The "Indo-Turkish Bluegrass" of Elden Kelly

In an age dominated by home recording studios, instant downloads, and self-promotion, it's difficult for independent musicians to build a solid fan base. The fans struggle too - it's just as difficult for music-lovers to sift through the internet garbage and find talented artists "under the radar" with an original sound and insightful lyrics.

Guitarist and songwriter Elden Kelly is just such an undiscovered musical gem. Kelly studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and formally taught music for several years, and his technical skills on the guitar are apparent.

But more than that, his sound - which is described on his website as "jazz and neo-classicism with middle-eastern influences and American roots music," or "Indo-Turkish bluegrass" for short - is strikingly original and fresh, and provides the background for some wonderfully contemplative lyrics.

His first EP introduces us to that unique sound, in which we catch definitive strains of Blind Willie Johnson, Ravi Shankar, Django Reinhardt, and Jeff Buckley. The roots influence is prominent on three stellar tracks: the southern-fried howling of "Willow"; the rollicking and dynamic instrumental "Indo-Turkish Bluegrass"; and "The Road Not Taken," a fresh take on the classic Frost poem:

"Fire" clued us into where Kelly was headed next. His follow-up album 1000 Doors is slower, more meditative, and much less roots-y sounding; there is also a recognizable spiritual element to every song.

In "O Son of Being" (download for free here), Kelly sings:

O son of Being 

Love Me, that I may love thee

If thou lovest Me not

My love can in no wise reach thee

Know this, O servant.

Most would venture a guess that these lyrics draw from something like the Psalms or Proverbs - but in fact, it's a direct reference to The Hidden Words by Bahá'u'lláh, a text read by members of the Baha'i faith ("Dwight" from The Office is one of the more well-known Baha'is). Most of Kelly's lyrics on this album are directly taken from or inspired by Baha'i texts.

Yet the sentiments and insights expressed in "O Son of Being" and throughout the album will be recognizable to members or students of any of the three major Abrahamic faiths as well. There is a profound and compelling conviction expressed in Kelly's music that a loving relationship between the one, eternal, external fountain of being and the solitary, fallible, transient human person is central to understanding the self and our place in the cosmos - that God, "I am who am," is, and that makes all the difference. 

For instance, Kelly, while describing the genesis of another song called "Dust" in a radio interview, says:

"On each of the 'hidden words' there's an exclamatory phrase at the beginning, and the exclamatory phrase at the beginning of this hidden words was 'O moving form of dust,' addressing the human...which is a very abstract and interesting concept to me - the idea that we come from dust and return to dust."

Elden's description is almost identical with a refrain that Christians all over the world hear every Ash Wednesday: "Remember man that thou art dust, and unto dust you shall return."

It's also reminiscent of another poet's description of our ignorance and impermanence:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats...

I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The connection deepens - TS Eliot ended his "The Wasteland" with "shantih," a Sanskrit prayer from the Upanishads meaning (roughly) "the peace which passes all understanding." 

Elden Kelly's spiritual "Indo-Turkish Bluegrass" is initially somewhat disorienting and strange - but I think this is because it represents a supremely intimate and honest journey into the human heart, an invitation into one person's search for that "shantih" to which a thousand doors lead. We may balk at the invitation; but ancient hymns of the "democracy of the dead" resound in Kelly's meandering guitar and solitary, wistful voice, and move us to ponder our own weakness and dependence, our nobility and beauty.

More importantly, songs like "O Son of Being" reflect a proposition that so often gets flattened and cheapened and distorted by the discourse of the day: that our short, little, fragile lives may be somehow "borrowed" from, and intimately, inextricably tied up with some other essence - in the "hidden words" of Bahá'u'lláh, one who is "mighty, powerful, and self-subsisting."