B Y - A L E X - C R E V A R
P H O T O S - B Y - P E T E R - F R E Y

Playing at the behest of the Dalai Lama, UGA jazz instructor Steve Dancz and his quartet were the stars of the inaugural World Festival of Sacred Music

"I am trying to lift the veil."—Steve Dancz

flight from Atlanta to India takes the better part of two days and no matter which direction you fly, west across Asia or east across Europe, the journey exacts a toll. Bleary-eyed from lengthy layovers in Amsterdam and Mumbai, the Steve Dancz jazz quartet landed in Bangalore, India, to the delirious sounds of car horns and the chattering of barefoot beggars on steaming asphalt.

The band had flown to India from the other side of the globe to play in the inaugural World Festival of Sacred Music, in which nearly 650 artists from 16 countries performed in April. They came at the request of the Dalai Lama, who sent an invitation to Dancz (BMus '80), a UGA music instructor, via the Tibet House—the Dalai Lama's cultural and publicity arm:

Dear Mr. Dancz,

I am pleased to invite the Steve Dancz quartet to participate in the Global Festival scheduled to be held in Bangalore from April 9-16.

Your participation in this unique musical event will be of immense value to us and essential to our efforts.

The other members of the quartet were jazz students under Dancz's instruction, and all three are now professional musicians: guitarist Trey Wright (BA '95), drummer Dwayne Holloway, a senior in music performance, and former UGA music student and bass guitarist Carl Lindberg. Together with Dancz, they made the trip to India to play for—and possibly meet—the man an exiled people call "His Holiness."

"I came because I love to play with Steve and because it is a celebration of sacred and indigenous music," said Lindberg, while loading his pack and bass onto the van taking the group to the hotel. "Any time you get to travel and be exposed to music, it's got to be good."

"It is a chance to bring a lot of people together to play their music and communicate without specific political and religious overtones," said Dancz. "It will be neat to be a part of all that. Jazz is a little different than the other sacred music here, but we should do just fine. All you can do is do what you do. We know we'll be groovin' and layin' it down."

Dancz was dead on. The quartet's capacity-crowd performance in Bangalore changed the tone of the festival. Prior to their show, audiences had treated acts, many of which were based in religious ceremony, as if they were museum pieces to observe from behind glass. "Dancz and Friends" (as the program read) turned the affair from monologue to dialogue, and the crowd's excitement could not be quenched with placid approval. Their reaction was a mixture of ovation and participation—just the response Dancz and his cohorts hoped for when the band got off the plane.

The hotel was already buzzing that first morning, as performers began to arrive. The South Africans seemed to take up the entire lobby with three-foot drums and props which included spears and shields. A crew of Canadians, who perform sacred styles from nearly every continent, lugged instruments to the reception desk. Indonesian musicians smoking sweet-smelling cigarettes told bellhops where to take their luggage. Tibetan volunteers darted from group to group dispelling scheduling fears and securing taxis. Throughout the building rang echoes of service-savvy Indians: "Yessir, boss."

"We are definitely not at home, are we?" said Dancz—himself a student of engaged Buddhism, a practice of living in the moment. "This is why I love to travel. It expands my ability to play music, teach, learn—really everything. And that expansion works toward my ultimate goal: to be a Buddha and awake all the time. I am trying to lift the veil."

"A celebration like this shows what could be," said Wright, "when we look at what makes us the same instead of what makes us different."

Fusing gaps between perceived differences is the reason performers traveled thousands of miles to display their sacred traditions, while accepting, wholeheartedly, the traditions of others. It brought Americans together with Dutch monks and Baul minstrels from Bengal together with Israeli vocalists. The richness of the cultural casserole could be tasted in conversations, which blended broken languages and raucous laughter. Its aroma loomed when 108 beautifully robed monks from every Tibetan Buddhist tradition chanted in guttural bellows, or when the South Africans, wearing bamboo skirts, danced and called out, "Hey hey, boom boom" to an audience that responded, "Hey hey, boom boom."

"What we do, we must do out of love," John Sithole, the South African lead singer, said to performers from Italy and Rajasthan, who were sitting in a circle eating after an evening's show. "We owe it to the children."

"I don't believe any type of thought is wrong," said festival coordinator Ami Mehera, whose British mother stood up to heavy racism (from even her own parents) after marrying an Indian, Mehera's father, in the fifties. "Everyone must decide what makes sense to them and respect the ways of others."

"I play a sacred instrument for a sacred festival."—Dwayne Holloway

he quartet's convoy—three taxis for equipment, band members, and their Tibetan guide, Ngodup, whom the group simply called Karma—made its way through downtown Bangalore to rehearsal on the second day. In the roadside shadows of shiny technology-funded buildings was an unbroken chain of poverty, linking the Indian subcontinent to the Third World, regardless of their computerized advances or nuclear arms. Faceless lepers and limbless mothers hustled, begged, and struggled to survive. Children bathed in polluted puddles, batting flies and mosquitoes away from their eyes.

"Americans aren't prepared for what we are seeing," said Wright. "This is heavy."

"Truly a land of extremes," said Dancz. "Unbelievable colonial splendor—and the destitution which comes from a country having one billion people and no way to take care of them all."

By 10:30 a.m. the group was sticky with exhaust-filled humidity—a condition created by Bangalore's status as the fastest-growing city in Asia, coupled with a surging auto-mobile population. Swarming drivers defy logic with a vehicular choreography in which cars, pedestrians, cows, and rickshaws maneuver as deftly as numbered waltz footprints.

"Man, we almost hit that guy—that was close," said Holloway on the ride to the rehearsal. The driver looked into the rearview mirror and flashed a smile.

Inside a performance room at a school for Western classical music, the quartet set up their equipment and made do with the lack of resources. Lindberg and Wright plugged their respective bass and guitar into an old amplifier, which cracked and hissed against a paint-chipped wall. Holloway sat in a dented, metal folding chair and, with no drum set at the school, used another folding chair as a snare.

"Damn Dwayne, you play the best chair I ever heard!" said Lindberg. "Make sure you pick the one you like and we'll take it to the venue in case they forget to get you a set."

"It doesn't matter," said Holloway. "I'll find something."

Dancz wondered how recently the piano had been tuned. He played a few notes, grimaced, and then came to terms with the "dead" sound.

With cabbies, unidentified Indians, and a cleaning lady in attendance, the band began to rehearse.

"All right, gentlemen," said Dancz, and the group followed his lead, taking cues just as they had in Dancz' UGA jazz improvisation class six years ago—where they all met. They have since formed a jazz band, Squat, which tours the South and plays regularly in Atlanta and Athens.

"Okay, Trey, let's start again from where you come in and I want you to get in and out quickly," said Dancz. "And Dwayne, it would be cool if you could double the melody at the end. Something like: bump-bump, jigga-jigga, bump. Carl, can you pick it up a little?"

After each of Dancz's suggestions, the players nodded and performed with the confidence that comes from trust for a respected teacher.

"Working with Steve is always great," said Holloway, who started playing drums in church at the age of four. He is now finishing his degree in music performance, and teaching four classes a semester at the Atlanta Institute of Music. Holloway is as quiet verbally as he is encyclopedic in his knowledge of rhythms, playing everything from hip-hop to rumba. But his relationship with Dancz is one subject upon which he will expound. "Steve has taught me how to think melodically. Some folks say drums are a way to relieve stress, but that's just beating—not playing."

Since 1992, Dancz has helped countless jazz players at UGA develop improvisational voices. His knack for teaching stems from the lifelong tutelage of his father, long-time Redcoat Band director Roger Dancz. "Everything I am came from him," says Dancz. "Dad was a great role model. He was an incredibly caring individual who made time for everyone. He taught me how important teaching can be."

In the late 1970s, the 19-year-old NEA grant recipient left home to conduct bands on cruise ships. The "floating universe," as Dancz calls it, took him to Europe, China, Japan, Africa, South America, and the Soviet Union. Returning to the States, he finished his music degree at UGA and then moved west, performing with a number of jazz heavies along the way—players like Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie Harris, and Clark Terry. He eventually settled in L.A. to learn music production.

"I learned early on that everybody has to stand in a line," said Dancz. "So it's important to pick the right line. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to be a musician, so I went after it. One great piece of advice I received came from 'Rocky' music creator Bill Conti, who told me, 'Don't have a Plan B.' That made the difference."

While in California, Dancz began to score movies. His résumé also includes TV projects like "Designing Women" and "Grimm Prairie Tales." In 1992, the same year he joined the University music faculty, Dancz scored the first of 13 "National Geographic Explorer" episodes. His latest effort, which aired this spring, revisits great white sharks on the 25th anniversary of "Jaws."

Dancz has been a student of Buddhism since 1977, which has led him to teach meditation and play music in an unusual venue: prisons. "My main inspiration," he said, "was to help people—and to do something a little on the edge. It's just like the musical festival—a lot of people getting together not to convert, but to be more tolerant."

That spirit of tolerance is a boon to budding musicians.

"Steve is a true mentor," says Wright, who teaches at the Jennings School of Music in Atlanta and played with Holloway, Dancz, and the UGA Jazz Band I at the 1999 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. "His approach is to do it yourself. He has become a great resource and a great friend."

Lindberg, son of the late Stan Lindberg, long-time editor of UGA's award-winning Georgia Review, started playing piano at five and bass at 12. After working with Dancz in 1994, he realized he had chosen the right teacher.

"I am still working with him because he always keeps my interest, which is no simple task," says the free-spirited Lindberg. "And through him, I have found Trey, who is solid as the day is long, and Dwayne, who's a freight train. We all play harder with Steve because he swings so hard."

By the end of rehearsal, the band had put together a six-song set for the festival, as if they were in a state-of-the-art recording studio. Holloway kept time on the chair and the cabbies slapped their knees to show approval for a distinctly American art form they have never known.

"I love to play with these guys because they are wonderful players and they play great together," says Dancz. "They make it easy for the audience to get involved."

"I'm so exhilarated, I feel all bubbly"—Carl Lindberg

oung women in flowing saris tossed flower petals into the air and moved quickly to stay ahead of the retinue surrounding the Dalai Lama, who had arrived at the Ashok Hotel in Bangalore to grace the festival. A stout man, maybe 5' 6", he was immediately engulfed by faces of many colors and shapes—some crying, all seeking blessings from the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetans, who were forced from China in 1959 following Tibet's bloody annexation. The Dalai Lama, who now lives in Dharasala, India, attempted to touch the devotees, then moved to the elevator. The crowd swelled around him: Buddhist priests, journalists, political allies, spiritual followers, religious groupies—and four UGA musicians—all pressing for a closer look at the man with a panda face who refers to himself as "a simple monk."

"Oh my," said South African festival attendee Ana Leigh Ross to the people standing behind her in the crowd. "I touched him and you could feel the energy. Shaking the hand of one man is like swimming with 10 dolphins."

After a day of meetings with politicians and religious dignitaries, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner asked to meet the Steve Dancz quartet, which hadn't flown halfway round the world just to play jazz. They also hoped to meet and perhaps even talk with the Dalai Lama. No one spoke as they stepped through a makeshift metal detector no wider than a man's shoulders. At the end of a hallway outside the Dalai Lama's hotel room, Dancz and his bandmates waited while rock-faced Indian soldiers stood guard.

"Oh, I am very happy to have the opportunity to see him, but I am also frightened and nervous," said Karma, adding to the tension. "When I see him, tears come to my eyes. For me, he is God."

Dalai Lama shows his approval. Said guitarist Trey Wright: "A celebration like this shows what could be."

The door opened and the group was motioned inside.

The Dalai Lama, a combination of pope, monarch, and living martyr, rose from his chair in front of bay windows to greet Dancz. His Holiness wore a maroon-and-saffron robe, and as he shook the hands with the American musicians his boisterous laughter helped ease the tension.

"It is nice to see you . . . so nice to see you," said Dancz.

"So, thank you, especially, for coming," said the Dalai Lama, his eyes disappearing behind chiseled Tibetan cheekbones. As his humble guests took their seats on the couch next to him, His Holiness began to speak of life's proper path:

"In my own experience, the practice of Lojong [the ancient Tibetan tradition of mind training] is to analyze the benefit of altruism and the harmfulness of the narrow, selfish-minded. That is the main message."

"During the guru meditation, I think of you," said Dancz.

"Hmmm . . . okay," His Holiness laughed, "but that is limiting the effect. Wisdom is the understanding of reality and the emotion side [is] like devotion . . . these must go together. For the Buddhist practitioner, intelligence is very important."

As for the music festival, His Holiness, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, said that Tibet House had worked hard to create an atmosphere with no specific religious or political ideology. Dancz, himself, was invited to the festival because of his tolerant, spiritual reputation and his international experience.

"I am always trying to be exposed," said Dancz. "When you go to lengths to learn about others, you are bound to became a better teacher. That's my quest for this trip—maybe every trip."

The Dalai Lama's vision for the festival stemmed from similar inspiration:

"I think this [festival] is very, very encouraging," he said. "Now we can work for peace and harmony. At that level, there is no difference of nationality, or religious belief. We are all just the same human beings . . . and have the same goal: happiness. Through dialogue, we can use opposite forces to [create] new energy, not to clash . . . . I think one method is through music festivals."

The group left the room in high spirits. Their fondest hopes had been realized—but they were also a little stunned.

"I can't believe we just met the Dalai Lama," said Holloway. "Think about the number of people in his personal space all the time, and we got to just sit and relax with him."

"And the pressures of carrying the weight of a people on his back," said Dancz. "The feeling he shares is the spirit of this festival: an openness through a common, musical language."

"Man, I just want to play."—Trey Wright

he Steve Dancz Quartet played twice in India, and their first show—before a capacity crowd—is the one people will remember. Other performers hadn't involved the crowd in their acts. That all changed when the four jazzmen from UGA took the stage of the J. N. Tata Memorial Auditorium on April 12.

"It was one of the best moments of my life," Lindberg would say later.

Waiting in the dressing room prior to their performance, no one spoke of music; they just locked eyes and waited to show people from Germany to Indonesia the ecumenical qualities of jazz. Sandwiched between a trumpet player from Japan and folk artists from the host Indian state of Karnataka, their mission was to contribute to the festival's universal language in a way not yet attempted—with amplified instruments and Western melodies.

"Ladies and gentlemen . . . please welcome from the United States of America . . . Steve Dancz and Friends!"

The band opened with three African-American spirituals: first "Joshua" then "This Train," and "Wade in the Water." Within the songs were snippets of other jazz favorites, like "Take the A Train" and "My Favorite Things." People clapped and cheered in a way foreign to the reserved reactions other performers had received.

Next, the quartet played three Dancz compositions, including the title track of his 1992 CD, Promised Land. Hooked on every number, the crowd's cheering grew louder and louder until the scene transcended traditional stage rules. Robed monks whistled, Europeans applauded and danced, and the whole room sang along with Dancz, who told the crowd: "We have come a long way to hear your beautiful voices." Between Dancz's piano solos, the crowd sang as one:

"Stand up with your fellow man,
Together, can we make this world a promised land?"

The ovation started halfway through the last number and lasted until well after the band had left the stage.

"I feel like I just gave birth," said Lindberg.

"That was one of the best gigs I ever played," said Wright. "The energy in that room was remarkable. We wondered if our music would fit in. It did."

"Jazz is universal," said Dancz. "Any music from the heart is sacred."

Decades ago, four musicians went to India seeking inner peace and harmony from the Mahaishi Mahesh Yogi. In the end, the Beatles left India disillusioned—perhaps because they went there to get something.

The Steve Dancz quartet went to India at the request of another spiritual leader and came home inspired—because they went to India to give something. For their generosity, they received the blessings of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and the respect of musicians from all over the world.

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