Indian Music

This article explores the question of improvisation in the context of South Indian (Tamil) temple nāgasvaram music, with a focus on the genre ālāpana. It shows that improvisation and creativity rarely come into conflict with the conventions of genre, culture, and society and demonstrates-through a dialogic process between the musical analysis of the performance and the insights of the musicians on their own practice-that the emotional effectiveness of a musical phrase depends not only on its idiosyncratic qualities but also on the process that prepares it and the context in which it is enunciated. It challenges most ethnomusicological approaches, in which musical improvisation is thought in terms of models and not as much in terms of creativity and/ or agency in the heat of the performance, and calls for a better articulation of explanatory models with emic perceptions and lived experiences. © 2 0 1 7 U n i v e r s i t y o f T e x a s P r e s s © 2 0 1 7 U n i v e r s i t y o f T e x a s P r e s s 26 Asian Music: Summer/Fall 2017

Towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium ‘Bollywood’ can be seen as having gained unprecedented cultural legitimacy in India and worldwide. This is even apparent on the level of official representations of India, with stars dancing to film songs at the closing ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Australia. With the new extension of legitimate culture beyond the boundaries of classical or folk into the realm of the popular, there is a sense that the culture of ‘the people’, ‘the masses’, is embraced, validated, approved. However, that 75,000 ‘bar girls’ who danced to Bollywood numbers in beer bars in Mumbai were made redundant in August 2005 following a virulent moral campaign indicates that areas of Bollywood culture exist that are by no means legitimised. Beginning with an examination of the Bollywood dance craze that has become one of the trendiest parts of globalised India and then moving onto ‘other’ arenas of Bollywood dance starting with the bar girls, this chapter seeks to problematise the question of ‘the people’ in Indian popular culture through an examination of hierarchies and processes of inclusion and exclusion at work within the popular sphere.

I offer an autoethnographic inquiry into the process of finding one’s way out of the maze of mental illness; it is an examination of how in the course of creating music to express my suffering from bipolar disorder, I found a poetic and musical expression for my soul. Making music gradually moved my focus away from illness toward imagination and creativity and brought about a major shift in my positioning in terms of my identity, helping me to construct the selfhood of an artist rather than that of an ill person. This transformation is explored in the context of India’s music and spiritual tradition and the Western framework of resource-oriented music therapy, an approach that prioritizes participant empowerment and uses music for self-care.
Keywords: music therapy, poetry, bipolar disorder, narrative reconstruction, autoethnography, rehabilitation, self-healing, Indian ragas

Citation: Sharma, P. (2014). Making song, making sanity- Recovery from Bipolar disorder. Canadian Journal of Music Therapy, 20(1), 2014, pp.65-84

Two very widely used terms, 'musicians' and the 'musicians' statuses', are commonly applied labels across the music fraternity, where Hindustani Raga Music [HRM] is no exception. In HRM, there are no objectively laid definitions of these two expressions. In different music cultures, musicians' statuses were seen from the societal, economic, and based on the roles played in music production and rendering. The intra-status, a musicians' relative position within the same group, is not clearly defined. The formal texts of HRM also do not categorically define a musician. In India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, people use the words vAggeyakAr, kalAvant, mirAsI, kasbi, AtAi, zauqI, and others, but these terms do not categorize musicians within the periphery of a specific musician's close circuit; these words do not point to intra-status. The current investigation used the DELPHI method to find some objective answers to defining musicians and their intrastatus. The HRM Experts from different parts of the world with an average HRM association of 39.11 years joined this investigation. The research exercise systematically generated an objective definition of HRM musician and suggested methods for defining HRM musicians' statuses.

Two very widely used terms, ‘musicians’ and the ‘musicians’ statuses’, are commonly applied labels across the music fraternity, where Hindustani Raga Music [HRM] is no exception. In HRM, there are no objectively laid definitions of these two expressions. In different music cultures, musicians’ statuses were seen from the societal, economic, and based on the roles played in music production and rendering. The intra-status, a musicians’ relative position within the same group, is not clearly defined. The formal texts of HRM also do not categorically define a musician. In India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, people use the words vAggeyakAr, kalAvant, mirAsI, kasbi, AtAi, zauqI, and others, but these terms do not categorize musicians within the periphery of a specific musician’s close circuit; these words do not point to intra-status. The current investigation used the DELPHI method to find some objective answers to defining musicians and their intra-status. The HRM Experts from different ...

The article describes the advantages of the Gamaka Box notation over staff notation for  Indian classical music. Three versions of Ganapate the Malahri Geetham are transcribed in Ramesh Vinayakam's Gamaka Box notation and in conventional staff notation as a basis of comparison.

The term prabandha simultaneously means very many things in the context of premodern Indian literature and music. The prabandha as a musical meta-genre has occupied the attention of musicologists from Mataṅga (8 th c. AD?) to Veṅkaṭamakhin (16 th c. AD). There is much variety in the number, description and details of the various types of prabandha songs found in the musicological sources, and it is fortunate that there are a few examples of prabandha-s available, even if they are from the late medieval period. Here, a specific sub-category – the Śrīraṅga Prabandha is considered, its genealogy through the musicological literature studied and also an example to understand the life trajectory of the concept of a prabandha is examined. By studying the structural, textual and musical content of the two songs, it is tried to sketch the identity of the musical prabandha vis-à-vis its literary namesake, its literary sources, and its successors in the history of musical genres. Also, the essay explores the overlapping yet distinct spheres of production, reception and circulation of the musical and literary prabandha-s. The available examples are used to discuss the methodological issues of studying genres that straddle the categories of the literary and the performative.

Folksongs identify itself with the people of the particular area and surroundings. They are verbally carried out through generations depicting the picture of a particular society and community. The colonial history of Western Assam had witnessed the political manipulation by the British authority, bifurcating the densely populated Rajbanshi territories to create Assam and Bengal. Koch-Rajbanshis are one of the major tribes of Assam and Bengal in India. After the territorial split, the Rajbanshis living in Bengal soon lost their language, culture as well as their civilizational roots. The condition of the Rajbanshis in the newly formed State of Assam was nothing better. Having lost their language, culture and identity, they soon got degenerated into an inferior community. At a juncture when the Koch Rajbanshis had to encounter a phase of crisis, Goalparia folk songs of Pratima Barua Pandey emerged as an instrument of effective intervention to usher in a path of hope for these people, who desperately needed a direction for possible redemption of their cultural, linguistic as well as social identity.
In a similar fashion, Phleng phue chiwit folksongs of Thailand reflects the marginalized people’s lives of Thailand especially after 1930’s (the period of 1930’s marked by the political change from monarchy to constitutional monarchy). Some of the well known singers through this particular group of folksongs used to lay emphasis on the corrupt politicians and satirizing the corrupt officials of the time. In 1970’s Carabao groups under the Phleng Phue Chiwit emphasized on peoples equal rights especially farmers, workers and labourers. Suntharee Wechanont in …

B V Keskar was Pandit Nehru’s Information Minister for a decade, from 1952 to 1962.  For him, Hindi film songs were a strict ‘no-no’ where Akashvani was concerned, as in his opinion, it should be the mission of the public broadcaster, to encourage only classical music. He had to face a lot of pressure and ridicule for this rather obdurate stand, but there is no doubt that had it not been for him, Indian classical music may have never reached and enthralled the common man, because classical music by its very nature was meant primarily for the elite....

Music works as a transcending tool of wellness, lifestyle and attitude within humans. The effects of musical tunes on the human emotions are universal. This is the reason music play a vital role in all the petty, big activities performed by the human tribe such as events, rituals, happy events, sad events, school functions, worshipping God.

The sitar and setar are the foremost classical instruments of India and Iran. They are seen by most people as being distinct instruments from different countries and traditions. However, they share a common ancestry, and their name is in fact the same word (Persian, ‫ﺳﮫ‬ ‫ﺗﺎر‬). It was transliterated into English in slightly different ways during colonial times. As we scratch just beneath the deceptive surface of Indian and Iranian music, we find the rich confluence that is the Indo-Persian world, a realm of connected histories and creativity, and a space to imagine new ones.

Ways of Voice explores techniques of voice production in North India, from Bollywood to raga music to ghazal to devotional hymns and Sufi song. The voices in play here are not merely given, but achieved. Singers consciously train themselves to cultivate characteristic vocal gaits, sonorities, and poetic attunements; they adopt postures of the vocal apparatus; they build habits of listening, temporality, and social relations. The action in Ways of Voice revolves around several dozen North Indian popular, devotional, classical, and folk singers engaged in projects of vocal striving. Like most singers, they are strategically working on changing, refining, and making their own voices. The book thus highlights the ways in which singers not only "have" voice, but actively acquire, cultivate and contest particular vocal dispositions for particular kinds of listeners. In framing a "Hindustani vocal ecumene" that encompasses a diverse range of classical, popular, and spiritual-devotional musical styles and practices, it offers an expansive look at ways of voice that extend far beyond commonsense boundaries of genre and place. A rich archive of audio and video examples are provided on the online companion site.

¿A qué nos referimos cuando hablamos de experiencia contemplativa? ¿Podemos definirla o tan solo podemos acercamos a ella desde los límites y las paradojas del lenguaje? ¿Sabemos distinguir entre contemplación y meditación? ¿Es la experiencia de Unidad la que nos abre al asombro, desvelando y revelándonos el legado de las fuentes de sabiduría?

Este libro es una invitación a abrazar la diversidad desde donde aproximarnos a estas y otras preguntas. Porque, más allá de la experiencia, sea esta inducida o espontánea, su cultivo consciente nos lleva hacia la dimensión contemplativa del ser humano; ser en plenitud desde un compromiso ético y espiritual.

Once expertos nos invitan a adentrarnos en estos temas, con rigor y pasión, desde la riqueza de la multiplicidad de lenguajes y experiencias. Sus textos nos acercarán al legado espiritual transcultural a través de tres vías del saber profunda y esencialmente humanas: la mística, la filosofía y el arte.


Jaime R. Pombo: Capítulo "Música y Conocimiento. Sobre la capacidad reveladora del arte musical".

This article situates melodic improvisation in South Indian (Tamil) culture, asking why ālāpana, a melodic and unmetered genre that encourages creativity and favours time flexibility, has become the norm to accompany South Indian temple festival processions, one of the most imposing manifestations of Hindu devotion. With reference to music performance, religious praxis and history, I argue that improvisation is central to devotional, bhakti-oriented modes of worship, and part of a ritual system in which all senses are used to enhance participants' religious experience and facilitate human-divine communication. Drawing from extensive fieldwork research in Tamil Nadu, I hope to shed new light on the production and reception of ālāpana in South Asian culture and help understand further the function and significance of sound, music, hearing and imagination in Hindu South India.

Non vi è canzone o musica (gīta) senza suono (nāda), non vi sono note musicali (swara) senza suono, non vi è danza (nrtta) senza suono, dunque il mondo intero è costituito di suono». 1 Questo scritto propone una riflessione sulla concezione del suono nella tradizione indiana così come è tramandata sia oralmente sia negli antichi trattati musicali. Fra questi, sono stati scelti la Brhaddeśī (VI secolo d.C.) e il Sangīta Ratnākara (XIII secolo d.C.) [ŚĀRNGADEVA 1991] quali esempi del pensiero musicale indiano, non soltanto perché sono fra i più autorevoli scritti della tradizione ma anche perché gli autori di queste opere pongono importanti considerazioni sul suono, sulla sua produzione e sulle valenze della musica, in riferimento allo yoga.

The Tamil term nadai (or gati in Sanskrit) is found in the South Indian (Karnatic) rhythmic system, describing the rhythmic subdivisions within a musical pulse. It is a component of the laya concept, one of the ten principles of South Indian rhythmic theory, the Tala Dasa Pranas. Within the broader concept of laya, which denotes a sense of tempo as well as the orderly flow of time, nadai suggests "the rate of speed or movement", or "the number and the rate at which the inner pulse divisions of each akshara [beat] of a tala [rhythmic cycle] is known." 1 Nadai can be considered a counterpart to the Western musical concepts of beat subdivision and polyrhythmicity.

The paper covers the mission and organizational makeup of the Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis, 1967-1977, and highlights its international programs in music, dance, theatre and film. The report concludes with the cancellation of the festival at the onset of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Araştırmada, kültürlerarası etkileşim unsurlarından birisi olan kültürel aracılığın, müzisyen özelinde nasıl meydana geldiği incelenmiştir. Örnek olay olarak seçilen Halil Çağlar Serin’in, Caz performansı sırasında gerçekleştirdiği ‘Konnakol’ (Indian Scat Singing) icraları veri olarak toplanmış ve analiz edilmiştir. Kendisini ‘etnik bir adam’ olarak tanımlayan Halil Çağlar Serin, doğaçlamaya uygun olan Konnakol pratiğini anaakım (mainstream) olarak tanımlanabilecek Caz ile icra ederek senkretik ve otantik bir icra tarzı elde eder. Örnek olay doğrultusunda kültürel aracılık görevinin meydana gelmesi için müzisyenlerin birden fazla kültüre sahip olması gerekir denilebilir. Bunun yanı sıra kültürel aracı olarak müzisyenler, kültürel pratiklerdeki dönüşümü kültürel sermaye ve çokkültürlülük aracılığıyla iki kültür arasındaki ortaklıklarda gerçekleştirirler.

A global tool of transcendence, music's therapeutic benefits are receiving a great deal of attention. Music is sound and the sound is rooted in vibration. Healing with sound is immensely popular and well documented as an effective holistic treatment. Musical sounds unleash knots created on our body sensory organs caused by the routine exertion and yields pronounced, calm, and balanced life. Treatment by listening to music leads to enhanced and thinkable brain. Through musical involvement in the therapeutic context, patient's abilities are strengthened and transferred to constructive areas of their lives. Music therapy also provide avenues for communication that can be helpful to the introverts, who constantly repress their emotions. Dr. Tony Cicoria, a well-regarded orthopaedic surgeon and a former football Player, actually embraced death and returned to life, after being struck by the lightning while talking on the phone. This robust fellow developed several neurological syndromes as explained in the book Musicophilia by Dr. Oliver sacks. " I saw my own body on the ground. I said to myself, 'Oh shit, I'm dead.' …Then —slam! I was back. " recalls Dr. Cicoria, while reminiscing the incident. A couple of weeks later, although his memory problem persisted, life still returned to normal when suddenly in a few days, his insatiable desire to listen to the piano music aroused. He listened seriously for hours. He felt completely mindful and free from the disturbing past when eventually, he started to teach himself to play piano. In the third month after being struck, Cicoria was inspired, even possessed by music, and scarcely had time for anything else. Some years passed, he continued to work as a surgeon, but his heart and mind was now centered on music. He met a fearful motorcycle accident meanwhile, but made a complete recovery through his piano-playing and was back at work in two months. i Music and the human body It is known that approximately 70% of the body is water and sound travels faster in water than the air. Therefore, inculcating sound vibrations for healing is becoming essentially credited. In addition, there are seven glandular systems in our body and musical notes are also seven. Each note has a unique vibration which stimulates the energy centers and subsequently our body.

BOOK: Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2018. The monsoon is the season of pouring rain and intense emotions: love and longing, hope and fear, pleasure and pain, devotion and joyous excess. Through a series of evocative essays exploring rain-drenched worlds of poetry, songs, paintings, architecture, films, gardens, festivals, music, and medicine, this lavishly illustrated collection examines the history of monsoon feelings in South Asia from the twelfth century to the present. Each essay is written by a specialist in the field of South Asian arts and culture, and investigates emotions as reflections and agents of social, cultural, and political change across borders of language and religion and between different arts and cultural practices. The history of emotions in the rain is as rich, surprising, beautiful, and devastating as the thundering monsoon clouds, and will delight general and scholarly audiences alike.

Musical instruments are considered as sacred objects, as mediators between the worlds of gods and humans. This junction between music and speech is understandable if we consider that many languages (African and Asian) use designated pitches for specific syllables. On that basis, we may say that sound intervals carry meaning. In the various regions where these tonal languages are spoken, percussion instruments reproduce these fixed pitches to transmit coded messages. Today, they are seldom used as a means of communicating between villages, but their role in controlling dance remain as strong as ever.

Sound creates a spiritual connection between music-maker and music-lover. Music resonates within the human spirit. At the heart of humanity is a song of the soul. The spiritual significance of music can transcend communities, cultures, and creeds. A musician perpetually dwells in the spiritual as he is in touch with musical tunes. Although, during routine practices and strive to achieve the consequence, he might not value the fact of his constant transcendence towards divinity and spirituality. In maintaining the fine balance between the happiness gained societal achievements and self-satisfaction, he might falter from the inner path and move towards the worldly success. In recent Indian classical music genres, there are the plethora of forms which helps one to reside and get accumulate within the spiritual aura through musical tunes and sounds. In this paper, several already in trend and new (upcoming) genres of Indian classical forms are discussed which, apart from being commercialized, often help us to ponder within ourselves and find the inner being and divinity through music.

This paper was written for a conference on Śārṅgadeva's Saṅgītaratnākara, held at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, New Delhi, India, in 2017. At a previous Saṅgita-ratnākara symposium, held in Varanasi in 1994 under the auspices of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Dr Mukund Lath stated: If there is anything new [regarding rāga] in Śārṅgadeva, it is the accent on ālāpa. For the first time, it is in his text that we get the form and spirit of ālāpa reminiscent of the performance of rāga which we now know...though we do not know his rāgas, yet we can relate to the kind of rāga music he had in mind. (Lath 1998) In considering Śārṅgadeva's treatment of ālāpa, however, we have to bear in mind that he deals with it in two different contexts, in different ways and with different names. In ch. 2 of the Saṅgīta-ratnākara he defines "ālāpa" in terms of its function-that of demonstrating the various lakṣaṇas of a grāmarāga or bhāṣā-and provides example melodies in notation for all the rāgas concerned. These melodies evidently did not originate with Śārṅgadeva, but  represent the music of a period considerably older than that of Śārṅgadeva himself. On the other hand, when he describes "ālapti" in ch. 3, he seems to be describing a musical practice with which he is familiar. The ālāpa melodies in ch. 2 pose considerable problems of interpretation. It is with the ālapti of ch. 3 that we perhaps begin to recognise, in Dr Lath's phrase, "the kind of rāga music" that we know today. I suggest that this difference is due to a fundamental difference of compositional method, and this difference can be accounted for in terms of universal human cognitive capacities. Both ālāpa and ālapti employ pitch and contour schemas; but ālapti in addition features recursion.

For centuries, the songs of devotional poet-saints have been an integral part of Indian religious life. Countless regional traditions of bhajans (devotional songs) have been able to maintain their existence by adapting to serve the contemporary social needs of their participants. This dissertation draws on fieldwork conducted over 2014-2015 with contemporary bhajan performers from many different genres and styles throughout India. It highlights a specific tradition in the Central Indian region of Malwa based on poetry by Kabir and other Sants (anti-establishment poet-saints) performed by lower-caste singers. This tradition was largely unheard-of half a century ago, but is now a major part of Malwa’s cultural life that has facilitated the creation of lower-caste spiritual networks and created a space for those networks to engage in discourse about social issues. Malwa’s bhajan singers have also become part of India’s popular religious and musical life as certain performers have attai...

This pioneering work, originally published in 1975, was the first book in Marathi which academically and thoroughly explained the theory of folk music as a major category of music. The author, Dr Ashok Da Ranade, was one of the most prominent scholars in 20th century India who laid down the foundations of 'Indian Ethnomusicology' and cultural musicology in India.

This chapter explores the modes through which vernacular music traditions may catalyze publics in contemporary India through an ethnographic focus on the Kabir Yatra in Bikaner, Rajasthan. As vernacular repertoires increasingly circulate beyond the contexts of their customary practice, they are accompanied by discourses that frame these forms as valuable resources. The chapter traces the mediations of these valorizing discourses, and the sounds of the repertoires that diffuse through live concerts, studio recordings and online networks. It unpacks the intertwining of the affective, the aesthetic, the political and the material-technological in the constitution of what Ana Maria Ochoa Gautier (2006) calls an ‘aural public sphere.’ I suggest that studying such intertwining gives us unique tools to think through the means and motivations around which publics may be summoned, may stabilize or disperse.

The future of Indian cinema was born in the deep recesses of a young man’s mind. The incredible journey
of Dadasaheb Phalke can be traced back to the fateful day he first saw a French movie. A spell was cast on
this novice that culminated into an industry, which has carved a place for itself in world cinema today.

Garhwal is a division of the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, North India. Like other Indian areas, Garhwal developed a blooming local music industry from the 1950s onwards (Fiol 2008), with a golden age in the 1980s-90s and serious difficulties since the 2000s due to digitization. This intervention backs on a study of the audience for online Garhwali music clips (Nowak 2013), as well as recent field work about Garhwali music production, distribution and reception in Garhwal and in Delhi. The combination of these angles allows a brief exploration of the “glocal”: in the communication chain, how do songs get to be labeled as “Garhwali” or “from Garhwal”?

Many styles of music in Trinidad and Tobago are frequently described as sweet: sweet steel pan, sweet calypso, sweet parang, and in this case, sweet tassa. While it is easy to understand how the melodious character of the steel pan, calypso, and parang music might affectionately be described as sweet, such a delicate term seems incongruous with the often ear-splitting sound of tassa drumming. What exactly then makes tassa sweet? This article seeks at least a partial answer to this question by focusing on the basic materials of music-making, the instruments themselves. I also discuss the role of tassa competitions in reinforcing refinements in instrument construction and highlight the ways competitive performances engage with Indian Trinidadian orientations to national belonging.

Thaalam refers to the basic recurring unit of rhythm of a music composition. So, it ultimately consists of a set number of beats (or bars as used in Western system of notation). Each beat is called a Maathra. Each Maathra is further subdivided into Aksharams. The number of Aksharams in a Maathra is denoted by Gathi or Nadai. Therefore, a part of a Thaalam in Trishra Nadai means that in that part each Maathra has three Aksharams. One full cycle of beats is referred to as a Theyyaka. So, if I say that a particular composition is 5 Aavartanas long, it means that the composition exactly fits in 5 Theyyakas. This is the basic framework of any rhythmic system in the world. In other words, Taala is an endless chain of Avartans of specific Theyyakas. Eg: Theyyaka-1, Avarthana-1 + Theyyaka-1, Aavartana-2 + Theyyaka-1 + Aavartana-3, Theyyaka-1, Avarthana-4 + Theyyaka-1, Aavartana-5 + Theyyaka-1 + Aavartana-6 and so on.

The Hindu Thaipusam festival is the most important religious event of the year for Singapore’s Indian minority population. However, drumming in the Thaipusam procession has been illegal since 1973. For some Hindus, this creates a sense of imminent danger, as drumming is believed necessary to sustain the trance of devotees undergoing penance. Such tensions culminated in 2015, when plain clothes policemen forcibly halted Hindu drummers during the Thaipusam procession, and a brawl ensued. In this article, I describe the long history of controversy surrounding Hindu drumming in Singapore, which goes back to the nineteenth century. Surveying the influence of liberal notions of the relations between sacred sounds, public space, discourses on heritage and postcolonial governmentality, I argue that the ‘soundscapes of modernity’ are not always homogeneous but may be fragmented and pluralistic, involving contestations over the efficacy of sacred sounds and debates on where they should be located on the streets of today’s ethnically diverse global cities.

Music is considered to be one of the most complex among the fine arts. Although various scholars have given different opinions about the origin of music, the historical perspectives reveal that this art, made by mankind on account of various social needs and occasions, has gradually developed along with every community. It is a well-known fact that any fine art, whether it is painting, sculpture, dance or music, is interrelated with communal life and its history starts with society. Art is forever changing and that change comes along with the change in those societies. This paper looks into the different sources of contemporary popular Sinhala songs without implying a strict border between Sinhala and non-Sinhala beyond the language used. Sources, created throughout history, deliver not only a steady stream of ideas. They are also often converted into labels and icons for specific features within a given society. The consideration of popularity as an economic reasoning and popularity as an aesthetic pattern makes it possible to look at the different important sources using multiple perspectives and initiating a wider discussion that overcomes narrow national definitions. It delivers an overview which should not be taken as an absolute repertoire of sources but as an open pathway for further explorations.