The Beatles, in their 1967 stint with the Indian transcendental meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, accidentally brought one man in Amagansett closer to enlightenment.
"I first heard the sitar in, believe it or not, a Beatles song," Gian Carlo Feleppa recounted. Mr. Feleppa, 53, is a Springs music teacher and multi-instrumentalist. His most regular gig is accompanying a Mandala instructor on his sitar in yoga classes at Amagansett's Scoville Hall.
The sitar is a stringed instrument as ubiquitous in Indian classical music as the violin is in the West. The seven-stringed variation that Mr. Feleppa plays originated in the 18th century and is an instrument of dazzling complexity. One of the features that gives it its tonal uniqueness is the array of 11 "sympathetic" strings. The seven strings on the neck run over a series of frets, much like a guitar. Underneath the neck are eleven strings tuned specifically to resonate when one of the played strings is plucked.
"If I play a C note up top, all the C-tuned sympathetic strings will ring in unison," Mr. Feleppa said. "And when that kind of stuff happens, it's like light on water. It's sparkly. It's gorgeous. It gives you goosebumps."
That kind of design is largely absent from the Western instrumental canon, reflecting the vast difference between Western and Indian classical music. For Mr. Feleppa, that was part of the appeal. "Indian composers don't think of notes in blocks or chords like we do," he said. "It's [a] total focus on the melodic line. Their approach is like the sound of a bird leaping, flitting around."
Mr. Feleppa was quick to point out that Indian composers have no interest in trying to blend genres or combine influences as many Western composers have done. This means that the culture can be insular in regard to outsiders taking up one of its instruments.
"When I was in India a couple of years ago, I told a cab driver that I play the sitar," Mr. Feleppa recounted. "He laughed, like actually laughed a big belly laugh, and told me I'd never master it because I wasn't Indian."
This dissonance was what drew Mr. Feleppa to the instrument. "I started taking music lessons at 5 and guitar lessons at 6. I was absolutely obsessed with the Beatles, and they had their whole thing with [Maharishi Yogi], which brought a lot of sitar awareness to the States. Then I heard a Ravi Shankar" — the late Indian classical music expert — "record and heard the sitar live for the first time, and it changed my life. So when I had made about $2,000 from a job, instead of spending it all on records like I do now, I went to an instrument store in New York City." (He is a lifelong collector of vinyl across many genres.)
It was at this instrument store that Mr. Feleppa had his chance encounter with the sitar. "The store owner told me that someone had brought in a sitar just the day before and asked if I wanted to try it. I had money burning a hole in my pocket, so I said, 'Yes, I'd love to,' and bought it immediately," he recalled. "I got incredibly lucky. It was a gorgeous instrument in near-perfect condition, despite having sat in a closet for the better part of 20 years."
Mr. Feleppa immediately put his sitar talents to use here on the East End. He has been playing for the Mandala yoga classes three times a week for eight years, "and it's like the most incredible thing I've ever done musically," he said. "Basically, I'm the backing band to the yoga teacher. They're teaching the class and telling everyone what to do. If the instructor says we need energy I play with energy, and if they say chill I chill out. It's really challenging but really fun."
Additionally, Mr. Feleppa, who grew up in Amagansett, delights in teaching students of all ages. He doesn't just teach the sitar, though. Mr. Feleppa specializes in something beyond instruments. "I don't ever make anyone pick up anything specific. What I want to do is teach the enthusiasm. If a kid is excited about drums, I can't teach them the guitar! That would be ridiculous," he said. "How can I expect them to pick an instrument when they can't even identify what instruments are playing specific parts of a song?"
Mr. Feleppa said that playing the sitar "changed my life. . . . People ask me to play their weddings, they ask for funerals, workshops, everything."
It's also gone hand-in-hand with the internet to broaden his own oeuvre, both as a solo artist and as a member of the band Student Body. "I'm at this lucky spot where I get to study all the relationships people have with music," Mr. Feleppa said. "The internet has made the world a much smaller place — we're able to put these instruments together now in ways that were totally unimaginable a couple decades ago. The art of the microphone has only been around for just under 100 years. I can't wait to see what we do with the next 100."
