THE MUSIC OF SUNIL DEV by SUNIL DEV

After the reissue of Don Cherry & Latif Khan album, Heavenly Sweetness goes further in Indian music with the first album of Sunil Dev. Sunil is a flute master from Katmandu. He was discovered there by French producer Martin Meissonnier. Sunil’s music is relaxing and spiritual like Jazz could be. A real massage for the BrainWhile I was making my documentary about the “Life of Buddha” in Nepal in 2003, I was looking for the sound of a flute to give the film the necessary power and serenity to deal with a subject like this. So I spent a bit of time in Kathmandu listening to traditional and classic music that might fit the bill, but a few months later I still hadn’t found anything. Then one day, as I was on my way to meet the sitar player Bijaya Vaidya and his friend Louis Bertignac who were going to play together that evening, I heard the most intense-sounding flute-playing I’d ever heard coming from behind a door - exactly the sound I needed. I asked who was playing and met a young man, twenty-five years of age, called Sunil Dev Shrestra who was listening to the tape over and over again. Sunil Dev Shrestra is a young Nepalese flautist who is now 30 years old. His favourite flute is the bass reed flute (in F). His repertoire is that of Indian classical music. He plays north Indian ragas for traditional festivities and in the thousand-year-old temples of Bakhtapur. His first master and guru was Prem Autari, an internationally renowned Nepalese flautist whose own guru had been the Indian flautist Chaurasia. Since then, Sunil has been to France to play at the Nuits de Fourvière festival in Lyon in front of 3,000 people and then in Paris at the Paris Quartier d’été festival. Those who were lucky enough to be there still remember these concerts. At the first, Sunil, who was totally unknown, had an audience of less than a hundred people; by the fifth concert, there were more than a thousand people there. People followed him around like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Since then, Sunil has been to Bombay to study for three years with the great master Prasad Chaurasia. Sunil has become a master himself. Sunil belongs to the Newar tribe. This tribe is very devout and practises a blend of animism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Sunil performs in temples at the incredibly lively Hindu festivals with his accompanist, Babu, the best tabla player in Nepal. What is interesting about these Nepalese musicians is that when they play this music in these places where it has been listened to for centuries, they give a new impetus to Indian music. Their energetic, rustic, sometimes naive performances give it a freshness, an emotion and an immediacy that the masters from Varanasi often lack. Sunil’s work helps us to understand how this north Indian classical music has been able to survive until the present day. Sunil’s music is important because it allows us to arrive, through him, at a better understanding of Hindu polytheism and Indian classical music. This is a very rare opportunity to see classical music performed in a traditional context that has not changed for hundreds of years. Raw and original. I went back to Nepal to record a whole album with Sunil. His music is a meditative experience and also a real massage for the brain! Martin Meissonnier