When I was a youngster, we had a two-manual Thomas electronic organ in our house that my father played (everything at a 4/4 tempo). About the time I turned eleven, my parents arranged organ lessons for me. I did fairly well for the first few months, when all the music was played with just chords. When the teacher tried to have me play a counter melody with my left hand, I began to fail. I was hopeless at musical multi-tasking. A few months later, the teacher was apparently fed up with my lack of progress and said to my parents right in front of me, “You are wasting your money.” That would be a red flag to any tight-fisted Mid-westerner, so the lessons ended right there.
Although I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about organ lessons, being dismissed this way was a major blow to my musical self-esteem. As an Iowan, I was raised to have a “healthy sense of guilt" over any failure. The really sad side to this was that I have always enjoyed music of many genres, and would have loved to have played alongside my friends in the school band. Why didn’t my parents get me a trumpet? The answer was “Mid-western cheapness” since we already had the organ.
A lack of coordination in my left hand was the cause of multiple musical failures. I tried the tin whistle, the recorder (several times), guitar, Scottish bag pipe chanter, tanpura and even the sitar. The only instrument I have ever had even modest success playing is the harmonium, and that only because my left hand does nothing more complicated than pumping the bellows.
A 19th century parlor organ, grand-parent of the modern harmonium from India. (Wikipedia Commons)
The iconic Indian harmonium is a small brass-reed organ-in-a-box. Old parlor organs frequently seen in antique stores or country museums, with twin foot pedals to work the bellows, are usually brass-reed harmoniums. These large harmoniums were brought to India in the 19th century by the wives of British colonial administrators and by missionaries (some sources claim it was Portuguese Catholic missionaries in Goa; very likely both). The Indians miniaturized the European harmoniums to the size of a suitcase, lopped off a few keys, and added a hand-pumped bellows. The harmonium became a popular instrument for kirtan, which probably was a great annoyance to the missionaries. “How dare these ruddy natives profane a good ‘Christian’ instrument with their heathen music!”
In recent years, the harmonium has been under attack by Indian musical purists as a foreign transplant. At least for a time, All India Radio (AIR) banned the harmonium from their broadcasts. It still remains a popular instrument for kirtan because of its portability and ease of learning.
I gambled and ordered up a harmonium of my own. The first thing I learned to play was the Integral Yoga kirtan, followed by selections from Paramahamsa Yogananda’s Cosmic Chants song book, other songs worked out from various cassette tapes, plus a few of my own modest compositions. Only once did I play publicly at the ashram, and that was not a great success. A professional musician friend said charitably that my playing was “a little uneven”. I suspect he was being very kind. Usually I played just for my own amazement.
My first harmonium, of unknown make. It wasn't much of an instrument, but I played it for over 30 years. It still works, but sounds awful compared to my new professional-quality harmonium.
Many Indian harmoniums are assembled in little backstreet workshops with the loosest quality control, if any at all. My own harmonium had lots of problems. Some keys stuck to their next-door neighbors, causing extra notes to sound. The stops that controlled the volume were very stiff, and the two that controlled drone notes didn’t work at all (and still don’t). The wind chests leaked air badly, so the instrument had to be pumped furiously to sound properly. Being a tinkerer, I had the experience and the tools to fix problems like these. I addressed these issues by partially disassembling my instrument, adding a new layer of felt to seal the air leaks, shaving the sides of the keys, then making adjustments and improvements to the mechanism as needed until the harmonium played reasonably well. Addressing tuning issues was beyond my skills, and I wisely did not monkey with the bellows.
While rooting about in the attic above the hunting lodge on some other project, I came upon two Bina-brand harmoniums. They had been shoved up there when something went wrong, since nobody at the ashram knew how to fix them. Given that the temperature in the attic could go well over 100 degrees in the summer, the instruments weren’t going to last much longer. Heat and dryness are obvious enemies of leather and wood. I was given permission to remove the harmoniums and see what I could do to get them working again. Using the experience from my own harmonium repairs, I was able to restore both to working condition.
Your author's first harmonium with the wind chests opened to show the brass reeds (top) and a partial view of the stops (below) which regulate air flow to the reeds. The two horizontal reeds just above the hinge are the drones, which have never worked.
Officially, the ashram had two harmoniums. One was kept in the meditation hall and used for playing the kirtan during satsang. The other was kept at the school to teach kirtan to the children. When I finished the two attic refugees, they were swapped for the two official instruments. This pair received the same first aid.
I never found what happened to the two extra harmoniums. I suspect they were taken by the more musical swamis to their quarters, which was probably a good use. As long as they didn’t end up in that hellish attic again, I was satisfied.
While rummaging about in the attic, I found “half” of another harmonium. This was also a Bina, but a rare stage model. Harmoniums like this have a stand bringing them to the right height to be played while seated on a piano bench. A bellows built into the base is charged by two foot-pedals with the air rising through pipes on either side to the upper half with the keyboard, much like a skeletal version of the 19th century parlor organs mentioned above. Using foot pedals frees up the left hand to play chords or a counter melody. I had seen and heard a harmonium like this just once during a visit to a Self Realization Fellowship temple.
Unfortunately, nobody at Yogaville could remember what happened to the top part with the keyboard. I suspected that once separated from the base, the top had been thrown in the trash as useless since it didn't have its own bellows. It would have been a wonderful challenge to restore this rare instrument.
It took me several hours of web searching to turn up a photo similar to the foot-pedal harmonium I found at Yogaville. The base was less ornate and lacked the portable "suitcase" features. What the lost top looked like is anybody's guess.
My modest skill at fixing harmoniums came to the attention of Swami-ji’s secretary, who asked if I would repair the guru’s personal instrument. Wow! What an honor, but what a responsibility as well. Swami-ji’s harmonium was a folding portable type, the first portable I ever worked on. It was an obviously expensive and beautiful instrument, but had been poorly assembled and was unplayable.
Again, many of the keys stuck together, so I removed them to sand the edges smooth. It was here that I made my greatest mistake — I didn’t think to number the keys, and despite my best efforts to keep them in order, some got scrambled. I was terrified that I had ruined Swami-ji’s instrument. Getting one octave worth of keys back in order was no big deal, but three octaves and change was another matter since there are a lot more keys, especially since the keys were hand-made and not all the same width. It took me all afternoon to restore the keys, and there were still some gaps I wasn’t truly happy with. The other adjustments went smoothly and soon the instrument could be played. With considerable relief, I returned Swami-ji’s harmonium to the secretary. I later heard that Swami-ji didn’t play his harmonium at all, and the instrument had been stuffed back into a closet.
The last harmonium I serviced was another portable, and appeared to be a near-twin to Swami-ji’s. One of the swamis had accompanied Swami-ji on a trip to India. She somehow had saved up enough money from her small monthly allowance to buy an instrument, and found a harmonium shop on her last day in India. The shop did not sell harmoniums to walk-ins, but only took orders and had them made to customer specifications. There was one harmonium awaiting delivery, and the shop owner persuaded his original customer to let the “nice American lady swami” have it, and another would be built for them. The swami paid for her instrument without playing it, and flew home the next day.
Her new harmonium was a total dog. The wind chest seals leaked so badly that furious pumping could barely get a note to sound. The stops were so stiff they couldn’t be moved at all. And again, some keys were so tight that depressing one key also pulled down its neighbor. The swami, probably fearing she had been cheated (she was!), almost tearfully asked if I could get her instrument to play.
I added a new layer of felt to all the seals, took the stops apart to sand and wax the pieces so they could slide, and sanded the sides of all the keys (removing them one at a time). It took several evenings of work, but I finally made the instrument playable.
Shortly after I serviced this instrument, I moved to town, and there were no more requests to fix harmoniums. I doubt that today anyone at the ashram remembers there was someone who could repair their instruments. I sometimes wonder what became of all these harmoniums, and hope they didn’t end up baking in some attic again.
