Musician J.J. Gregg to play sitar at TEDxSalem Jan. 4th

Play­ing the sitar is not some­thing you real­ly pick up on a whim. At least, that’s the expe­ri­ence of J.J. Gregg, who will be per­form­ing at TEDxSalem on Jan­u­ary 4th.

“The sitar is a dif­fi­cult instru­ment to learn, but it’s very reward­ing over the long haul,” said Gregg. “Progress can be quite slow. It’s like walk­ing from Salem to Seat­tle. Well, maybe Salem to San Diego. It’s absolute­ly pos­si­ble, but it’s a long-term com­mit­ment rather than a week­end moun­tain climb.”

Gregg’s ultra-marathon jour­ney to mas­ter­ing the sitar began with a love of music with intri­cate or com­plex beats. He often lis­tened to favorite albums repeat­ed­ly from every angle on dif­fer­ent speak­ers and dif­fer­ent times of day.

“I’ve prob­a­bly lis­tened to ‘Sgt. Pepper’s [Lone­ly Hearts Club Band]’ at least 200 times, and more recent­ly the album ‘Amer­i­can Don’ by Don Caballero,” he said.

This pas­sion led him to the real­iza­tion that he want­ed to be a good musi­cian but couldn’t quite fig­ure out how to get there on his own. A cou­ple weeks after this epiphany, he arrived in India on a study abroad pro­gram and short­ly there­after met his now guru, Ustad Usman Khan. He start­ed tak­ing sitar lessons with him twice a week for five months.

“Over many return trips to study sitar in India,” he said, “I slow­ly devel­oped a love and devo­tion toward the sitar – it’s now the only instru­ment I real­ly play.”

What is your favorite part about per­form­ing?

One of my favorite things about per­form­ing is impro­vis­ing, and the chance to sur­prise myself musi­cal­ly. Every audi­ence and per­for­mance is dif­fer­ent, depend­ing on size, time of day, venue and the ener­gy of the audi­ence. I love the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take my audi­ence on a jour­ney. Often the sounds I use calm people’s ten­sions and allow them to explore thoughts, ideas and pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences while lis­ten­ing to the music.

Do you play oth­er instru­ments?

I took piano lessons for nine years and played the french horn for sev­en years, and start­ed an exper­i­men­tal rock band with my best friend after Kurt Cobain’s death. In that group, I sang and at dif­fer­ent times played bass, drums, gui­tar and oth­er dif­fer­ent things that made inter­est­ing nois­es. I also spent a lot of time record­ing our music and releas­ing things most­ly on cas­settes and then lat­er CD-Rs, so you could say that I have always been pas­sion­ate about per­form­ing and pro­duc­ing music.

How does the sitar dif­fer from a per­former’s and a lis­ten­er’s stand­point?

The sitar is dif­fer­ent from a gui­tar in that it’s pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to play melodies. It also pro­vides sup­port­ing rhythm for those melodies. A gui­tar, while it often plays melodies too, is a whole world of har­mon­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties in chords. The sitar is real­ly in just one key.

The sitar as an instru­ment evolved along with South Asian clas­si­cal music. That broad tra­di­tion empha­sizes melody and rhythm, with har­mo­ny cre­at­ed from note to note as part of the melody rather than through the chord changes found in much of West­ern music. So, from my performer’s per­spec­tive, play­ing South Asian clas­si­cal music on sitar feels like a per­fect match. With­in this tra­di­tion, there’s great scope for impro­vi­sa­tion.

What can you tell TEDxSalem atten­dees about your upcom­ing per­for­mance? 

I hope atten­dees can enjoy my per­for­mance as a time to relax, process oth­er ideas from the con­fer­ence, or be trans­port­ed into a dif­fer­ent frame of mind.

How long have you been in Salem, and what do you like about liv­ing and work­ing here?

I live in Salem and have for about five years. There are lots of great things about Salem: We have awe­some trees on our streets and in our parks. You can gar­den through the win­ter, and I like my neigh­bors!

If peo­ple are inspired to learn them­selves, how can they find more infor­ma­tion about the sitar?

I teach sitar lessons here in Salem, so that’s a great place to start. I think every­one has the capac­i­ty to learn to sing or play the sitar or any oth­er instru­ment. First, you need a strong desire to learn your cho­sen instru­ment. Then it’s real­ly a mat­ter of reg­u­lar, delib­er­ate prac­tice; fam­i­ly sup­port to make your prac­tice pos­si­ble; and an expe­ri­enced teacher to guide you.

If you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing sitar lessons, Gregg can be reached at charukeshi.roopak@gmail.com. To hear his music, go to jjgregg.bandcamp.com or lis­ten to his guru Ustad Usman Khan’s album “Yaman/Charukeshi” who recent­ly re-released on New Earth Records as “Pure Yoga” on iTunes and Spo­ti­fy.

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TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com