[Discussion-AZC] Gandhi's Wonder Years

Tue Apr 22 15:34:24 CDT 2008

Interesting little interview. _K

Gandhi's Wonder Years
Philip Glass's 'Satyagraha' may be in Sanskrit, but its messages are universal.

Vibhuti Patel
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 5:17 PM ET Apr 17, 2008

Composer Philip Glass became famous--or infamous--when his minimalist 
opera "Einstein on the Beach" debuted in 1976. His second major work, 
"Satyagraha" (1979) is being staged with much fanfare at New York's 
grand Metropolitan Opera. "Satyagraha," which is actually part of a 
trilogy that includes "Einstein" and "Akhnaten," focuses on Mahatma 
Gandhi's politically formative years in South Africa. The production 
has received rave reviews for its music as well as its theatricality: 
giant puppets and props are made from humble materials like 
newspapers and corrugated metal. Glass, a decades-long devotee of 
Gandhi (and a Buddhist now himself), talked to NEWSWEEK's Vibhuti 
Patel. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Why did you choose "satyagraha" for the title?
Philip Glass: It's a Sanskrit word, coined by Mahatma Gandhi, meaning 
truth force or, the power of truth. Gandhi turned an idea into a 
word. He understood the power of communication: he'd started a 
newspaper in South Africa, which was mailed to India so everyone knew 
who he was when he returned. All modern political movements have 
borrowed from Gandhi. In America, his legacy reappears in the work of 
Martin Luther King. It transformed our country.

What inspired you to write this opera?
Having worked with Ravi Shankar, I visited India in 1967 to learn 
more about its culture. There, in a small-town cinema, I saw a clip 
of Gandhi's Salt March. To protest the British-imposed tax on salt 
that was hurting the poor, Gandhi marched to the sea and made salt. 
Thousands joined him on that long march. His charisma came through so 
clearly that I read his autobiography. I had no idea then about doing 
an opera.

But why in Sanskrit?
That's the language of the Bhagavad Gita, a discourse on the value of 
action, which Gandhi had memorized by pasting its passages on his 
shaving mirror. The Gita preaches activism--Gandhi was not passive; 
he preached not pacifism but nonviolent resistance. Also, the words 
in opera are not understood anyway. We project translations onstage. 
When I wrote the opera, I was moved by the violent state of the 
world. It never occurred to me that 30 years later, there could be so 
much more violence. China's engaged in a genocide of an entire 
nation, America is in Iraq. The opera is more relevant today than it ever was.

Gandhi was against industrialization. How would he react to today's 
technology and to global warming?
He would have marched! I am of the Vietnam generation when people 
marched in protest. Today's young stay home, on the Internet. That 
has to change. When young people understand that the power of change 
is in their hands, they'll take it. The idea of satyagraha applied to 
ecology is powerful. It's about nonviolence to the environment.

Ironically, Gandhi's ideas are largely ignored now in India, where 
the information technology boom and a 9 percent economic growth are 
results of industrialization.
Every industrialized country has to come to terms with that. The 
modern world is in the thrall of technology. We mustn't let it run 
rampant--it can be controlled. Developing countries first develop the 
technology, then they learn to control it. India is still in the 
early years of development. It will come to terms with this because 
protection of nature is part of its tradition.

Your opera traces Gandhi's ideas from Tolstoy to Martin Luther King 
Jr. In our age of global terrorism, do you think those ideas can work 
in the Mideast? In Tibet?
They are the only ideas that can--and will--work. Even generals are 
now saying, force is not the answer. We've seen it again and again. 
In Iraq, we see the disaster of the Bush administration's utter lack 
of understanding of how history works. They've turned that country 
into a living nightmare. The only thing that can help us is active 
nonviolence. If that does not work, I don't know what can. It's hard 
to be optimistic, but we can be inspired by Gandhi and King. Gandhi 
is more present in our lives now than he ever was.

Gandhi used boycotts to great effect. Should we boycott the Olympics?
Absolutely. The Olympic Committee must--the Chinese were given the 
honor of presenting the Games on the basis of their agreement to 
respect human rights, and they've begun a genocide. They must be 
censored, and if the Olympic Committee doesn't do so, individual 
countries--starting with ours--must do it. Sports, art and culture 
are powerful tools. I wrote the music for the 1984 Olympics' lighting 
of the torch, and a piece for the Olympics in Athens in 2004. I have 
a great belief in the power of sports as a culture. Human values are 
shared through sports. People can come together. The Olympics should 
be a model of our behavior, they should not be given away to 
murderers and despots. But that story is not yet over.

URL: <http://www.newsweek.com/id/132590>http://www.newsweek.com/id/132590

||||||||||Karl Richichi
||||||||CLST RM: 228
|||||||ACC Rio Grande Campus
||||||Vox: 512.223.3082
||||Fax: 512.223.3430
||Email: richichi at austincc.edu  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://austinzencenter.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20080422/333e5552/attachment.html 