Korla Pandit Still Spreading Metaphysical Message

“I was speaking the universal language of music and that goes beyond all borders and languages,” says pioneering television star Korla Pandit in explaining why he never uttered a word during any of the 900 “Korla Pandit Programs” that ran in the early ‘50s.

“I never spoke, yet I received letters from around the world that communicated as if people knew exactly what was on my mind,” says Pandit, who’ll be performing on the pipe organ tonight in the Terrace Room of the Park Plaza Hotel. “I once asked a parapsychologist if it were possible that the technology that transmitted my image and music could also transmit my brain waves and he said yes, it was possible.”

Broadcast three times a week on KTLA from 1949 to 1952, “The Korla Pandit Program” took viewers on a musical journey around the world with an international repertoire of exotic interpretations of the classics. A multitalented one-man band sporting a jeweled turban, Pandit used a variety of cheesy visual aids to flesh out the show. However, the real focus of every episode was the penetrating gaze of the mysterious maestro.

The New Delhi-born son of a Brahman father and French mother, Pandit was a child prodigy whose natural gift was nurtured with musical training in England and at the University of Chicago where he enrolled at the age of 13. His education in the ways of the world commenced in Los Angeles when he found himself part of the birth of a new form of entertainment called television.

“I was still a teen-ager when I came to L.A. in 1949,” Pandit recalled during an interview at the Park Plaza Hotel. (Tickets to his show are available at the Amok Book Store in Silverlake and will be sold today at the Park Plaza.) “I was traveling alone and knew no one when I arrived here, and landed a job performing on ‘Hollywood Holiday,’ a radio show broadcast from Tom Breneman’s restaurant at Hollywood and Vine. It was there that Klaus Landsberg, the director at KTLA, saw me and offered me a guest shot on a variety show.

“The response to my appearance was so great that they gave me my own show, which also did so well that a syndication company wanted to send it all over the country,” he continues. “The show got good ratings in various markets so the syndication company wanted to put me under contract--and that’s where my troubles began.

“In the early days of television, syndication companies were completely unregulated. They often refused to pay performers, but what was worse, they basically owned many performers--and that’s what I balked at. They insisted on controlling my mail--everything sent to me would be theirs--and I refused to allow them to use me to rob people. We see many religious groups doing that today and I could see where things were headed then.

“I refused to do business with them so they hired Liberace instead. They approached me a second time, I again refused, and they told me I’d never work again. After that, whenever someone approached me about performing, they’d receive a phone call and suddenly lose interest.”

Pandit did indeed vanish from the airwaves, but he says he’s enjoyed a thriving, if low-profile career for the last 35 years. Married with two sons, he maintains a full performing schedule, has recorded 14 albums for Fantasy Records and gives seminars in metaphysics that combine music and spoken word.

“I believe in all churches and religions,” says Pandit, who’ll be presenting a free seminar at Sherman Clay Music Co. June 22, “because if you get high enough in any religion they’re all in the same place.”

Pandit practices metaphysics in Northern California where he lives with his wife, Corliss, and an assortment of chickens, rabbits and cats.

“I settled in Calistoga because I didn’t want to be in the cities anymore,” he explains. “People are doing strange things in the streets now and Los Angeles is very different now from the way it was when I lived here. I arrived in L.A. at the end of two great eras--of big band music and motion pictures--and it was an exciting city filled with flamboyant, successful people. However, many performers were owned, and many of the beautiful female stars were mistreated by men. I saw a sadness in them because they were not free. So on a glamorous plane I found it delightful, but on a spiritual plane I questioned much of what I saw.”

Pandit questioned aspects of the entertainment industry then and continues to be troubled by much of what he sees on television.

“Television has tremendous potential to teach but it also has the power to rob us of freedom on a very fundamental level. It concerns me that television is controlled by a few people who are molding people’s minds. This machine was meant to serve us, not control us, yet we’re not thinking anymore--we’re being directed. We’ve got to put soul back into this robot!”

The indefatigable Pandit certainly hasn’t let the TV mind police stand in his way.

“They managed to keep me off the air, but I’ve still succeeded in spreading the message of love,” he enthuses. “I’m recognized everywhere I go and I have to say I’m the best-known unknown in the world. The people who opposed me couldn’t turn me off because it wasn’t them who turned me on.”