Online edition of India's National
Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 11, 2002
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In
her own words...
On starting out with folk
IN THE early 1960s, I
couldn't afford a band. I made my first record when I was 14. So I
just did folk stuff. You can't do blues when you are very young. You
have to have experienced life, love, heaven and hell many times in
order for it to come out in how you sing. Blues is something that
comes out of the heart.
On getting into films and
theatre
I started writing my music
from the age of 11. I always knew I wanted to be a musician. But I
got sidetracked in the late 1960s and early 1970s because of the way
I looked into doing film roles. I was a pretty good-looking young
starlety type. At the same time, I was getting offered musicals. I
was the first Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar. And that was
quite a big role. By the time, folk was right out to the window. I
had already got a rock band together.
On switching to blues
By the time Jesus Christ
Superstar had started, I had already got a blues band together in
1973. Even then although I loved blues more than anything else, I
still liked that kind of singing ... I guess you could call it pop.
I guess I needed a serious upset in my life to realise I could sing
the blues. And the upset was that by 1974, I got caught up in most
dreadful lawsuits. I had a knee operation and couldn't walk properly
for two years. I had no money, had broken up with the guy I was
living with, couldn't walk and couldn't record. Couldn't record was
the worst thing. When you hit real bottom, you realise what it is to
be walking painful. I started making blues albums in 1980 after I
went to Vienna to do a play.
On the India connection
I have always been in love
with India. I have been coming here for 30 years and from the very
first time I felt as if I was coming home. In the early 80s, I had a
hit with a tune I had based on a Mohammed Rafi song. I had heard
this song and I didn't know who Mohammed Rafi was then and I still
don't know what the title of the song is. I called it `Move Your
Body Close To Me'. I went on and did an album, which had some
melodies that I borrowed from Pankaj Udhas.
India has borrowed melodies
from the West, so I was kind of doing the reverse.
On the Sai Baba connection
Twenty years ago, I read a
book on Sai Baba. I did something I never normally do. I leapt on a
plane and went to see him at Puttaparthi. And I did that twice a
year for 12 or 14 years and he ignored me each time. Never talked to
me or anything. But I always knew I had to be there. Then for his
70th birthday, I got a call and was asked whether I would go and
play there with my blues band. So I started investigating bhajans.
And I thought I would change my name so that blues fans wouldn't get
confused. I mean if I called myself Dana Gillespie and people went
and bought an album... .hot damn, they might discover it was Ganesha
bhajans.
On being called the Queen
of Raunchy Blues
I did three albums (in
this genre). For these, I researched all the tongue-in-cheek, sexual
lyrics in the old days from the 1920s to the 1940s. All of these are
blues songs and they have humour in them.
The style is raunchy, very
basic, very earthy... this is what I do for a living. It is music
below the belt unlike jazz even though the two forms cross
occasionally. I feel missionary like coming to India with blues
because people here are not familiar with blues even though they are
with jazz.
M.P
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