Ravi Shanker, Philip Glass – Passages

Each listen to Ravi Shanker, Philip Glass – Passages reminded me of the same feeling, the transport in a spiritual journey of movement without destination, ethereal experience without the weight of past or future… all in the now.

Passages is more than a musical collaboration.  It is a transcendent journey where East and West meet not at a crossroads, but in a continuous, flowing embrace. Co-composed by two titans of their respective traditions, Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, the album offers a masterful fusion of Indian classical sensibility and American Minimalism, woven into a soundscape that is at once intricate and inviting.

The structure itself is a dialogue in motion where Shankar offers a theme, which Glass transforms through his compositional lens, and Glass responds in kind as Shankar reinterprets.

This conversation unfolds over six movements, each one deepening the intimacy between their worlds.  In the opening, a raga unfurls through the unexpected voice of a saxophone. In the next, Glass’s language of pattern and pulse bends under the influence of Shankar’s melodic elegance.

Glass’s signature motifs are cyclical, mesmeric, and harmoniously fluid, and they are all present in this work, yet Passages is a departure from his more austere Minimalist works. Here, rhythm becomes a living thing, pulsing with the complexity of Indian talas and shifting time signatures. Drones and open intervals offer a meditative grounding, while layers of voice and instrumentation rise and intertwine like silk threads in a ceremonial fabric, bringing moments of pure lyricism and ethereal beauty.

What emerges is not a hybrid, but a union.  It is a rich, resonant tapestry where musical traditions intermingle with elegance and respect with jewel-toned moments of clarity shimmering against a backdrop of exotic instrumentation and poetic tension. The music doesn’t just blend styles, it transcends them, inviting the listener into a space beyond genre, beyond geography.

This is music that doesn’t demand understanding but invites surrender. Every note feels like an offering, every passage a caress for the soul.

Listen to minute 34:30 of this YouTube video with Anoushka Shankar, Pt. Gaurav Mazumdar & Karen Kamensek, ‘Passages’ 2017 Royal Albert Hall

I found this 8 mins of bliss with my favourite song, Ragas in Minor Scale. It is a magical carpet journey through different uplifting musical emotions, leaving listeners with joy, delight & utmost euphoria.

In yester years, with young boiling blood and completely oblivious to fear or danger, I took on world travelling to experience countries, people, and culture beyond my reach growing up in Ireland.

In 1990, I found myself taking driving lessons for a commercial truck to get a driving license out in the desert of Western Australia by the goldfields.    Hindsight, not the brightest idea but definitely not my first nor my last one.  I was sleeping in a tent, on the rock hard campground in a sleepy town called Kalgoorlie.

There was nothing to do at night other than laying on my back to watch the night sky, with an occasional stare among friends.  My only trusted and loyal companion then was my portable, short wave radio that I used to always carry in my sparse belongings so that no matter where I was, I could tune into the BBC world service.  On on one particular night, I was listening to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and found this album playing in its entirety.  That night, I resolved to owning this album when I returned to the civilization.

The Glass & Shankar Friendship

Philip Glass met Ravi Shankar in Paris in the 1960s, a time when Shankar was already famous in the West for his collaborations with Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison and the Beatles. Shankar taught Glass, then still in his twenties, how to accurately notate Indian classical music and Glass learnt how Indian music achieves its sophisticated rhythms and ornamentation, which had a profound affect on his approach to rhythmic structures as a foundation to his own music:

“I did a remarkable, intuitive thing, which is I took the music I had written down and I erased all the bar lines. And suddenly, I saw something which I hadn’t seen before.” (Philip Glass)

Where to find the album

I never thought that this was available on vinyl, but something made me search a few years ago.  Low and behold, it was released on LP in 1990.  That led to me buying a copy in near mint condition on Discog from Italy with a lofty $30 just for postage alone.   Enjoy.