In 1992 Chinmaya got together with Persian musician Sangit Sirus (violin, oud, sitar and percussion) and producer Sangit Om (flute) in North Germany to make a whirling CD for Nightingale Records. Bengali Babu (also featured on Terra Incognita âNo Goal but the Pathâ) played tabla and hand percussion
(From my diary)
â2nd November 1992
Back from recording with Sirus and Babu at Hubenthal. Sangit Om engineering. Sirus contributed few musical ideas, but made lots of Persian rice and made heroic attempts at rescue on hand drums on the second track which goes on far too long. Sangit Om got flustered and made errors as we recorded the template. We had forgotten to record tanpura first, so then discovered that we were doing all our overdubbings out of tune. What with all the patching up, fixing, compromising âin my stress I had an almighty blow up with S Om.â
I have absolutely no money, Aruna and the guys from my construction team have no work for me and canât take me back âtil I get a Gerwerbe, which due to German bureaucracy, I canât get until I have a new Auftenhalterlaubnis, which I canât get until my tax is settled, which canât be done until I have insuranceâŠ
13th November Sunday: Managed to scrape enough to pay for petrol to drive to Hamburg, reaching by 9am for a first productive day mixing with Sangit Om.
By Monday night we are finished; epic real time mixes, with pages of notes in front of us, and all four of Sangit Om and my hands on the console riding faders, twiddling knobs etc on cue. At midnight: I get on the autobahn, slapping my face to keep me awake on the all-night drive. By Tuesday 7.30am Iâm back in Munich due at work with the team on a roof. But Iâm so utterly out of it that I just have to call in sick. By Wednesday after 11 hours sleep I listen to our mix. The tablas are too low, the 6/8 is a wobbly disaster and yes the drumming does go on far too longâŠâŠ.â
(Sangit Omâs memories as recorded in his review of my Rarities album for Osho News)
âI first met Chinmaya 1992 in Gut Huebenthal, Germany. It was my job to do the recording for his and Sangit Sirusâs co-production “Spiral Dance”. Chinmaya was mainly playing sarod, presenting his compositions and conducting the band. I still recall vividly the highly inspiring and creative atmosphere, and although I was officially hired as a sound engineer, it turned out that I played my first bansuri track (Indian bamboo flute) on a publicly released recording. Always looking for ways to merge Eastern and Western music, I suddenly found myself in the midst of folks who were doing exactly that, as if they had never done anything else! Chinmaya, with his great sarod playing, and already displaying his unique talent to fuse those influences, enriched my âinner musical worldâ in a big way.â
