Transcript for the Piece Audio version of The East-West fusion of Urban Nature

music Beatles-Within you without you

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MORE THAN 40 YEARS AFTER ITS RELEASE, GEORGE HARRISON'S INDIAN HYMN, "WITHIN YOU WITH OUT" YOU IS STILL INFLUENCING MUSICIANS LIKE GUITARIST TODD BOSTON.

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TB: I think it was the Beatles who brought me to Indian music. I did a college paper on the song Within You Without You .....And I think that was one of the first pieces of music that really grabbed me that had some traces of Indian music and then I kept just going deeper and deeper into it.

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TODD BOSTON WASN'T EVEN BORN WHEN THE BEATLES' SGT. PEPPERS CAME OUT. THE GUITARIST GREW UP IN THE PHILADELPHIA SUBURBS, AS DID PERCUSSIONIST RAMESH KANNAN. HIS PARENTS WERE BORN IN MUMBAI AND MADRAS AND HE HAS EVEN DEEPER ROOTS IN INDIAN MUSIC.

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RK: My mom is an amazing Carnatic vocalist and she’s been doing that her whole life and she’s the one that influenced to learn tabla when I was 8-years old and my musical path kind of got dictated in that way from her.

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THE TWO MUSICAINS MET IN SAN FRANCISCO, WHERE THEY FORMED AN EAST WEST DUO CALLED URBAN NATURE.

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TODD BOSTON HAS STUDIED INDIAN MUSIC EXTENSIVELY, INCLUDING A COUPLE OF YEARS AT THE FEET OF THE LATE INDIAN SAROD MASTER, ALI AKBAR KHAN.

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TB: What appealed to me was something that I had a harder time finding in Western music and in popular music in the United States which was, you know, what somebody might call a spirituality to it or a depth. You know, I’ll just define it as a depth to the music. There’s a saying from India that says “Nada Brahma” which means “sound is God.”

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URBAN NATURE IS INFLUENCED BY JAZZ GUITARIST JOHN MCLAUGHLIN'S ICONIC BAND SHAKTI, AS WELL AS WINDHAM HILL GUITARISTS LIKE THE LATE MICHAEL HEDGES. THE PLAY ACOUSTIC BASED MUSIC, BUT WHIP OUT ELECTRIC GUITARS AND DIGITAL LOOPS, AND THEY THINK OF THEIR ALBUM, COMING HOME, AS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN A MEDITATION CD AND A PINK FLOYD CONCEPT ALBUM.

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RK: you know, we talked back and forth about like where does it fit, where does fit and is it meditation music? Is it world fusion music? What is it? And that way of thinking wasn’t getting us anywhere. We’re like, “let’s just make a record, a creative album that can explore everything that we are right now with this.”

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URBAN NATURE'S LATEST CD IS CALLED COMING HOME. I'M JOHN DILIBERTO AND THIS HAS BEEN AN ECHO LOCATION.