Celtic Ragas Fragrance of the East Karma Circles Yoga on Sacred Ground Buddha Moon No Goal but the Path Tribal Gathering
Feng Shui Concert for India’s Environment DVD Sacred Temples of India Yoga Lounge Lands of the Dawn The Beloved Om Shanti Yoga Spirit

Bio

I was born in 1954, in Kent, England, an area then accurately described as the ‘Garden of England’. Around our 400-year old farmhouse was a patchwork of hop gardens, apple orchards, wheat fields, woods and streams – a playground in which I could disappear for hours without my parents having any idea of where I was. (To dispel any notions that it was a true paradise, let me point out that this was rural Britain in the 50s and 60s – a repressed, depressed and tradition-bound culture that made being a rebellious Scorpio teenager a tough job!)

my first guitar in 1970

1970 was a turning point for me. I smoked my first whiffs of euphoria, hitchhiked to see Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival, and acquired my first guitar (a nylon string).

Over the next years of school and Art College, I mixed my love of painting with learning classical guitar and trying to copy the sound of my favourite folk musicians ‘Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band and Planxty’. (The sound of my favourite progressive bands – Pink Floyd and Genesis was altogether beyond my abilities!).

India was always calling in those years, and in 1975 I took myself off on the hippy trail through Turkey and Afghanistan. Holed up in the mountains of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province surviving on fellow travellers generosity for months, having lost all my money, I got my first taste of the gentle rhythms of the East, where acceptance of whatever comes is more important than pushing your own goals. I also became a vegetarian (I have not lapsed) and started yoga.

my first sarod in 1986

It was my next trip East in 1979 that proved the decisive turning point in my life. At an all night concert in Delhi, I saw Ustad Amjad Ali Khan playing sarod and instantly fell in love with the instrument. On the same trip I fell in love with my first Osho sannyasin and started out on my journey with the infamous ‘Bhagwan’.

Returning to London, it took me four years before a sarod teacher appeared on the scene. Gurdev Singh (by chance Amjad’s leading disciple) found me an instrument and taught me over the next years.

Right from the start I seemed, mysteriously, to have some feel for Indian Classical music. I remember at Gurdev’s house, his fellow musicians sometimes putting their heads round the door to the back room where I was practising and saying, "Wah, I thought it must be an Indian playing not a gora (white man)!"

In 1988 I moved to the Osho Commune (now Osho Meditation Resort) in Pune, and studied sarod under Pandit Shekhar Borkar. I also began performing with some of the Commune musicians, people of diverse musical backgrounds blending Indian with Western music in the presence of Osho.

with Gopal and Lolita in Pune in 1988

Two years later I recorded my first CD ‘Terra Incognita’ with some of them (including Prem Joshua and Ravi, both now well-known artists - photo below).

‘Tribal Gathering’ was released on Tao Music (today called New Earth Records).

with Ravi and Prem Joshua in 1991

During the 90s I lived in Munich, Amsterdam and Maui, Hawaii, returning each year to Pune for a few months.

with Karunesh and Shastro in Maui in 1997