Tarisha, Sudha and Surahbhi
Miten during the Wells Cathedral Concert
Tarisha, Sudha and Surahbhi
Wells Cathedral
God Rocks
Yeah. God was rocking in the nave and in the aisles of Wells Cathedral yesterday. (May 27th 2009). Could be he hasn’t seen this beautiful cathedral so jam-packed, wired and grooving, since the Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII in 1534.
Deva Premal, Miten and Manose had drawn in a huge crowd from across the south of England; all ages and variety of Faiths. An audience of nearly one thousand were listening to – and singing – Mantras, Sanskrit chants and old favourite soft-rock sacred songs.
Wells Cathedral has one of the most elegant and imaginative architectural solutions to the age old problem of building higher and bigger. Its innovative, reinforcing "scissor arches" round the transept were built in 1338 to support a later, massive, central tower.
Framed and dwarfed by one of these graceful modern-looking arches, first of all Tarisha, Sudas and Surabhi and then Deva Premal and Miten sang.
Their songs, as are their lives, are about the marriage of spirit and matter, of the noumenal with the phenomenal. In an intimate and informal way both Deva Premal and Miten are able to reach out to and embrace their audience. Deva whose musical subtlety has evolved profoundly over the years and Miten whose heartfulnes and humour has remained unchanged, very quickly and magically evoke the climate of the divine. That is their talent and their attraction. It was not long before they had the audience – the congregation – singing, chanting, laughing and dancing in their seats. Very soon it was as if the very stones of the cathedral, their columns and their orders, began to lose materiality, began to float and melt, become more luminous and transparent. We the audience too began to lose our edges – become one. Humanity meets the Divine.
It is inspiring and informative to see singers who are not Hindus singing Hindu chants in a Christian Cathedral that has largely lost its Christian congregation.
What is happening here?
In a world where we are seeing more and more frequently the collapse of old institutions – political, economic, social, religious institutions that have served their purpose – the New is struggling to emerge. This newness is organic and unpredictable, flexible and free-floating. The one thing that informs it is the recognition of both inner and outer, man and nature, the sacred and the mundane.
Humanity has to meet the Divine. In the last moments of the Wells Cathedral concert the voice of Osho was heard speaking the Sanskrit words of the Isha Upanishad and their translation:
All this is full. All that is full.
From fullness, fullness comes.
When fullness is taken from fullness,
Fullness still remains.
text by rashid Maxwell, photos by Samarpan Tracy – 28th May 2009
