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74.
Mantras.
An open reel tape featuring live recordings of Allen Ginsberg chanting three mantras. Quarter inch tape on a 4-inch plastic Scotch spool. 11.45; 7.5 ips. Housed in a plain white card tape box, with Fred Hunter’s ink annotations to lower panel (copies of the tape were offered for sale by Hunter’s Intersound Recordings as part of the series ‘Poets on Tape’).
The first mantra [5.45] is taken from the recording of his appearance at the Hampstead Festival of the Arts, May 25, 1965 (item #96) - “Om Ah Ra Pa Tsa Na Dhi”. The second [3.45] and third [2.15] mantras were recorded at an unknown location, possibly at the International Poetry Festival (see item #145), held on the South Bank, London, in July 1967 (in “Kodak Mantra Diaries”, Iain Sinclair describes how, at the Purcell Room, Ginsberg “had chanted first to purify the atmosphere. And had failed.”). The two mantras, both accompanied by harmonium, are “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare” and “Hari Om Namo Shivaye”.
Tape digitised and transferred to CD. Provenance: The Fred Hunter Archive.
