“A MELODY came to my head in a flash,” says Patasar. “I began to play it and suddenly I noticed the people were moving and dancing. I called the piece Dreadlocks.” Dreadlocks is the opening track on Patasar’s first CD, Nirvana. The 14 tracks are a culmination of work begun in 1978 when Patasar, playing with ace pannist Len “Boogsie” Sharpe, decided to merge pan and sitar for a sound he called Pantar -- a word that is also the name of his band. “Ever since I was a kid, I never saw myself as a Trinidadian musician alone. “I see myself as a world musician and my kids as world musicians. “I see the world as our home and not Trinidad alone. Trinidad is my rock, it is my gate; it is the place where I belong to, but my music and whatever God has given to me here is not for Trinidad alone, it is for the world.” Born in Trinidad in 1946 of parents who had emigrated from India before Independence, Mungal first learnt the intoned singing of ancestral prayers -- the Ragas which are modulated as the singer improvises around a precise musical grid. By the age of eight, Patasar was playing harmonium, dholak and dhantal and played clarinet in his school’s military band. He then learnt to play the mandolin on his own with a book and became one of the top mandolin players in the country. By instinct. By ear. He finally chose the king of all instruments, the sitar. Mungal Patasar, a virtuoso sitar player, has worked with jazz masters, along with Boogsie Sharpe and Harold Headley. I have been playing the sitar since I was 27 years old. “I was a musician before that. You name it, I’ve played it. I started off as an Indian musician for prayer groups and so on, playing the harmonium and the accordion. I played the tabla as a child and then growing up, I started to go to college and learnt how to read and write music, you know the theory and so on. Then I picked up the mandolin, guitar and keyboards so I have a little knowledge of everything. When I picked up the sitar, I was already playing professional music with the National Music Orchestra. I was able to learn it within a year, because of having at least 10 years worth of musical knowledge. It was just a matter of adapting myself to the melodies of the sitar. So I would say in all, it is over 30 years of playing the sitar.” “When Boogsie and I started in 1978, we found that there was never a meeting place between the African and Indian music, except for Shorty’s use of the rhythm in his creation of soca. Boogsie and I found the sitar and the pan blended well together to give a unique sound because they are both vibration instruments. The pan vibrates and when a note is played on the sitar, it vibrates with the next note. The two together absorb each other’s vibrations and merge harmoniously.” He continues: “The first release -- Nirvana -- was a Pantar CD, the second -- Dreadlocks -- was I alone incorporating other musicians that I felt would enhance my music. The first effort was released about ten years ago and we were playing a lot of Calypso/Jazz and that sound more or less was the CD. The second CD was more of a European type setting, so you find that it did extremely well in that circuit. The year it was released we did over 30 gigs in Europe for that year alone. “There was a gentleman from India who was a singer and he came and established schools for music throughout Trinidad. He taught me how to tune the sitar and he taught me my first scale, after that I did a lot on my own. I then took his examination and passed a number of the exams and I then left for India to study. In India, I did my Bachelor’s Degree in Music and another Bachelor’s in Music 1 -- one is a B.A. and the other is a B.U. -- and then I did a Master’s Degree in which I topped all the Universities in India. So that is my musical history.” Other Trinidadian ethnic influences merge in what Patasar describes as “the European translation of harmonies.” American culture is translated through the jazz, which Patasar says he is close to, spiritually speaking. Recently, Mungal’s music has even taken on the European sounds of rave and trance beats. At 40, Patasar went to India to pursue his studies in sitar at the Banaras Hindu University. India was a whole new experience for Mungal and achieved several academic degrees. “The greatest musical influence in my life has been Ravi Shankar and the trend he follows in life is the trend I put in my music, but the difference between Ravi Shankar and myself is that he was not willing to compromise like I have done. For instance musicians would have to adjust to his style always, whereas what I do is learn other people’s styles in order to create a diversity in performance, but, he has been my idol. I am always very impressed with European Classical music, I like it very much. I love efforts made by those like John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck, John Mc Laughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Locally, my greatest source of inspiration is Andre (Tanker). Zanda has been a great influence on my music as well as Toby Tobias. In the early 70’s,  Andre asked me to work with him on the music for the film “Bim”. That was our first introduction, in 1974, and from then on, Andre has been the biggest inspiration to me in music.” He continues: “During my stay in India, I discovered what the expression ‘to work yourself to the bone’ meant. “After eight hours of daily sitar exercises, the toughest skin gives in. I understood that once I returned home, I had to regenerate the ancient art of the raga by exposing it to Caribbean rhythms. My music is holistic in its essence, but pluralistic in form.” Mungal has had three massively successful albums to date the first Dreadlocks, followed by Nirvana and the last Callebasse Café. Mungal when not playing sitar is Director of the Caribbean School of Music, Deputy Director of Culture at the Ministry of Culture and Gender Affairs. He is also father/ guru to his daughter who is also an excellent, classical sitar player. Mungal’s latest release is a live CD entitled -- Mungal Patasar and Pantar live at the Little Carib Theatre with a DVD on the concert to follow soon.