Savitri Solar Songs – II

A Note of Offering: Full cost price will go to either our Education Fund or for planting of a Timber Tree sapling to sustain the natural resource of instrument wood.

Savitri Solar Songs

Two Song Cycles (1986 -2020)

Origin

Having read and studied Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri – A Legend and a Symbol, for years with different approaches, already early on spontaneous tunes would arise while contemplating selected passages of Savitri. It was always a surprise and joy how these melodies seemed to arise out of the written word. Similar to the mantric effect of certain lines, the tunes fell into the ear and h-ear-t and rose in repeated rhythmic strains, creating strong resonances in the being and surroundings.

Often also, while taking chosen lines on long walks through nature, reciting the verses in movement with every step, these melodies emerged as if from behind and through the spoken words, creating a natural com-position of word, rhythm and tones, embracing these elements of human vocal expression into a heightened form, deepening the encounter with the visionary poetry into an elevating experience.

Production

During the lockdown time of Summer 2020, encountering severe breath problems forced me into conscious breath and voice work, and resulted in revisiting the work of more than 30 earlier song compositions on Savitri. Spanning studies of three decades, two distinct forms emerged of the earlier and later works and were compiled in 2 song cycles.

The dedicated and masterful studio work of Auroville musician, composer and producer Holger from Sunshine Studio helped to shape and arrange the songs from simple song-lines into orchestrated versions, retaining the focus on the key texts. The collaboration with Anushka and Varun on the demos, mastering and their beautiful vocal contributions and suggestions made the work into a celebration of joy and harmony.

SAVITRI SOLAR SONGS II

The second cycle of Savitri Solar Songs emerged through years of explorations in Indian Classical Vocal Music, and is based on the all supporting underlying drone of the Tanpura.

The recordings happened in one take with Holger then creating and enhancing the sound atmosphere and minimal and characteristic instrumentation for every piece and stage of the journey.

In contrast to the more play-and youthful tracks of the first cycle these song-lines call for deeper contemplation, opening the mantric and image dimension of the original passages.

1

A CALL
I wandered lost in woods, I heard a call…
The voice of winds and waters,
A listener to the universal speech; I heard a call…
The echoes of a word supreme
A song of evening to the silence of my soul. I heard a call…
– S A V I T R I –
And listened through music for the eternal Voice.

BOOK 5, CANTO III: Satyavan and Savitri

This tune emerged as a saving companion while desperately lost in a Japanese forest and relates the exile forest habitat of Satyavan, “the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grief of death and ignorance”

REFUGE
Earth in this beautiful refuge free from cares
And voices of the sun and star and flame
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
Murmured to the soul a song of strength and peace.

BOOK 5, CANTO II: Satyavan

The refuge of nature – original, protected or regenerated as in Auroville – nurtures the opening of the soul and its listening to her ” song of strength and peace”…

EARTH’S YEARNING
Answering earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss,
A greatness from our other countries came.
A storm of sweetness and of light and song,
And beauty and rapture and the joy to live.
A hymn of rays,… revealed the secret Word

BOOK 4, CANTO I: The Birth and Childhood of the Flame

Here the birth of Savitri is described in its sweetness, beauty and rapture, revealing “the secret Word”…

2

AWAITING
Awaiting the unknown eternal Will.
Then from the heights a greater Voice came down,
The Word that touches the heart and finds the soul,
The voice of Light

BOOK 7, CANTO VI: Nirvana and the All-Negating Absolute

Savitri as “the voice of light” is descending from the heights into our earthly field and brings “the Word that touches the heart and finds the soul”…

BREATHING
Alive, breathing a deep spiritual (spirit-filled) breath,
Healed were all things…
And sorrow could live no more in Nature’s breast:
…for God was there.
The soul lit the conscious body with its ray,
Matter and spirit mingled and were one.

BOOK 2, CANTO VIII: The World of Falsehood

Hardly having been able to breath, this lines opened the healing potential of the situation, and the release of sorrow, as “the soul lit the conscious body with its ray”…

A GROWING TREASURE
A growing treasure in the mystic heart.
To find some lost or missed felicity.
The lyric voyage of a divine soul

Magician builders of sound and rhythmic words,
Wind-haired Gandharvas chanted to the ear
Strains trembling with the secrets of the gods.
The rhythms that bring the sounds of wisdom’s sea.

BOOK 11, The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation

This “growing treasure in the mystic heart” describes “the lyric voyage of a divine soul” and invites all musicians as “magician builders of sound and rhythmic words” to bring forth “the rhythms that bring the sound of wisdom’s sea”…

3

THE SUN WORD
Earth nursed… the inhabiting flame,
There was a movement and a passionate call,
A rainbow dream, a hope of golden change;
Some secret wing…
A growing sense of something new and rare
And beautiful…
…a faint whisper
And wonder lifted up its bardic voice.
Her name, the sun-word
A key to a Light…
Exalted and sweet
Chanted… from the epic lyre… chanted
OM TAT SAVITUR VARAM RUPAM
JYOTIR PARASYA DIMAHI
YANNAH SATYENA DIPAYET

BOOK 4, CANTO II: The Growth of the Flame

THE GOLDEN BRIDGE
A power of silence in the depths of God;
She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,
She is the Force, the inevitable Word,
The Sun
The Light
The Joy
The Might
In her miraculous rapture we shall dwell,
Our self shall be one self with all through her.

BOOK 3, CANTO II: The Adoration of the Divine Mother

ONE SOUL
The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love
Caught all into a sole immense embrace;
All mind was a single harp of many strings,
All life a song of many meeting lives;
For worlds were many, but the Self was one.

BOOK 3, CANTO III: The House of the Spirit and the New Creation

This longer song- trilogy brings together core passages describing Savitri as “the sun-word, a key to a Light… a rainbow dream”, invokes Her through Sri Aurobindo’s Gayatri as “the golden bridge , the wonderful fire” and “a Bliss, a Light a Power, a flame-white Love” and invites our self to “be one self with all through her”, celebrating all life as “a song of many meeting lives”.

4

A PROMISE
A promise and a presence and a fire,
A mystery of the rapture for which all
Yearns in this world…
There is a Power within
To live, to love are signs of infinite things,
Love is a glory from eternity’s spheres.
A bliss is born that can remake our life.

BOOK 5, CANTO II: Satyavan

HARMONY
His soul was all in front like a great sea
Flooding the mind and body with its waves;
His being, spread to embrace the universe,
United the within and the without
To make of life a cosmic harmony,
An empire of the immanent Divine.

BOOK 3, CANTO III: The House of the Spirit and the New Creation

JOY
All now is changed, yet all is still the same.
The world I inhabit and the god I adore.
Lo, all these beings in this wonderful world!
Let us give joy to all, for joy is ours.

BOOK 12, Return to Earth

This closing trilogy celebrates Savitri’s “promise and a presence” and the coming front of the psychic being, the soul “like a great sea, flooding the mind and body with its waves” to “make of life a cosmic harmony”.

Savitri, after the resurrection of Satyavan from death, still holding the earth soul in her arms, invites all with her words of victory “Let us give joy to all, for joy is ours”.