Kitaro – India (1983)

Posted By : Designol | Date : 01 Dec 2011 04:18:13 | Comments : 4 |

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"India" has been described as the fourth album of the 'Silk Road' series, characterized by a fragile beauty of many flute and wind melodies with a much traditional feel.

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SILK ROAD - TENJIKU (means, "India")
This is the second in a series of very important original soundtracks Kitaro created for NHK’s televison special “Silk Road Journey” for a popular Japanese television series in 1980. The series would run for five years at a cost of over 50 million dollars, which had begun in 1979.
NHK’s theme for this continued series was titled “Connection Without Time.”
Tenjiku is an obsolete word of Japanese origin but translates to: (India) In the Indus River (sindhu). This is the great trans-Himalayan river of South Asia and one of the longest rivers in the world, having a length of 1,800 miles and rests in the semi-arid plains of Pakistan. The river is twice that of the Nile and three times that of the Tigris and Euphrates combined. The river's name comes from the Sanskrit word sindhu (“river” or “stream”). It is mentioned in the Rigveda the earliest (c. 1500 BC) chronicles and hymns of the Aryan peoples of ancient India, and is the source of the country's name.

Kitaro was selected from ten other musicians NHK was considering at that time. Kitaro was chosen based on the music from his album “Oasis”. To NHK, Kitaro’s music was “mind music” and would fit the theme of the ancients that had traveled the famous Silk Road. NHK also recognized the music Kitaro was producing was not unlike the sounds from the “pure organ sound” Dr. Tanaka had discovered over 100 years ago. (Kitaro was around 27 years old at this time)
After the completion of Tenjiku, NHK curtailed all filming for this project for two years in preparation for their next trek. The NHK crew had experienced hardships from civil war, local custom restrictions, along with film censorship, as they passed through these countries filming the Silk Road. The NHK crew also observed the local people and their survival techniques to the extreme desert heat by lying on the ground at midday under the shade of the linden tree with its dense heart shape leaves. In giving thanks to this tree, Kitaro composed the music “Linden” for this album. Austrian composer Schubert (1797-1828) had also been inspired by this tree of life.
Kitaro was creating the majority of the Silk Road music while traveling with the NHK’s Silk Road film crew, as they passed through such desolate places as Tunhuang. The crew had revealed… “It was Kitaro’s music that kept us going through all the hardships we encountered.”
Interestingly, Kitaro and this film crew passed through some of the same areas Kobo Daishi (Ku-kai) had traveled while gathering esoteric knowledge for the foundation of Buddhism in Japan around 805 A.D. Much of this secret knowledge remains there in the mountains of India even today. Please see kitaro.us to learn more.

Subsequently, this Tenjiku LP album became re-released as India in 1983 and later re-mastered and grouped under “Silk Road Journey” as Tenjiku and formatted onto CD in 1998. This CD became grouped into one of six other compilation albums classified as “Healing and Meditation”. The other albums titles are: Endress Journey, Silver Cloud, Asia Tour Super Live, Healing Forest and Noah's Ark.

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