Edward G. Lueders, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, February 1, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 326 and 327

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EDWARD G. LUEDERS February 1 2000 and I d go for long periods without any. With my sweetheart at the time from Hanov r College, who became, as soon as I got back, my wife. WIN: Well, while you were in India, how much contact did you have with the indigenous, native Indians? EDW: Relatively little, except that I was fascinated and repulsed almost, at the same time! A feeling that lives on for things Indian. For one thing, I got deathly ill at one point. I could have died of amoebic dysentery because I was mistreated for it. Deathly ill. It took me years and years to get even a whiff of Indian food without that same kind of churning sensation I'd had at the beginning. Curried foods still - I like them - but I still have the association! So I had the usual attraction to anything that's exotic, and these Hindu celebrations would go right by the base, and I'd want to get out there and watch them, and see all of the exotic things that were going on. I'd go down into Calcutta whenever I could, and try to become a part of that curious mixture of cultures that Calcutta was, and is, complete with burning ghats down at the shore of the Hoogly and all of the rites that the Hindus would live by, and live through. They were always having their holidays! It seemed one holiday was over just in time for the next. And there would be celebrations, and there would be music. That strange atonal stuff with a different scale to the music that caught me, and still catches me, is something that is so alien to me. And yet, I can understand how a musician could follow off some of the things that are being improvised in Indian music. Boy, we had the diatonic scale, and 44