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An Arcadia-Merchant Ivory Film

RCA STEREO RECORDS may be played on any modern phonograph with a lightweight tone arm.

You will hear excellent sound reproduction on a mono player and full stereo sound on a stereo player.

TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX presents

the

GURU Starring

RITA TUSHINGHAM - MICHAEL YORK- UTPAL DUTT: MADHUR JAFFREY Guest Star BARRY FOSTER - Also Starring APARNA SEN - ZOHRA SEGAL - SAEED JAFFREY - NANA PALSIKAR - NADIRA - LEELA NAIDU

Produced by Directed by Screenplay by

ISMAIL MERCHANT JAMES IVORY R,PRAWER JHABVALA - JAMES IVORY COLOR BY DELUXE

Utpal Dutt as “The Guru”

G; | Suagested For GENERAL Audiences CED

Rita Tushingham with composer-sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan

THE GURU Stereo LSO-1158 An Original Soundtrack Recording

Music composed and sitar played by Ustad Vilayat Khan Music conducted by V. Balsara

SIDE 1

Title Music (2:50): Tom’s Arrival The Guru’s House Carriage Chase

Jenny’s Theme (1) (1:25)

The Haunted Palace (6:15): Arrival The Courtesan’s Ghost Revels Murder

Tom’s Boat Song* (sung by Michael York) (1:30)

Jenny’s Theme (2) (1:01)

The Pupil and His Master: Rag Bilawal (Instrumental by Ustad Vilayat Khan and Ustad Imrat Khan) (4:03)

SIDE 2

Arrival in Benaras (1:44) The Begum’s Lament (Instrumental by Ustad Shakoor Khan and Ustad Imrat Khan) (1:03)

Train Journey (:27)

Jenny’s Theme (38) (1:22)

Tom’s Boat Song (Reprise) (1:03)

Concert in the Haunted Palace: Rag Malkauns (Sung by Ustad Zinda Hasan Khan and Ustad’ Fayez Ahmed Khan) (2:25)

Concert in the Haunted Palace: Rag Yamani (Instrumental by Ustad Vilayat Khan and Pandit Shanta Prasad) (12:53)

Instrumentalists: USTAD VILAYAT KHAN, S/TAR Ustad Imrat Khan, Surbahar and Sitar Ustad Shakoor Khan, Sarangi Pandit Shanta Prasad, Tabla

Ustad Zinda Hasan Khan Ustad Fayez Ahmed Khan

*Words and Music by Ustad Imrat Khan and R. Prawer Jhabvala

All music published by Fox Fanfare Music Inc.— BMI

A&R Coordinator: Andy Wiswell

Ustad Vilayat Kahn, Ustad Imrat Khan, and Ustad Fayez Ahmed Khan ee through the courtesy of The Gramophone Company of India, Ltd.

Singers:

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“The Guru” is about an Indian ustad, or master musician—in this case, a performer on the sitar. Like all important Indian musicians, he is not without a number of disciples. Most of these have approached him in the proper spirit of submission, but one, an English pop singer (played by Michael York), has to discover for himself that before learning music he must learn to submit to his guru. Though this is the story of the film in a nutshell, “The Guru’ is also an affectionate portrait of an imperfect man, the ustad (played by Utpal Dutt); a tribute by a foreigner, myself, to Indian classical music; and a study—like ‘Shakespeare Wallah,” my previous film—of relationships be- tween Indians and Europeans in India today.

Ustad Vilayat Khan, who composed the background music for ‘The Guru” and recorded the sitar pieces that Utpal Dutt “plays,” is exactly the kind of Indian ustad that the film is about. He has a rich musical heritage, being the sixth in an unbroken family succession of celebrated musicians. Like the guru of the title, he is surrounded by faithful disciples, although un- troubled by distracting pop musicians and intense young girls from abroad (in the film, Rita Tushingham). Like the guru, he is a man of tremendous reputation—a star. When he plays in India, it is an event, and even when he plays in European cities, the hall is sold out long in advance.

This last is hardly news to anyone who knows and appre- ciates Indian classical music. Vilayat Khan is one of India’s greatest musicians, and if he has never performed in America, his records have been obtainable here for years. Now

there is this recording to add to the others. It contains a superb piece of virtuoso playing (Rag Yamani), but otherwise it is highly unusual, in that it is a soundtrack album, made up pri- marily of bits of incidental music. ‘‘The Guru” is not the first film that Vilayat Khan has composed for. He collaborated with Satyajit Ray on the score of ‘“‘The Music Room’’—a film that, interestingly, is like “The Guru” in being, in a way, about Indian. classical music, Indian musicians, and the appreciation of music.

Vilayat Khan is so very much the heir and exponent of a

Photo by Raghubir Singh

chaste and classically refined style that he seems particularly well suited to compose music for films in which tradition, rather than innovation, is important. However, the music he has composed for ‘‘The Guru” is at times so unchaste — using massed strings, electric organ, electric guitar, and the like—that one realizes immediately that the classicism of his~sitar im- provisation is no bar to innovation in his film scores. The inno- vation here actually derives in large part from popular Indian film music, but the taste and sensibility of the classical musi- cian prevent Vilayat Khan from turning out the turgid sort of thing so often heard in Hindi films.

Most Indian film music is based—either shakily or solidly— —on ragas, the fixed, complex melodic patterns within which

elaboration occurs. Such patterns, unfortunately, don’t really suit Western orchestration, yet large orchestras of Western instruments are extremely popular with the music directors of Indian films. The movie-going public in India expects that kind of sound now. The result is usually not very agreeable to West- ern ears, no matter how much enlivening coloration may have been provided by Indian native instruments or by rhythms based on Indian folk tunes. Satyajit Ray, however, has been able to compose excellent music for his films by starting out from a raga. Vilayat Khan has been equally successful here, using Rag Bilawal as his main theme and devising all sorts of variations on it. This raga is the one that Tom Pickle, the pop singer in the film, attempts to learn during his stay in India, and he seems to have nearly mastered it by the time he leaves to go back to England.

Vilayat Khan called together a number of celebrated Indian musicians for the recording of this music: the sarangi player Shakoor Khan, who is one of the last of an older generation of illustrious Indian musicians; Fayez Ahmed Khan and Zinda Hasan Khan, to sing Rag Malkauns; Vilayat Khan’s younger brother Imrat Khan, himself an accomplished performer on the sitar as well as on the surbahar, which he plays here; Pandit Shanta Prasad, to play the tabla. The gathering of these ustads

TM(S) ® by Radio Corporation of America

©1969, RCA RECORDS, New York, N.Y. « Printed in U.S.A. 7

at the Rajkamal Kalamandir recording studio in Bombay was something to see. At each new arrival, such heartfelt greetings, such embracing, such pressing of hands and touching of feet, such exquisite phrasemaking in Urdu as fathers, uncles, cousins, children, and departed dear ones were remembered! Such musical reminiscences, such recalling of great musicians and great concerts and the grand, tumultuous reception given one another’s (and sometimes one’s own) music! In addition to these solo performers, there was a large group of musicians who mainly played Western instruments — strings, timpani, guitar, piano, electric organ, and harpsichord—along with some who played Indian instruments like the wooden flute and the pakawaj, a long drum.

In Bombay, the musicians who play for films are kept busy. They are divided into classes—A, B and C—and it is on the basis of their class that they are contracted for and paid. Even so, there are no fixed payments, no union scale. Each musician must be settled with individually, and his price fluctuates with the demand for his services and with the resources of the pro- ducer. Since a great many films are made in Bombay, few musicians go hungry. Hours are flexible: there is a shift system, but no penalty is exacted if the session goes on longer than the contract specified.

A word about the concert performances in ‘‘The Guru.” Audi- ences seeing the film are sure to assume that Utpal Dutt is actually playing the sitar—that he is a skilled musician himself. This is not so. The sitar pieces were recorded in advance, and Dutt learned the correct fingering for those sections which were to be photographed. It is never an easy thing for an actor to impersonate a great artist, but when Vilayat Khan saw Dutt’s performance, he was amazed. That Dutt “‘plays’’ so convinc- ingly says a lot about his powers as an actor, and about his

determination, his tenacity, and his musical connoisseurship, all of which contributed to this fascinating screen portrayal of a

master sitarist. Notes by JAMEs IvoRY Director of ‘‘The Guru”