Why Aude Khatru?

The story starts more than 40 years ago.  In fact it was either 1973 or 1974.  The confusion is over the year in which the list was published.  What list?  A list of the best albums of 1973.  I think it was in Playboy, and the list was probably published in early 1974.  The top three on the list were…

1. Yessongs - Yes
2. Light as a Feather - Return to Forever
3. Chicago 6 - Chicago

Chicago 6 was one of my favorite albums at the time, and I had to find the two albums that beat it out.  I headed down to my local record store, The Wherehouse.

Now, a quick aside…back in 1974, most single LPs were $3.99 at the Wherehouse.  A lot of my present collection of LPs were bought around this time, and at this price.  In a moment you will see why this is important.

I did not find a copy of Light as a Feather, and it would be a couple more years before I heard Jazz Fusion Supergroup Return to Forever, but I did find a copy of Yessongs.  The problem is that Yessongs is a triple LP, and it cost $10.99.  That sounds like very little now, but for a 17 year old who worked for $1.90/hour, that was a lot of money.  A lot of money for something I had never heard before.

But, I bought Yessongs, and from the moment I heard the strains of the Firebird Suite, which Yes used as an intro to the concerts recorded for Yessongs, I was blown away.  I had never heard anything like it, and I loved it.

I want to say that it changed my life, but other than my taste in music, I am not sure that is really true.  What I can say is that I have never lost my love for the music of Yes.

Khatru comes from the Yes song Siberian Khatru.  I use it as a mark of my love for the music of Yes.

What does Khatru mean?  Hell if I know. 

Jon Anderson, the vocalist for Yes, who wrote the lyrics, said that it meant "as you wish" in Yemeni.  Yemeni isn't actually a language, at best it is an Arabic dialect, and Khatru does not seem to have a meaning anyone can pin down.

Many years ago, my wife found a website that said that Khatru meant Mongoose in Egyptian, or something like that.  I do not remember exactly, and I can no longer find the website.

So, back to the question, what does Khatru mean?  Khatru means, one who considers the group Yes to be important enough to his life to take a word from a song and use it as part of his online name.

That leaves us with Aude.

Aude is a department in southern France.  When I went to France in 1976, Carcassonne in Aude was the first city where I lived.  The river Aude flows north from the Pyrenees and turns east in Carcassonne before heading out to the Mediterranean.  I spent a month or two in the small town of Limoux, which is also on the Aude.

In latin, Aude means dare, as part of the phrase "Sapere Aude" from the First Book of Letters by the Roman poet Horace.  It is my understanding that this is the origin of the French word "audace"  and the English "audacity."

That isn't why I picked it, but I like it.

Then recently, I found that Aude is also a french feminine name.  I don't remember meeting anyone named Aude while I was in France, but I didn't meet more than a few hundred French during my two years, so I may have been unlucky, or it may have been more commonly used since.  This has nothing to do with why I picked it, and it doesn't matter to me now.

Oh, and Aude is pronounced "ode."  Just like the type of laudatory poem.

So, that is why Aude Khatru, or more commonly, AudeKhatru.