Entry point 2: Discovering non-Western traditions

The Mahabharata, original film soundtrack (1990)

After the crash course in popular music my friends put me through in high school, and the mind-melting variety of new kinds of music I experienced my first year or so in college, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on what music was and what it could do.

Then Chris Bailey (it was almost always Chris Bailey) upended everything when he settled into my D…