I had been planning the music for Nagamani for at least six months, putting it aside while I composed the four compositions found on Lunar Mansions and Luminous Realms. The challenge I was readying myself for was to compose a one hour alap (no jor or jhala) with sustained musical interest. When I was finally ready to begin, the actual composing and programming took about three weeks. It turns out that the swaras (tones) I used are identical to an obscure South Indian raga, Nagamani, which translates to mean jeweled snake or cobra. But that was after the fact. My actual musical inspiration came from Hariprasad Chaurasia, the Indian bansuri master who has raised the art of flute playing to previously unimaginable levels.

Realizing that some degree of contrast would be necessary for such an extended piece, I decided to set-off the main voice, a Near Eastern kawala timbre, with the gentle struck-wood sound of an African balafon, slightly punctuated with a Japanese hyoshigi, a wooden percussion instrument. Together they swim within the prominent expanse of male (low) and female (high) Indian tanpuras.

While listening to Nagamani following the composition and realization phases, I had a vision that the kawala was a mother mourning the loss of her child, and the balafon was the spirit of the departed child.

Soon afterwards, the poem, "Oil and Blood" by William Butler Yeats, came to mind.

IN tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet. 

- Michael Robinson, July 1998, Beverly Hills

Catherine Glynn Benkaim, a professor and collector of Indian art, told me this music was the only thing that comforted her for days and days when her husband, Ralph Benkaim, who began the collection, passed away. - MER