#Owsley Stanley The Bear's Sonic Journals That Which Colors the Mind ragas

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Tabla player Zakir Hussain (left) accompanies sarod player Ali Akbar Khan and his wife and collaborator Mary Khan.

When The Giants Of Indian Classical Music Collided With Psychedelic San Francisco                                     Jan. 23, 2021

In May of 1970, at a San Francisco concert venue best known for reverberating with the sounds of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, three masters of Indian classical music took the stage for a celebration of Indian ragas. The concert was recorded by another legend of the time: Owsley Stanley, the man who designed the Dead's innovative sound system, as well as making what was reputed to be the best LSD of its day. That recording is now available as a live album, titled Bear's Sonic Journals: That Which Colors the Mind.

On that night, Indian sarod master Ali Akbar Khan was joined on stage by sitar player Indranil Bhattacharya and a 19-year-old percussionist named Zakir Hussain.

Capturing the performance in the highest fidelity possible was the goal of Owsley Stanley, the man known to friends as "The Bear." Hussain says Stanley was often seen running around "like a madman," tripping over wires and cursing. "This was a guy who knew what needed to be done about how this music should be presented to those who were not there. I mean, Bear had this idea that the music should be heard in a way where people can close their eyes and actually see where the musicians are seated."

"His objective with his recording was to try to capture the audiences' experience so that he could improve the sound system," says Starfinder Stanley, son of the late sound man and head of the Owsley Stanley Foundation. He describes his father as an "audiophile who was born in a low fidelity world," devoted to improving the sound systems and overall sonic experience of rock and roll. "He called his tapes his sonic journals," he recalls. "They were his working diary so that he could improve the sound."

The Foundation has begun restoring Stanley's tapes and releasing the music. "He had collected about 1,300 reels of 80 different artists in nearly every idiom you can imagine of music," says Hawk Semins, the executive producer of the series. From Miles Davis to Janis Joplin, Semins says these live recordings capture the 'magic' of the 60s and 70s Bay Area music scene. "It's just absolutely remarkable the mix that's reflected, the contacts that there were, the open-mindedness of the scene in terms of the various musical influences," he says. "You've got Ali Akbar Khan one night, and you've got Commander Cody another night, and you've got the Grateful Dead another night. And they were all listening to each other, and they were all playing with each other."

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https://www.npr.org/2021/01/23/959394422/when-the-giants-of-indian-classical-music-collided-with-psychedelic-san-francisc