa, that mad SOB. Only Zappa could make lyrics like "Broken hearts are for assholes" or "My guitar wants to kill your mamma" and carry on making these futile doses of melodrama we seem to dish out to each other,sound funny and ironic. Which when one thinks of it, it is!

And then his "Watermelon in Easter Hay" is one of the finest aching guitar solo orchestrations ever performed.

A new and very good discovery was Eva Cassidy, a cover song singer. Beautiful voice reinventing old standards like "Bridge over troubled water". Too bad she is dead 8 years now, of bone cancer to hear more from her.

K.D.Lang is also a good songwriter and singer. Happened upon her when I saw her featured in the latest ad for Audi. "Anywhere but here", even with it's pop overtones, is a good song, especially for driving around and around the block. Britney Spears, babe rather than discuss your virginity or the lack of thereof, listen to the masters like Lang, bitch!

Lucinda Williams "Essence" is another superb record we heard. Somone called those songs, "gorgeous anti-lullabies". Pretty accurate. This sister got the goods.

Till then we will shoot up this shit into our nerves and await George Clinton, the father of funk, to take Atlanta in the first week of August.