Eagalic Music

Eagalic Music is an autobiography describing the journey of a Canadian-born musician and his family to India in 1986, where he was initiated into the Chishti Silsilyah of Sufis at the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia in Delhi. Ted Katrensky (Baba Farid) was born in Winnipeg in 1946. He began playing music professionally at an early age and by the time he was in his twenties he was travelling the world, playing and learning with musicians of many other countries. In the mid-1970's he met Paul Reps, co-author (with Nyogen Senzaki) of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, who was then in his 80's. Ted was profoundly impressed and touched by the spirit of this diminuitive but powerful human being and through "reps" came to the teachings of Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, who had taken reps as a mureed or student in the Sufi way, in the 1920's, in California and given him the name Saladin. Ted began an intense study of Zen Buddhist philosophy and sufism which was to culminate in the mid-80's in an "accidental" trip to India in company with his wife, Karen, and their two young daughters, Chaya and Nika. Just before leaving, Ted also "by accident" discovered that his beloved Inayat Khan was buried in Delhi, where they were due to disembark. So within the first few days of arriving in India, Ted and his family paid a visit to the dargah or burial place of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, a revered 13th century sufi saint near whose shrine Inayat's dargah is also located. There, Ted was invited to offer music at the shrine and met the man who was to become his murshid or teacher in the Sufi path. Over the next few months Ted was initiated, inwardly and outwardly, into the Chishti silsilah or line of sufism and given the name Baba Farid.

Photo of Paul Reps by Robert James circa 1978

Photo of Inayat Khan courtesy Sufi Order website, www.sufiorder.org