The Rasa Tea Time Edition presents contemporary Ambient, classical, Electronica and music from the tea-traditions. Al Gromer Khan, key figure of Ambient- and contemplative music
since 1975, acting as player, composer and curator. His distinctive unique Paisley Music style has won him a circle of friends throughout the world.


Indian Music
contains excerpts of a live-performance by Al Gromer Khan and tabla-player Suman Sarkar of Calcutta. The sitar performance follows the lyrical style of the great Vilayat Khan, who in Al Gromer Khan´s words ´has found a way into the core of human existance that renders differences between religion, race and nation become meaningless.´



The Rasa Tea Time Team is proud to present

Al Gromer Khan´s Indian Music II.

Seven years have passed since his first classical sitar album and it is our first release in 2008.
This release marks the 40th anniversary of AGK´s career as a sitar player, starting in 1968 in West Hampstead, London, England with taking lesson from Imrat Khan.

In order to allow the listener an ambience in which to be inspired and yet not being forced to follow a rigid structure AGK decided not to show - what Stephen Hill calls - the´Tour de Force´ aspects of Indian classical music and to include some Ambient pieces with a sitar lead instead.
By doing this and by reducing specific incongenial sound frequencies of the upper mid-range type AGK has achieved the sonic mood he was looking for.

He says this about the music:

In addition to the obvious the title INDIAN MUSIC II contains ambiguities and a nostalgic sadness.
The translation onto another emotional plane which the great Vilayat Khan, with his subtle poetic expressions on sitar, has achieved made music holy for me. It wasn´t the fact that Vilayat Khan was Indian and played Indian music that so fascinated me. He could just as well have been a Bavarian sculptor, a writer of modern poetry or an architect, I would still found him and his work interesting.
His music provided me with the strength to find my ideal: to be able to create something enchanting and beautiful from any given point, out of any material. Therefore, in the forty years on the road, playing the sitar I am by no means interested exclusively in Indian music, but any artistic expression that serves the above principle.
Furthermore, Vilayat Khan´s music was still traditional music, with all its appendices, all the rivalry and battling contests of those Khans who built empires on horseback. It also contained a fixed mode of performance that you had to follow, in which sheer virtuosity was being applauded.
In order to find the music of a possible future I had to continue my search.
Carlos Montaya, I believe it was, who answered the question why he played everything so fast, with: "Because I can!" This type of thinking was to be avoided. "You are playing contemplative only because you can´t play fast," said Virtuoso." "You are playing fast only because you are restless inside," answered Yogi. A stalemate situation.

The pieces on this album are meant to open up emotional areas, made accessible through the Vilayat Khan type of emotional refinement. Even though my artistic enterprise is based on a mystical motivation I have never been very much content with being limited by categories such as ´New Age´ or ´Spiritual´.
It is time for me to proclaim that I am interested in a state (Zustand) beyond traditions, paths and categories. This collection of pieces was supposed to keep its mood under all circumstances , all times of day month or year - any cup of tea.

January, 2008 © Al Gromer Khan