Vytas Serelis

"Born on February 10, 1946 in Memmingen Refugee camp. He immigrated to Australia with his parents Antanas and Jadvyga in 1950.

In 1963 Vytas graduated from Woodville High school and enrolled in the South Australian school of Art, where he graduated in 1966.

In 1963 Vytas was awarded the Sands & McDougall Prize for drawing, and the Osborne Art Gallery Prize.

''At that time abstract art especially hard edge and colour painting was the prevailing style. Vytas preferred figurative and realistic art. He stopped painting and turned to music because he felt pressed to paint a certain way.''

''Vytas held his first solo exhibition in 1967 at the North Adelaide Gallery. That same year, Vytas in the generation of flower children, travelled to India, studying Indian music and mystical life. At the invitation of Akbar Khan school of Music in Calcutta he studied there. He explored several different types of sitar and decides to make himself one of them.''

''He returned to Australia for a short time, before heading off to London. While there, he married a fellow Australian. The newlyweds both earned a living from graphic design, and Vytas still played the sitar in various clubs. They toured North Africa with a popular music group. He designed posters for various musical groups and performers who sprang up in London at the time. His illustrations featured in magazines such as Time Out, Rolling Stone, newspaper "Oz" and others..''.!. (Read more here)

Links To Peel
In early 1969 John Peel hosted a series of concerts, featuring his then favourites Tyrannosaurus Rex, supported by David Bowie as a mime artist and Vytas Serelis playing sitar. In later life Peel often expressed his amazement that he had been involved with concerts involving two future superstars performing in styles very different from those which would bring them fame. He would also mention that the concerts included an Australian sitar player. Although Peel sometimes had difficulty in recalling his name, this was Vytas Serelis. At the time Peel appreciated Serelis's playing, as he wrote in Disc & Music Echo:

''The concerts have started with the sitar playing of Vytas Serelis who, refreshingly, makes no esoteric claims for his music but says, simply, that he plays what he is feeling. In Birmingham he played for 25 minutes instead of his alloted 35, but nobody minded. In the audience were many shining folk with stars on their brows and we've seen them everywhere..'''

Vytas Serelis never did any sessions for Peel, but footage of him in 1970 has recently been found by the British Film Institute, in a short film called Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate, made when the area was the centre of London's hippy community (Peel's mother lived there, as did the DJ himself for a time, at the flat of his then girlfriend and later wife Sheila Gilhooly). The film includes Quintessence, who recorded sessions for Peel's shows, underground figures including journalist Felix Scorpio (Felix de Mendelssohn) and Caroline Coon (both of whom were studio guests on Night Ride) and locations such as All Saints Church, known as a venue for underground gigs, and the offices of Oz magazine. Vytas Serelis can be seen playing solo sitar pieces in the open air, at the beginning and end of the film.