Joel Banner Baird on bass, jhaffur khan azad darakth on bansuri and tymponics
photo by Taka Yamanouchi
Poem by John Copley Alter
"Sunny Yass with Bass: an Easter
morning song --for Jeff Campbell
celebrate with awe
Distillate of bird song (a native tongue
for you) your Easter cantata reaches
to the last the least strand of the great
web
to the shamyana where your parents
hand in hand are dancing. Consolation
it brings, nostalgia, drum & drone &
flute—fragrance of the five rivers. Easter
then, a sunny yass, a hallelujah…
my tongue rejoiced
Your song is the sangam of many
tongues,
rejoicing. Cuckoo, Himalayan thrush
Gurmukhi. And your father’s voice
is there,
the story teller. And such longing is
there,
your sunny yass echoing in mountain
pastures, along the Beas, rejoicing
again and again, in breath, in breathing.
It is springtime in the Panjab, holi
day, and among the hills of Ta’ang,
cherry
blossoms. The muscle memory, music,
the sound of a boat coming to rescue…
fullness of joy
Joy in your music overflows, it will
not be still. Your song is brimming
over.
On Easter morning such abundance
makes
the stairway to heaven the Shalimar
gardens let’s say, a charpai beneath
the
banyan tree. And the last the least
strand of
the great web quivers. All the bright-
ankled
small streams, the ecstatic company, are
dancing down the dream mountain. Do
you not
hear the five rivers raising glad voices—
Greetings!
Hallelujah! -John Copley Alter
