'It's not what you think': behind the star-studded life of a rock star's wife

Model turned author Jenny Boyd’s new book details a life living with Mick Fleetwood, inspiring a Donovan song and working with the Beatles

Jenny Boyd has two words for anyone who ever fantasized about marrying a rich and famous rock star. “Watch out,” she said, with a laugh. “It’s not what you think.”

She should know. In the 70s, Boyd married Mick Fleetwood twice, first in a stretch between 1970 and 1976, and then, for a fraught year between 1977 and 78, each resulting in feelings of loneliness, jealousy, rage and, ultimately, a total loss of identity. “If you’re going to be with someone who’s clearly an artist, who’s deeply dedicated to what they do, then you need something that you’re passionate about,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re just an extension of someone else’s dream. Sadly, I never felt I was creative. I felt so locked inside.”

Jenny Boyd modeling a Foale and Tuffin suit. Photograph: John Cole

Exactly what she locked inside has finally been released in new memoir, titled Jennifer Juniper: A Journey Beyond the Muse. In vivid, anxious and sometimes hilarious prose, her book chronicles a life at once privileged by its proximity to the starriest rockers of the 1960s and 70s, and plagued by her inner feelings of anxiety and doubt.

On the enviable side, Boyd’s connections went far beyond Fleetwood Mac to bring her deep into the Beatles’ inner circle. Her sister, Pattie, married George Harrison in the mid-60s, before going on to wed Eric Clapton. Pattie published her own book about being a rock star muse in 2007, titled Wonderful Tonight, after the song penned for her by Clapton. Just as Pattie inspired that song, as well as Something, by Harrison, and Layla, by Clapton, Jenny prompted a smitten Donovan to serenade her in his fanciful 60s hit Jennifer Juniper, which lent the book its title. The Boyd sisters, as they were known at the time, also enjoyed brief, but notable, careers as models in the swinging London of Carnaby Street, where they exemplified its doe-eyed innocence and insouciant character, captured in the smart clothes of designers like Foale and Tuffin.

Despite having what Boyd called “just the right look for the time”, her insecurities surged, first over her belief that she was just an extension of her older sister, who had gone into modeling first, and then for her inability to master the gait of a proper catwalk. “When I had to do the straight modeling, it was terrifying,” she said. “It didn’t feel like me at all.”

So she wound up making her own style, dancing down the runway instead of walking. “The music they were playing was Motown, or rhythm and blues, which you just have to dance to,” she said. “I became known for that.”

Jenny, Mick and Amelia. Photograph: Sally Fleetwood

While it was already de rigueur for rock stars to date models, Boyd knew Fleetwood before she ever sat for a professional photographer. They met in school when she was 15, one year younger than he. “There was this sense of recognition,” she said. “And we had similar backgrounds. His father was a pilot, like mine, and he’d lived in a different country as a small child, as I had.”

Even so, Boyd’s childhood was far more wounding than Fleetwood’s. Her dad was scarred in battle in the second world war, which left him “disfigured and traumatized”, as she wrote in her book. He was already a distant person and his marriage to her mother was deemed “a mistake”, by both parties. 

When Jenny was just nine months old, her parents moved the family to east Africa, where their already shaky marriage crumbled. After her mother returned to England, with the children in tow, her mother remarried. The reception party afterwards set the stage for Jenny’s later reliance on alcohol. Though she was just five at the time, “there were two guys at the back of the hall giving me glasses of champagne over and over,” she said. “They were thinking it was funny to see this little kid completely off her head. That’s where it all started.”

Jenny Boyd. Photograph: Courtesy of Jenny Boyd

Her home life was equally unbalanced, marked by threats of violence from her stepfather. “In my upbringing, there was never that support from parents that makes a child into someone who has confidence,” Boyd said.

Outside the home, her beauty attracted boys, and her connection to them brought her to the center of London’s bold new music scene. At the time she met Fleetwood, he was already playing in a band, the Chaynes, who supported the Yardbirds and the Stones, whose world became her circle. At one point, Mick Jagger told her he’d written a song for her, though he didn’t bother to mention which one. “I always wondered about that,” Boyd said, with a laugh.

She spent time in San Francisco and later accompanied her sister and Harrison on the Beatles’ famous trip to India to visit the Maharishi in 1968 but things didn’t turn out as planned. From the start, Boyd suspected the Maharishi of having less-than-pure motives, and the whole party wound up bolting from the ashram after accusations that the guru had acted inappropriately with a young woman in their party. Today, Boyd thinks that allegation may have been “a bit of mischief”, concocted by “Magic Alex”, a man given that nickname by the Beatles for his supposed technological skills. “He was quite possessive of John [Lennon] and wanted him to go to his guru,” she said. “There was definitely some underlying stuff going on.”

Back in London, Boyd began to manage the Beatles’ Apple Boutique, sporting clothes by its design team, The Fool. There, Donovan began to see her. And though he wrote his hit song for her, they never consummated their flirtation, a decision Boyd said, was hers. “It was more like courtly love,” she said.

During this time, she had an on-again/off-again romance with Fleetwood. It wasn’t until six years after their meeting, in 1970, that they finally wed. Even at the ceremony, she described the drummer as living in a world of his own, his thoughts fixed on the band. At the time, that did make sense. The group’s star guitarist, Peter Green, had just left them, and if Fleetwood hadn’t rallied the rest to carry on, “they would not have survived,” Boyd believes. “Mick had a large vision. And he’s incredibly tenacious.”

To solidify the band, Fleetwood suggested they live together, a move that didn’t thrill his new wife. “I wanted to start a family, not a commune,” she wrote in the book.

Though the band added a woman to their ranks, the supremely talented Christine McVie (wife of bassist John McVie), she was considered by them to be “one of the guys”. The album they recorded took its name from the place where they lived, Kiln House. For its sessions, Boyd wrote all of the lyrics for the song Purple Dancer, and some of them for Jewel Eyed Judy. But she wasn’t given any credit. “Their manager wanted his band to be ‘the guys’,” Boyd said. “To have Mick’s wife have credit, he wouldn’t want that. So, he gave it to Mick.”

To promote the album, the band went on a long tour of America, leaving Boyd alone when she gave birth to their first child. Over the next few years, her loneliness ballooned, while Fleetwood’s ambition exploded. Even when the couple were together, they barely communicated. “We were both bad at that,” she said.

In her most alienated stage, Boyd had an affair with a guitarist in the band, Bob Weston, who gave her the attention her husband hadn’t. When Fleetwood found out, he fired Weston. But, soon after, Boyd dumped the guitarist and went back to her husband. “The affair I had with Bob, I felt so guilty about it,” she said. “It took me many years to get over it, because it was so against my nature. I’m a naturally monogamous person.”

Of course, Fleetwood had his own affairs, most ruinously with Stevie Nicks. “For years I didn’t talk to her,” Boyd said.

During this low period, her use of alcohol and drugs soared, as did Fleetwood’s. Her emotional isolation led her to leave her husband several times, taking their two children with her. That outraged Fleetwood’s parents as well as hers, who all viewed her as an ingrate who didn’t appreciate the rich life she’d been given. In one stretch, they banished her from seeing her children, keeping them instead with Fleetwood’s family. In one of the worst periods, Boyd sought refuge with sister Pattie and Clapton, only to find them both to be 24/7 drunks. Not only did the alcohol make Clapton verbally abusive, on one occasion Boyd claims he crawled into her bed, while her sister slept in the same house. “That was horrendous,” said Boyd.

At the same time, something her sister said explained, if hardly forgave, Clapton’s action. “She told me he had been wanting to separate us,” she said.

Jenny Boyd and Mick Fleetwood. Photograph: Kells Jesse

After divorcing Fleetwood for a second time, in the late 70s, Boyd married the journeyman drummer Ian Wallace, but that relationship fell apart for many of the same reasons her earlier one had. Only after Boyd divorced Wallace, in the 90s, did she sort out her life, axing the alcohol and drugs, going back to earn a degree in psychology and, finally, beginning what would become a long career running an addiction treatment center in England. Boyd also went on to write a book before the new one, titled Musicians in Tune, for which she interviewed 75 musicians about their creative process. For the book, she talked to Fleetwood, who she came to forgive and to form a warm friendship with. In speaking to him about their many difficult years, Fleetwood told her he “had no idea that’s what was going on with me”, she said. “I’m not surprised, because everybody was so out of it.”

While Boyd believes it hurt Fleetwood to read her book, he has endorsed it. She even managed a rapprochement with Stevie Nicks. “A few years ago, when the band were playing the O2 Arena, she wanted to see me,” Boyd said. “She apologized. I told her I had forgiven her years ago, but I really appreciate that.”

In 1997, Boyd married a non-musician, the architect, David Levitt, who is a member of the mayor of London’s design council.

These days, Boyd takes a sanguine view of everything she experienced with the band. “I saw Fleetwood Mac in Paris recently,” she said. “Standing on the side of the stage, I thought, ‘God, I love these guys.’ We’ve all been through so much together, over so many years. A love will always be there for just that reason.”

Jennifer Juniper: A Journey Beyond the Muse is out now

(Source: The Guardian)

Things Fall Apart singer Cristina reportedly dies from coronavirus

The pop performer, who was known for being a part of the 80s underground New York scene, was 61

The new-wave pop singer Cristina has reportedly died at age 61 after being diagnosed with coronavirus.

The singer, whose full name was Cristina Monet-Zilkha, is believed to have died of complications from Covid-19, according to reports from various music channels and those close to the musician. Fans flooded the singer’s Instagram account with comments, expressing their grief.

Cristina Monet-Zilkha, known in the 1980s for dance-pop tunes, has reportedly died of complications from coronavirus. Photograph: Retna/Getty/Handout

Cristina is known for dance-pop tunes such as Things Fall Apart, Disco Clone and a cover of Peggy Lee’s Is That All There Is? that were emblematic of the 1980s underground New York scene.

She enjoyed brief success through club hits co-written with her husband, Ze Records label owner Michael Zilkha, before the two retired from music and moved to Texas in 1985. After her divorce in 1990, she returned to New York and wrote a number of music essays.

In a Facebook post, Steve Wasserman, a UC Berkeley professor and friend of the late singer, said Cristina posted to social media that she was experiencing a high fever, but “her lungs were clear” and she appeared to be recovering. “Then, with appalling swiftness, she was gone this morning,” Wasserman wrote.

Singer Zola Jesus paid tribute on Twitter, calling her a “HUGE inspiration” and praising her for being “too weird for the pop world and too pop for the weird world”.

Notable names in music who have died from the virus include singer Alan Merrill, the songwriter behind I Love Rock’n’Roll, and country musician Joe Diffie.

(Source: The Guardian)

Remembering the Khasi singer who immortalised fading folktales and village life

Through his music, Skendrowell Syiemlieh spoke of forgotten myths, folktales, ethics and ways of life.

Born on March 1, 1945, Skendrowell Syiemlieh was the first son of Plentimai Syiemlieh and Romuel Ryntathiang. He grew up in his native village called Umthied Bynther in West Khasi Hills, Meghalaya.

Raiot

At the age of eight, he started to mesmerise the village with the melodious sound of his four-stringed duitara and his soulful singing. In 1967-’68, he was given an opportunity to sing on an All India Radio programme. After that, Syiemlieh became a regular artiste on All India Radio Shillong and his songs were loved by many.

Living old memories

Syiemlieh would begin many of his songs with the words “Ha sngap ho para ngan iathuh khana” (Listen o my brothers and sisters, I will tell you a story). Indeed, his songs were stories. But they were narrated not only to entertain, but more importantly to teach. Like a storyteller of old, he would sing his stories. The duitara, the guitar and the violin were accompaniments as he would retell tales about his people, the Khasis, and in particular, the rural folk.

The origin myths of the Khasis, ancient sacred tales, histories, tragic tales of fallible Khasi heroes and doomed romances were the subjects of his art. In his songs, he repeated the tale of Tirot Sing in prison (Iing Byndi), the awe-inspiring account of the ancestral father of his clan, U Lohryndi, the tragic tale of U Manik Raitong, and the story of Ka Suna.

For Syiemlieh, storytelling and singing were the same. The accompanying musical instruments – such as the duitara, guitar and violin – deepened the union between the stories and his music.

Though his musical creations are tales of yore, they present different perspectives. In Iing Byndi, for instance, he does not sing about the heroism of U Tirot Sing Syiemlieh (a native chief who led the Khasis in their fight against the British during the 1929-1933 Anglo- Khasi War). Rather, he chooses to sing about the anguish in Tirot Sing’s family after his arrest.

In U Lohryndi, he tells us about U Lohryndi the Thawlang (or ancestral father) of the Syiem Sutnga and Syiemlieh clan. While many have sung about the Iawbei (root-ancestress of the clan) Ka Lidohkha, Skendrowell shows us another perspective by making Lohryndi his song’s protagonist.

In Ka Mahadei (Syiem’s Wife), he talks about how the Syiem (traditional Khasi chief) had asked his myntri (nobles) to fetch a poor woman for a wife, especially someone who is a khun khatduh, the lastborn daughter in a poor family. The Syiem hopes to marry a humble and self-sacrificing woman who knows how to keep house and serve him and her family too. There is one such woman, but her elder sister is envious of her. She lies and gets married to the Syiem instead, claiming that she is the khun khatduh who takes care of her parents. The younger sister has no idea about this. She marries a baker. But as justice would have it, the Mahadei (Syiem’s wife) gives birth to deformed children who do not live long. The Syiem understands that there is something the Mahadei is hiding from him. She confesses and the Syiem imprisons her. 

The Syiem then orders his nobles to fetch him another wife. They come back with the Mahadei’s youngest sister whose husband, the baker, dies before fathering any children. They find her to be the best match for him.

Skendrowell sings:

Ko jingpihuin ko jingbishni phin lah shan slem oh katno sngi?

La phi leh bein ha sla pyrthei ia rangli ki juki, 

Ka jinglanot kan wan ha phi, 

Khatduh ym slem kan thad lyngkrang ia phi.

Oh envy, oh jealousy! For how long would you last? 

You may have ill-treated the poor, 

but suffering will come to you and in the end,

you will be shamed and laid bare.

Uniquely, in many songs, he would begin without singing and without music, instead imparting a moral lesson. Once the music started, so would the singing.

Romanticism in songs

Inspiring his songs were the natural beauty and serenity of rural areas. In one song after another he would sing about the four seasons (like in Saw Aiom Ki Por) and his village.

In Ah Moina – “Ah Moina! Ah Moina! Bu chong cha ri bujngei (Oh Mynah! Oh Mynah! That lives in a faraway land”) – and in U Sohkhia, the image of the mynah reappears. The bird is a recurring motif that symbolically suggests a love that is lost and has flown away. In several songs, plants and flowers – like U Tiewlyngksiar, U Tiewlyngskaw, U Tiewdohmaw (all wild orchids) – are nature’s symbolic suggestions of the manners and qualities of human beings.

In Khublei Khublei, Skendrowell uses the imagery of flowers to describe the difference in the way he is treated in his village and in a town. In his village, he is U Tiewlyngksiar (an orchid symbolising an honourable gentleman), but when in town, he is forced to apologise since to the urban elites, he is just U Tiewlyngskaw (a flower symbolising the rustic). Amidst this drama, he mentions how U Tiewdohmaw (a flower symbolising a wise person) would listen to the songs sung by U Tiewlyngksiar, who is but U Tiewlyngskaw to the urban elite.

The rural landscape inspired his singing. In Ah Moina, Skendrowell sings of a life lived in the soothing embrace of nature, a life filled with the simple joys of catching a bird or a mountain rat, when ploughing the field, when playing the duitara and when eating u sohphlang (a white edible tuberous root that has a sweet crunchy flavour).

Singing in the Mawiang dialect (one of the many Khasi dialects spoken in the West Khasi Hills), he begins with the words:

Chi bu duk bu toi

Set synduk ia ka loi loi

We who are poor,

we lock up the nothing we have in a box.

The empty box symbolises poverty as well as the meaninglessness of material possessions. This box, which is seemingly empty to the urban folk, is in fact a treasure box containing the most precious experiences of rural life. In Skendrowell’s eyes, these rural experiences are valuable. They must be carefully locked in a box, a box that the urban rich sees as having nothing or “loi loi”. This is proof of his unwavering belief in the serenity and freedom of rural life, even if it is sometimes hard or poverty-stricken.

Amid a difficult village life, his songs talk about 1. Ka Tip Kur Tip Kha; 2. Ka Tip Briew Tip Blei; and 3. Ka Kamai ia ka Hok (1. To know one’s maternal and paternal relations – the sacred principle that defines family relations; 2. To know man and know God – the sacrosanct value that defines human relations and our relationship with God; 3. To earn righteousness – the ideal and belief that one must work one’s righteousness out).

These are the Khasi ideals, ethics that were ingrained in him since childhood while he would sit around the hearth with his family and other villagers. His love for the rural and the natural, however, is unlike Wordsworth’s pantheistic ideology, unlike Keats’ worship of beauty and it indicates nothing of Shelley’s escapist desire. Like a true son of his village, he sang his songs – a villager singing his songs.

His songs are a magical description of the intoxicating, inspirational and soul-soothing rural life, of which he was a part. He did not wait for a Wordsworth to describe his life. Indeed, Skendrowell’s songs are not poems about a Yarrow Unvisited (a poem of Wordsworth’s) but he was part of his own Yarrow, meaning the Khasi rural landscape.

His love for his village is mirrored in Shnong ba nga ieij (The Village I Love). If WB Yeats could not help but go to Innisfree, where he hoped to find peace, Skendrowell gave in to the call of his village hut – a call made by Mother Nature (Ban khot noh ia nga, Ba phah ka Mei Mariang). Like a true Khasi, he saw nature as a Mother (Mei meaning mother – Mei Mariang or Mother Nature).

His songs, however, are not descriptions of a utopian Khasi world. He was not blind to the loss of values among Khasis and with an honest eye, he saw the moral decadence in his society. In Akor Khasi, he mourns the loss of Khasi manners and values. “Akor Khasi pat la ha niamra (Good Khasi manners and values are now in dark caves).

Raising questions

While entertaining, his songs were also meant to teach and reflect on human nature.

His search for meaning in life starts with questions that dig deep into the deepest pits and chaotic labyrinths of human nature. There are questions aplenty in his songs. Balei (why)?, he would ask. In Balei jinglong briew? (Why is human nature such?), Skendrowell sings,

Balei jinglong briew kum ka sla halor um kaba shu per?

Why is human nature like a leaf that floats on the water surface?   

This suggests his understanding that humans are simply drifters – wavering like leaves on the water surface.

In the same song, he continues:

Balei jinglong briew ka shu lum Dorbar khlem nongbishar?

Why do humans gather a Dorbar when there’s no proper judge or righteousness?  

This suggests corrupt practices in the traditional Khasi Dorbar.

Balei jinglong briew ba shu kwah ban her sha ka ri ki khlem kam tang shyntur suda?

Why do humans want to escape to a land where people don’t work but only talk?  

This suggests tall talk but no action.

Balei jinglong briew ba shu kwah ban her shaba sting u ba met ba khia u stait?

Why do humans want to escape to where the edible part of the rice grain is light and the husk is heavy?

The part of the rice grain that is edible should have been described as being heavy since we toil and labour for our food. 

But Skendrowell turns this upside down. The edible portion is light but the husk, which is unnecessary, is heavy. This suggests a chaotic and absurd world, where there is a total inversion of values as opposed to the world of his village, where the simple joys of life amidst nature are soul-soothing and where everything is in order.

However, like Pablo Neruda in The Book of Questions, Skendrowell does not provide solutions to the human predicament. He sees his people as being caught in a dilemma (Ka Dum Dngiem) and he firmly believes that it is the greed of man and the loss of the old Khasi value of “Ka Kamai ia ka Hok” that the Khasi world is now absurdly chaotic and seemingly irredeemable.

True to roots

His inability to sing in English meant he was never fully embraced by the urban elite. Even the Padma Shri bestowed posthumously in 2009 did not help raise his image among them. They continue to regard his art as a subaltern art belonging to a subaltern rural narrative. They fail to notice his brilliance.

However, he remains “the singing storyteller” for many in the villages and small Khasi towns considered Nongkyndong (a pejorative term used by the Khasi urban elite to paint village folks as village idiots). His courage to sing about himself as a son of the village brought him success when, without inhibition, he sang Ah Moina in the Mawiang dialect.

The Mawiang dialect is associated with the rustic life. Nobody imagined that a song sung in a dialect of West Khasi Hills would be appreciated. But it was. Till date, Ah Moina remains one of the most popular Khasi songs, bringing fame to him but also to West Khasi Hills.

Skendrowell is not purely a folk singer. Though much of his music is fusion music, yet it enhances folktales and it helps our generation – who are more attuned to the sounds of a Western drum or guitar – relate to them. In Skendrowell, the duitara found a companion who could take it to a new generation. With Skendrowell, the oral storytelling tradition became a singing tradition, making our generation connect with our roots. Ancient folktales were given a new life and they are now sung to our generation.

The old has given way to the new, but folktales are part of our cultural memory and Skendrowell’s songs have contributed much to their retelling. By immortalising memories, he has immortalised himself. Thanks to Skendrowell Syiemlieh, many Khasi folktales have become flesh and blood. Let us all tell our own stories in songs and maybe we too will live forever.

(Source: Scroll)

David Olney: American folk singer dies on stage aged 71

The American singer-songwriter David Olney has died on stage during a performance at a festival in Florida.

The 71-year-old was mid-song when he apologised, closed his eyes and fell silent, two musicians who were performing alongside him said.

He suffered an apparent heart attack during the show in Santa Rosa Beach on Saturday night, a statement said.

Olney was a key member of Nashville's music scene and his songs were recorded by a number of country and folk stars.

David Olney released more than 20 albums during his solo career

In the early 1980s, he formed a rock band called The X-Rays before embarking on a solo career and releasing more than 20 albums.

"Olney was in the middle of his third song when he stopped, apologised and shut his eyes," Amy Rigby, a musician who was sitting next to him, wrote in a Facebook post.

"He was very still, sitting upright with his guitar on, wearing the coolest hat and a beautiful rust suede jacket," she added.

Scott Miller, who was also on stage with Olney, said he had attempted to revive the singer.

"David paused, said, 'I'm sorry' and put his chin to his chest," he wrote. "It was as easy and gentle as he was."

"We got him down and tried our best to revive him until the EMTs [emergency medical technicians] arrived. The world lost a good one last night but we still have his work. And it still inspires."

In a statement posted on Olney's website, Emmylou Harris, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, paid tribute to the singer's ability to tell "marvellous stories with characters who cling to the hope of enduring love".

(Source: BBC)

Gangnam: The scandal rocking the playground of K-pop

Earlier this year, the meticulously managed world of K-pop was rocked by scandal.

Seungri, a singer in one of the world's most famous boy bands, Big Bang, was questioned by police over allegations he was procuring prostitutes for his business and had embezzled funds at Burning Sun, a nightclub he part-owned in the exclusive Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea.

Several of his celebrity K-pop friends were also caught sharing sex videos and bragging in a chat room about raping women. One by one, Korean heartthrobs more used to being mobbed by fans found themselves fending off reporters as they made their way to the police station to face questions from drug-taking to rape.

But in recent months an even more shocking picture has emerged of Gangnam, where South Korea's high society live, work and play. The BBC has heard allegations that in its glitzy nightclubs, women have been drugged to order by powerful men and raped, and that underage girls are being sexually exploited for profit.

The BBC has sought the voices of those caught up in Seoul's sex scandal. We have heard from club-goers and club employees as well as victims, including underage girls who say they were recruited to have sex with paying customers. They all say the abuse of women in the clubs is pervasive and often violent.

We have been told that elite clients, known as VIPs - and the richest VVIPs - were prepared to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have women who were enjoying a night out drugged and taken to a nearby hotel room, the abuse routinely captured on camera.

As one club-goer put it to us: "These men are hunters and they pay to get in the game. So you need prey. It's foolish to think you won't get shot in this place."

A warning: this article contains details of alleged sexual assaults which you may find upsetting.

'He kept giving me water'
We were shown a harrowing video which allegedly depicts a sexual assault. The still image in front of me gives me an idea of the horror which will follow.

A woman is lying naked on a red sofa with three men staring down at her. I press play, and the men approach her. One laughs as he lifts up a limb and it falls. Her body is limp and she does not respond. The two minute video is too upsetting to describe in detail.

She appears to be sexually assaulted by all three men. Repeatedly.

The video was allegedly shared in a chat room between employees - I cannot verify its contents. But this clip is now part of a police investigation into activities at several clubs in Gangnam.

Gangnam has often been described as the Beverly Hills of Seoul. Flashy and fashion-conscious, it's a symbol of prosperity and status. At night, it's the neon playground of the very rich and those eager for a taste of the celebrity lifestyle.

The cost of a night out appears almost irrelevant. One wealthy, connected club-goer told us he spent up to $17,000 (£13,300) on just one evening. A viral social media clip shows a man spinning on the dance floor, throwing bank notes into the air like confetti. The décor is loud and ostentatious. The dress code is, of course, designer chic and for many of the more prestigious nightclubs, gaining entry requires being on an approved list.

DJs are celebrities in their own right, conducting crowds of dancers crammed around the turntables. Beautiful women serve thousand-dollar bottles of champagne to revellers who appear ready to party until dawn.

Kim - not her real name - used to be a regular on the Gangnam scene. She liked to dance and she had a few favourite DJs. One evening last December she was invited to a nightclub for drinks.

Among the group was an Asian businessman who she claims took an interest in her and began serving her whisky.

"When he was pouring the drink, I couldn't see him," she says. "He had his back against me. So I drank around three to four glasses. Every time I did so, he kept giving me water to drink."

At some point, she claims, she blacked out and woke up in a hotel room with the man looking down on her.

"He forced me to lie down but I didn't want to, so I kept getting up. When I got up, he would grab my neck and force me down on the bed over and over. I thought someone could die like this by having their neck broken.

"I started crying and yelling. Then, he got on top of me and used both of his hands to block my mouth and started pressing down hard. He kept saying 'relax, relax'."

She told us she feared for her life. "I couldn't resist his power and I was in so much pain that I could die, so I just gave up and lay there like a dead body."

Kim says she had been drugged in the club and was raped. Afterwards she threw up, then begged to go home.

"I was grabbing my clothes and other things to leave when he took his phone to take a photo with his face and my face in it. I said what are you doing and 'no, no'. But he grabbed my arm and wouldn't let me go. So I thought it'd be best to just take this photo and leave otherwise I could get into some real harm.

"So he just took the photo and I left."

Kim went to the police the next day. They found no trace of drugs in her blood, but prosecutors tell us that is not unusual. The most common drug used to incapacitate a victim is thought to be GHB, or Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate a strong sedative that is undetectable in the body after a few hours.

"Thankfully I was awake when it happened and I can fully describe what I dealt with," she told us.

But she said she had found other women online who also believe they were drugged and raped after visiting Gangnam clubs, but have no clear memory of what happened.

The businessman was found and questioned but he has strongly protested his innocence. In a statement to the BBC he said she did not black out. He said he did not rape, sexually assault or physically assault her at all and that CCTV footage shows her willingly leaving the club with him and walking to the hotel.

The investigation continues.

'Bring me zombies'
Over the past few months, police have questioned nearly 4,000 people, focusing on allegations of drugs, prostitution, sexual assault and illicit filming linked to the club scene which have outraged the public. Those questioned include several male celebrities from the K-pop scene.

Seungri - real name Lee Seung-hyun - has resigned from show business, denying that he ever procured prostitutes but saying the scandal "has become so big".

The continuing controversy has led to the resignation of the head of a major South Korean entertainment company - Yang Hyun-suk, chief producer of YG Entertainment, which was behind the viral hit Gangnam Style. He denied wrongdoing, but said he could no longer withstand "humiliating" allegations of his involvement in a drug scandal and was stepping down to fight them.

Seungri, once one of South Korea's biggest pop stars, has stepped away from show business

The allegations have encouraged others to speak out. People we spoke to who were an integral part of Seoul's club scene have described a culture of exploitation, where the procuring of women for sexual gratification had become almost routine for some wealthy clients.

The clubs employ hosts known as "MDs" to cater to guests' desires. It's a murky role - one female MD told us it entailed building relationships with "pretty girls" to bring them into the clubs. They would entice them with the offer of free entry and free drinks.

MDs would have a number of beautiful women on their call lists. Many would encourage them to drink with their clients and the MDs would then take around 13-15% of the drinks sale. With the right clients, some of them would make around $20,000 a month. As one MD put it: "To secure high-paying clients, MDs need to be able to supply hot girls."

We have heard repeated allegations that at some point and at the request of clients, the women's drinks were being spiked, rendering them unconscious. However one senior club executive told the BBC that the suggestion GHB had been sold or distributed to customers and sexual assault encouraged was ridiculous.

A former host at a famous Gangnam nightclub said one VVIP - the elite guests - was "well-known for his crazy appetite for unconscious women".

"He ordered me to bring two totally drunk or unconscious women to him," he told us. Specifically, he said, the client's request was: "Bring me zombies."

He claimed to have witnessed several attempted sexual assaults: "I saw a few people every week that didn't seem like they were drunk, but gone in a different way. You can tell with your eyes the difference between who is drunk on alcohol and who is gone from something else."

Lee - not his real name - worked as an MD and said these women were "just people who came to the club".

I wanted to ensure I understood what he was telling me. So I put the question to him clearly: "Ordinary women going into the club for a nice night out, could face being drugged and raped? Is that what you saw?"

"Yes," came the reply.

After procuring the women, he said, the clients "would usually take them to the hotel above the club or there are a lot of hotels near here, or motels".

We cannot name any of these workers, because they fear reprisals. Likewise a regular club-goer told us that he had been in the VIP room at a Seoul nightclub when a waiter brought in unconscious women.

"I don't know if someone drugged her but I had a woman who was clearly hallucinating and unconscious. I wondered if she was mentally ill, especially since she was drooling and her body was limp. I worried - what if she dies here?"

He denies being involved in drugging or attacking women and said he had challenged the host.

"I told the waiter that she is too drunk, and he said: 'She's not drunk. She won't remember a thing so you can do whatever you want.'

"Sexy, beautiful women are the prey. These men are the hunters. And they pay to get in the game. So you need prey, and the MDs are the ones who release the prey."

A pastor undercover
Joo Won-gyu is a church pastor who has become one of the most vocal campaigners against sexual violence in Gangnam.

Pastor Joo says he saw rapes 'three or four times a week'

He had been working with runaway teenagers in 2015 when 20 of them disappeared. He tracked them down and found them working as underage prostitutes at clubs. He decided to become a driver for some of these clubs to try to discover more about how these teenagers were being treated and recruited.

He said scouts or pimps would entice runaway teenage girls by claiming they would help them become entertainers or actresses after "working" at the club for two to three years. Others were even promised plastic surgery.

One of the youngest girls working in clubs had been recruited at the age of 13, he claims. The age of consent is 18 in South Korea. Sex with a minor is statutory rape.

He said he had witnessed a number of unconscious women being raped in that time. He told us how he believed the system worked.

"VIPs would tell MDs 'I want to sleep with that girl'. The MD would then tell the girl 'that VIP is super-rich' and then the MD would take the girl into the partitioned area. Then they would drink together, put GHB in the drink or actually get her drunk on alcohol to rape or sexually assault her."

He drove us around the back alleys of Gangnam where he would drop off clients or sex workers, including underage girls, at hotels or office apartments. He described it as a "challenging time".

"I saw women raped inside clubs, raped outside clubs behind cars, being drugged against their will, being beaten and so on. I would say three to four times a week I'd see this."

'We gave our bodies in rotation'
Joo tried but failed to remove several girls from these clubs. He would not let us meet any of them, but allowed us to put questions to two of them by phone, through him.

One who was recruited for clubs at the age of 16 was very blunt about her role.

"When we were there we were drinking, taking drugs, dancing like idiots and we gave our bodies in rotation," she said.

She said the men were "like kings". Both teenagers said the sex was often violent - they and their friends would need medical treatment.

Her clients often filmed her. She was told to act innocently, and sometimes she was to act as if she was being raped.

"For girls like us they'd make porn out of it… I just act like I don't see it when they film me."

Joo says these videos could be used to blackmail the young girls to prevent them from leaving the club's service, or to stop them going to the police.

The minors said that on many occasions they were not alone with these men in the motel rooms.

One told us the VVIPs would bring along women they'd picked up at clubs who had been drugged and they would witness them being assaulted or raped.

Some girls were lured with marijuana, they said, but if the men "think it could be a crazy bitch that could sue them, then they would drug them with GHB and film them unknowingly".

"They are just unconscious. They cannot get a grip. Or they have no idea what they did."

Now that the police investigation is under way, I asked one, through the Pastor, what she would like to see happen to those involved in this sex scandal.

"I hope they all die," she said.

"Only those who have a… strong mind survive following Gangnam."

'Sexy beautiful women are prey'
Prostitution is illegal in South Korea, and yet the sex trade is thriving and thought to be worth around $13bn a year. There is no shortage of prostitutes, for those who want such services.

But one rich club client told us that the men he knew did not want a prostitute. He said comparing prostitutes to ordinary women was "like a business car versus your own car".

"You cannot touch a normal girl like that easily. The sense of achievement follows when you gain access to certain things that not everyone is allowed to."

We challenged him that having sex with women who are unable to give consent was rape.

"Normal women who drink normally will not take off their undies? So what do men do?" he answered indignantly. "They try to make them drunk, but they refuse. What do you do?

"You say innocently that 'I'm only here to dance. Sure, but will people let you only dance? This is a jungle. It's right that you are here to sightsee, but there are alligators, lions and lizards out to get you. Sexy beautiful women are prey."

'Screaming testimonies of women'
The idea of being preyed upon by men will feel disturbingly familiar to so many women in South Korea. Last year, thousands took to the streets of Seoul to protest at so called "spy cameras", where videos of women, often sexually explicit, were taken without their knowledge.

The scandal has prompted further large protests as campaigners call for justice. They fear that police cannot be trusted to investigate fairly.

South Korean women have been growing collectively angrier about hidden cameras and revenge porn

Shin Ji-ye from the Green Party addressed the last mass rally on International Women's Day in March and claimed this abuse had taken place over "decades".

"In so many clubs," she said, "we have heard the screaming testimonies of women being raped and assaulted."

But there is anger that it was only when celebrities were arrested and police collusion was suspected that action was taken. There is fear that the voices of female victims have been ignored for too long.

Police have arrested 354 people in the last three months in connection with what has become known as The Burning Sun Scandal. Of them, 87 were arrested for brokering sex, secretly filming sex and rape. In 20 cases women had been drugged.

But campaigners say the total number of female victims may be much higher. Lawyer Cha Mee-kyung says such "hidden crimes" happen but "are not reflected in justice system statistics".

There are also claims that some police officers turned a blind eye to reports about the nightclubs.

President Moon Jae-in has ordered an investigation into alleged police corruption and said there was "evidence suggesting that the prosecutors and police purposely conducted incomplete investigations, and actively prevented the truth from being revealed". The Gangnam station chief has been removed from his position after a special inquiry.

Reporting a rape can be hard for victims. Many women in South Korea are reluctant to come forward. They fear the stigma. They believe they will be judged by an extremely patriarchal society.

Supt Choi Hyun-a said all allegations would be investigated thoroughly

The use of drugs also makes it difficult for women to remember the details of an assault.

Lawyer Kim Jeong-hwan is in the process of trying to bring to court South Korea's first case involving GHB. He said the nature of GHB meant it was "highly likely the victims would not have a clear recollection" of the night.

"On top of that it is hard to secure evidence that GHB has been used as it is extremely unlikely that a blood test will detect the drug because it disappears so quickly from the body," he added.

Then there is the fear of not being believed. It is their word against the rich and the powerful. Will a police force, which is already being accused of trying to cover up some of these crimes, be able to hold those in positions of power accountable?

The Korean National Police Agency has set up a special unit to investigate crimes against women. Supt Choi Hyun-a told the BBC that her officers would "thoroughly and fairly investigate so that all South Korean citizens had a greater trust in the police".

She added that her team would focus its efforts on "preventing sex crimes where women are drugged".

"We know this frightens women the most," she said.

Some women are concerned that once this controversy has passed, the exploitation will continue. But campaigners have vowed to fight on.

Kim told me that she had never before thought of herself as a feminist or a fighter. After her alleged rape, that has changed.

"I really wanted to catch these evil men. I want the law to change. I want a society where these drugs can't be used and where no more victims are created."

(Source: BBC)

What made Kishori Amonkar’s music sublime, complex and radical?

Arun Dravid, her foremost disciple, witnessed the evolution of Amonkar’s music, as she spurned conventions, broke new ground and became one of India’s greatest female vocalists.

There was a magical unpredictability in Kishori Amonkar’s khayal. It was complex and pulsating, yet profoundly meditative. She abhorred unnecessary displays of virtuosity, and warned those hankering for applause through on-stage gimmickry that they were misusing the medium to excite listeners when, in essence, the role of music was to take them to a place of absolute silence.

For Amonkar, the tonal purity of the sur reigned supreme, and it was her matchless ability to paint its delicate hues, invoking the most fragile microtones, that gave her singing that extraordinary luminosity. So tall were her artistic accomplishments that core raags in the Hindustani pantheon came to be singularly associated with her renditions of them. She immortalised raag Bhoopali for instance, holding music lovers in thrall with her self-composed masterpiece Sahela Re.

What were the triggers that informed this exceptional musical sensibility? How did Amonkar, a pedigreed inheritor of the Jaipur-Atrauli lineage, turn into an iconoclast and break new ground with her fiercely original thought?

Since her death in 2017, much has been written about the life and artistry of Kishori tai, as she was fondly called. But the majority of it either concerns her famously mercurial persona, or is overrun with superlatives about her unrivalled musical brilliance. When Amonkar herself spoke about her craft – on the rare occasion that she did – it was in such esoteric terms that people were caught off guard by the abstractions.

It was this sketchy nature of musicological insight into arguably one of India’s greatest female vocalists that prompted Arun Dravid, Amonkar’s foremost disciple, to embark on the journey of clinically deconstructing his guru’s music for scores of serious aficionados two years ago. In January, he held what was perhaps the last of his lecture-demonstrations at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, a studiously curated three-hour presentation, in which he elaborately explored the multiple facets of Amonkar’s gayaki, and her artistic evolution over a performing career that spanned more than six decades.

Dravid, 75, began learning under Amonkar in the early sixties when she had just started performing publicly. He continued to do so intermittently till the early 2000s, by which time Amonkar had emerged as the reigning diva of the Hindustani classical stage. Dravid, who was a gold medallist at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, had also risen up the ranks in an illustrious corporate career and would retire as chairman of the India operations of Jacobs Engineering.

His long, intimate association with Amonkar’s music through the early period and the younger generation’s lack of familiarity with it in the formative years is what prompted Dravid to conceive the series. He wanted to put the spotlight on the first half of Amonkar’s career to set the context for her later motivations as an avant-garde radical.

“I divide her musical life essentially into two broad segments – from 1960 to 1985 and 1985 to 2017,” Dravid told Scroll.in. It was roughly in the mid-’80s when Amonkar’s music went through a phase of change, when “she began departing from the rigid discipline of the Jaipur gharana, and remoulded her style to give it a distinctly more emotive flavour.”

The Jaipur school of singing had come into being in the early half of the 20th century as a result of the voice limitations of its founder Ustad Alladiya Khan. He was unable to handle extensive melodic elaborations due to a physical disability acquired at a royal court. This prompted him to formulate a more compact style of presentation, which was marked by several distinct characteristics. They included a one-to-one correspondence between the note and the rhythm; a faster pace of improvisation; the practice of singing the shuddha aakar, or a natural non-compressed aaa; and intricate patterns of taans, orrapid melodic phrases. As a result of its wide repertoire of compound raags and highly intellectualised form of presentation, Jaipur gayaki was soon highly regarded by musicians.

“But somewhere along the way its emotive content dried up a little,” said Dravid. “The appeal of hitting the heart with the note was subdued, and the biggest contribution Kishori tai made in her later years was to fill that void. She didn’t fully leave the gharana, its basic grammar always remained visible in her expositions, but her focus began shifting emphatically on discovering the swara and its true nature. She was a born aesthete, but became an even more ardent devotee of aesthetics in music.”

This transition was a result of her obsessive quest in the 1980s to uncover the deeper dimensions of North India’s primordial musical tradition. She began studying in great depth ancient Sanskrit treatises on music, such as the Bharat Natyashastra and Sangeet Ratnakar, meditating over the precise microtonal position of a shruti, or note, and its relationship with the mood of a particular raag.

“It was her ruminations on these most subtle nuances, often difficult even for trained musicians to discern, let alone concert audiences, which gave her music the power to move people to tears, without them understanding why it was happening to them,” said Dravid. “She actively sought out insights that would’ve eluded her had she remained confined to the rigid stylistic impositions of a particular lineage.”

Dravid illustrated his point about the shrutis in his presentation by playing Amonkar’s rendition of raag Kaunsi Kanada, a late night jod-raag, which amalgamated the melodic framework of raag Malkauns on the way up and Darbari Kanada on the way down. Both of them incorporated the flat 3rd (ga) and flat 7th (ni) in their structure, but with a slight variation in their frequencies. The accurate interpretation of Kaunsi Kanada thus required a musician to show four mildly different shades of the two notes. Only an artist of Amonkar’s dexterity could do that, and consistently so, through a 40-50 minute performance.

Amonkar’s obsession with the accuracy of the shrutis may also have been a fundamental reason why the tempo of her music slowed down in later years, says Dravid. “She felt the real rasa of a raag was hidden in the shrutis. It could not be drawn out by singing electrifying taans. It required a gentle caressing of the notes to come out.”

In fact, in her later years, Amonkar almost began to brush aside the taans, which were such an integral ornamental insignia of her gharana. Her presentation became heavily tilted towards the smooth, steady elaboration of the alap, the gradual technique of improvisation in the slow tempo. She also largely chose to perform the established paramparik raags on the concert circuit, rather than the packaged Jaipur specialties that wove the rhythm and notes more categorically into one another.

“When she did perform the Jaipur varieties, such as the various Nats and Kanadas, she didn’t change their character,” said Dravid. “A clear mark of the gharana discipline was retained, but she brought a degree of subtlety to them.”

This wasn’t the case, though, with the conventional melodies. Much to the horror of purists, she rebelled against what were considered sacrosanct grammatical raag frameworks to take slight deviations ever so often. Dravid played two distinct examples of this – Shuddh Kalyan, in which she added a touch of the augmented ma and ni in the ascent and Bageshri, where she applied a pa that was commonly omitted.

“She was bold and defiant, and determined to explore beauty in every way possible,” said Dravid. “Her argument was that if the splendour of a raag could be enhanced by going just a little outside the established perimeter, she would do it. She didn’t care for the detractors, as long as her listeners found utter joy in what she was creating. Her genius lay in understanding just the extent to which she could breach the convention, without destroying the soul of a raag.”

Amonkar also paid special attention in her later years to understanding raag bhaav. This, she said, came not merely from repeating its trademark phrases or chalan, but by ensuring that the meaning of the words in a bandish, which most consider incidental to classical khayal presentation, matched the mood of the melody. She was also very particular about the enunciation of words and created several of her own bandishes or changed words in the existing ones because they didn’t correspond with the overall disposition of the raag.

Dravid meticulously illustrated these finer nuances by playing out spliced up recordings of Amonkar’s creations, and the raags that she had composed, such as Barwa Malhar, Sawan Gandhar, Nandashree and Lailt Bibhas. He also played her Maru Bihag, a common raag in the concert repertory, which Amonkar sang only twice in public because she admitted it hadn’t yet ripened to her, and Durga, which she never performed publicly despite having composed a bandish in it. While the clips provided valuable support in illustrating the talk, it would have helped to juxtapose older and newer versions of the same composition to highlight her stylistic evolution in the later years.

Nonetheless, the presentation revealed several new dimensions about Amonkar’s music. It was also richly peppered with anecdotes, such as one about how Amonkar would compose only the first two lines of a bandish before becoming impatient with the process. It was then left to Dravid to finish off the antara. The biggest challenge for him was in matching the words with the mood of the sthayi.

Dravid has painstakingly recorded and preserved several of Amonkar’s public performances since the 1960s. Amonkar fiercely guarded her recordings from commercial interests, for fear of being shortchanged, and had entrusted them to Dravid. As a result, he has a treasure trove of vintage Kishori recordings of around 100 seven-inch reels and about 100 audio cassettes. He played excerpts from this stash during the presentation, after having digitised it into a catalogued archive.

“What’s floating around on YouTube are mostly recordings from the last 20 years,” said Dravid. “What I possess is pristine music from her heyday. But at some point I will have to donate it to a large, dependable organisation like NCPA, or the ITC-Sangeet Research Academy to safeguard for posterity. But the big question is: how do we make it available to as many future generation music lovers as possible?”

Given the legal tangles that others who put her recordings online have got into in the past, Dravid is wary of doing the same. But he has handed over a copy of the entire archive over to Amonkar’s younger son Bibhas, in the hope that it will be officially released by the family for public consumption sooner rather than later.

(Source: Scroll)