David and students

With Robert Bly at a full house at Plymouth Church In Minneapolis, on the occasion of his friend and collaborator, Tomas Tranströmer’s, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Robert had two friends who received the prize, the second being Bob Dylan.

Minnesota rocker, Mary Bue, my student for a time

Teaching

David began teaching sitar at the University of Minnesota in 1974, at the age of twenty. At present David teaches at Carleton and Macalester Colleges in Minnesota, and is a Senior Lecturer at Carleton. David also teaches privately.

I teach ragas to the best of my ability in the Imdadi Gharana style of my training. But I also wish for each of my students to play in their own way, and to sound like themselves. In a sense, to evolve their own style.

Lec Dem in Boston

A Quote from Robert Bly about my sitar:

“One of LCE’s favorite non-musical guest speakers was the late great poet Robert Bly who came to Lexington twice to give poetry readings for our program. On one such occasion he read with sitarist David Whetstone alongside to accompany his Kabir, Ghalib and Mirabai poetic versions. At one point in the reading Bly encouraged us to attentively listen to the sitar player and to hear in the music a message from a loved one, or a therapist, or a god. He said that he loved the instrumental music of the sitar most of all because ‘the music carried nothing but the truth.’ ”

There is a link to info here about Craig Hall’s recent Lexington Community Education event, “A Celebration of Indian classical Music.” I didn’t participate in that, but at the end of the article he kindly mentions me in the above quote.