Wednesday, August 29, 2007

INDIAN MUSIC - A TRADITION


Indian music has been long associated with religion. The evidences are from some sculptures on the ancient temples and palaces as well as miniature paintings. They all demonstrate a visual record of musical instruments, and the where and how of performance through several thousand years. Besides this, there are many references to music in the Indian epics, such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana and some other stories and religious writings, such as Veda.
There are two main traditions in Indian classical music, both of which have close relationship with their religious beliefs. The Karnatic is from the south and the Hidustani tradition is from the north. Although both of these use the concepts of ragas (the melodic modes) and talas (rhythmic cycles), there are differences existing between these two styles. Northern style, the Hindustani music tradition, employ instruments such as the sitar, sarod, sarangi and tabla, which were greatly influenced by Persia and other elements of Islam for culturally speaking, northern India has been dominated by Islam since the Muslim invasion in the 13th century. The structure of a composition is also different. With less strict composed sections, the music of broad improvisations shows its brilliant virtuosity. It is this unique improvisation style that serves as a tool for the Indians of the north to meditate about the relationship with gods and the universe.
Compared with the north, Karnatic in the south is much more orthodox in its Hindusim tie. The music is built around a great repertoire of pre-composed songs, which were done by the musicians who devoted themselves to their gods centuries ago. Most compositions are vocal music with the parts of solo (either vocal or violin) and accompaniment (mridangam). The role of music is to please the gods; and therefore, music is considered a “personal mode of religious expression”.The melodic pattern of the solo part along with the ancient sacred text either in Sanskrit or Telegu has a superior position to that of other parts. Kritit, a Karnatic form, is an example of this.
Indian music provides the insights of the undivided relationship between music and religions. What religious beliefs serve in these cultures is a way of communication for people to either worship their god(s) or merely meditate their own relationship with the gods. This relationship exists in both sacred and secular music in many different cultures around the world. The study of music, therefore, always needs to be considered from many different facets of human cultures. The relationship between human reality and mysterious power is an illustration of this concept.

Hindustani Music


Hindustani music is based on the raga system. A raga is a melodic scale, consisting of notes from the basic seven known as sa, re, ga, ma pa, dha, and ni. Apart from sa and pa which are constant, the other notes may be in major or minor tone, and this gives rise to innumerable combinations. Ten basic scales or thaats are recognized, and other ragas are considered to have evolved from these. A raga must contain a minimum of five notes.
Depending on the notes included in it, each raga acquires a distinct character. The form of the raga is also determined by the particular pattern of ascent and descent of the notes, which may not be strictly linear. Melody is built up by improvising and elaborating within the given scale. The improvisation is at times rhythm bound and at other times free from any overt rhythm.
Formal compositions (songs or instrumental compositions in a fixed meter) are juxtaposed with the improvised portion. Khyal and Dhrupad are two major types of compositions within the Hindustani genre. Of the two, Dhrupad is an older form and requires rigourous training in rhythm control as well as voice culture. Khyal developed as a more popular alternative as it contains both slow and lively compositions, though it retains its totally classical character.

Carnatic Music


Carnatic music is considered one of the oldest systems of music in the world. Carnatic music is a very complex system of music that requires much thought, both artistically and technically. The basis of Carnatic music is the system of ragas (melodic scales) and talas (rhythmic cycles). There are seven rhythmic cycles and 72 fundamental ragas. All other ragas are considered to have stemmed from these. An elaborate scheme exists for identifying these scales, known as the 72 Melakarta Ragas. Three saint composers of the nineteenth century, Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Shyama Shastri, have composed thousands of songs that remain favourites among musicians and audiences. The most important specialty of Karnatic music is its devotional content. The lyrics of the compositions are set entirely against a devotional backdrop. The notes of Carnatic music is "sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-da-ni". These are abbreviations of the real names which are shadjam, rishabham, gandharam. madhyamam, panchamam, dhaivatam and nishadam. Unlike other music systems, every member of the solfege (the swara) may have up to three variants. The exceptions for this are the two notes shadjam and panchamam, which have only one form, and madhyamam, the middle note, which has only two notes. Spiritualism has always been the prominent content of Carnatic music. The beautiful interweaving of the devotional element and aesthetics has made it ethereal and eternal. The basic idea behind compositions has been to see and seek the ultimate reality or God. In fact, it has been said that the easiest way to attain salvation is to sing the greatness of the Almighty.In Hindu mythology, music and God have always been portrayed together. Many deities are assigned their own instruments and are all hailed as music lovers. Lord Siva is believed to be theembodiment of Nada.
Lord Krishna, the foremost of flautists, indicates his musical inclinations byassessing that he is Sama Veda among the Vedas. While Lord Siva is the embodiment of Nada and Tandava (cosmic dance), Goddess Parvati is hailed as the embodiment of Lasya.Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning is always associated with the Vina (known as Vipanchi). Goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth is believed to revel in music while Lord Vishnu, her consort, plays on the percussion. Among the saints, Narada and Tumburu are hailed as Vainika-Gayaka (experts in music and Vina). Nandi, the bull, is the master of Laya. The separate set of demi-Gods like Yaksha, Kinnara and Gandharva are all believed to be proficient in music and musical instruments. In fact, music is known as Gandharva Vidya. Hanuman was proficient in what is called the Hanumad Vina and this is the predecessor of the present day Chitravina.
The growth and development of Carnatic music through the centuries is a testimony to the greatness of the Indian mind. It needs to be taken to the international arena parallel with any other classical form. This can be achieved if we understand it in the right perspective and don't lose it to religion.Carnatic music, the sonic representation of a rich cultural heritage that prevailed in south India, the essence of spirituality evolved out of the heart and brain of the pious ones. The ultimate synonym to salvation and eternity. The Nada Brahma - God incarnated in a sonic form. This website aims at informing, educating and entertaining rasikas, providing them with information regarding various aspects of Carnatic music. Let us contribute to this rich tradition of Carnatic music and make this chain continue. Lets take a pledge to keep the flame bright for the future.

Indian Film Music


Though popular film music is not entirely synonymous with Hindi film music, Hindi films are usually seen as adequately constituting the "essence' of commercial Indian cinema. Since the early 1930s, there have been few Hindi films without songs, and only the so- called art cinema, the advent of which was perhaps marked by Shyam Benegal's Ankur ("The Seedling", 1975), has shown a disdain for this most marked feature of the Hindi film. A number of characteristics of Hindi film music and song compel attention. First, Hindi film music has borrowed unabashedly from all known styles and genres of music, and much like Indian culture as a whole, refuses to acknowledge the bankrupt concept of "copyright". Everything is, to put it colloquially, fair game: thus the borrowings are not only from Indian classical, folk, and devotional music, but also from Japanese music (as in the film "Love in Tokyo") and Persian music, and from Western music. Hindi film music is often set to large, Western-style orchestras; in many Hindi films until recently, there was a set piece in which the hero played, before a large and distinguished gathering, in which his fiancee as well as the vamp were present, the piano. But the hero in the Hindi film plays the piano no more than he sings: indeed, songs are sung by what are termed playback singers. Thus the hero and heroines (the villains are seldom given that honor) appear to sing, but the long history of Indian cinema has known only a few dozen singing voices.
Among the most well-known male playback singers have been K. L. Saigal, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, and Manna Dey; among the women, the two dominant voices have been of Lata Mangeshkar and her sister Asha Bhosle. Lata, as she is affectionately known throughout India, has been singing for nearly forty years. Along with her sister Asha she is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for having recorded more songs than anyone else. Some of the songs are sung as duets, with male and female voices alternating. T he song in this selection is entitled Is Moe Se Jaate Hain ("From this turn [of the road] we leave"), and is taken from the film Aandhi ("Storm"): Lata is accompanied here by Kishore Kumar.

Bhajans


The predominant theme of bhajans or devotional lyrics, which are often set to music, is the love of man for God, which is represented in the form of woman's love for man, and most particularly as the love of Radha for Krishna, a perennial theme of much of Indian painting, music, poetry, and folk art. Mirabai, a sixteenth-century saint and poet, became "mad" by virtue of her love for Krishna, and she speaks in her compositions of having to abandon this world. Bhakti literature shows a disdain for the conventional pieties and forms of Sanskrit literature, and bhakti poets advocated direct communion with God, having little use for the priestly brahmin class, or for other forms of institutionalized religion. Bhakti poets wrote in the vernacular tongues, but not only in an attempt to acquire a large following, for they thought of Sanskrit as a stagnant language. Another bhakti poet, Kabir, a weaver by birth, mocked the pretensions of both Hindus and Muslims, and described the adherents of both religions as bound by superstitions. He is known for having written in ulti-bhasa, the upside-down tongue, which is also to say that he thought of the world as an upside-down and peculiar place, where the innocent must struggle and the wicked prosper.
The lyrics in the selection are by Kabir; the musical composition is by Srinivas Khale, and the bhajan, entitled "Ye Tanu Mundana be Mundna", is sung by Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, one of the greatest exponents of Hindustani music. Born on 4 February 1922 in the Dharwad district of what is now Maharashtra, Bhimsen Joshi received his training at the hands of Sawai Gandharwa, himself the most brilliant disciple of Abdul Karim Khan, who founded the Kirana gharana. His professional career has spanned nearly five decades.

Indian Fusion Music


The history of collaboration between Indian and Western musicians dates to the 1960s, when Ravi Shankar first started playing alongside Western musicians. Ravi Shankar was present at the music extravaganza known as "Woodstock". In subsequent years, the sarod maestro, Ali Akbar Khan, and the tabla maestro, Alla Rakha, the father of Zakir Hussain, also worked with Western musicians. Other successful collaborations over the years have been between Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, Ustad Sultan Khan (on the sarangi) and Marco Guinar (on he Spanish guitar), and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Ry Cooder.
More recently, the Indian mandolin virtuoso, a young man by the name of U. Srinivasan, produced an album, released under the label "Real World", in collaboration with Michael Brook. The album, called Dream, has four numbers, and the excerpt here is from "Think", with U. Srinivas on the electric mandolin, Nigel Kennedy on violin, Nana Vasconcelos on percussion, and Caroline Lavelle on the cello.

Instrumental Music


In North Indian or Hindustani music, the major stringed instrument is usually either the sitar, a long-necked fretted lute, or the sarod, a plucked lute without frets, and with a considerably shorter neck than the sitar. Other major stringed instruments include the sarangi, a short-necked bowed lute, and the surbahar, which is much like the sitar except larger. Wind instruments include the shehnai, which has no keys, and the bansuri, a bamboo flute, blown from the side, and with six or seven holes. In a concert, rhythmic accompaniment is provided by tabla, a pair of small drums played with the fingers, and the drone is provided by the tanpura.
In South Indian or Carnatic music, the vina, a long- necked and fretted plucked lute with seven strings is most commonly heard. The vina takes the place of the bansuri, and the nagaswaram, an oboe-like, double-reed instrument with finger holes, takes the place of the shehnai. The principal secondary instrument has been the violin, though now the violin has been raised to new heights at the hands of some practitioners. Several percussion instruments are used to provide rhythmic accompaniment, most notably the mridangam, a double-conical, two-headed drum. The sarangi is associated almost solely with Ram Narayan; the shehnai, likewise, is associated with Bismillah Khan, who has achieved such fame that one of the principal concert halls in Tehran is named after him. The shehnai is also commonly heard in north Indian marriages. There have been many notable tabla players, but a phenomenon unto himself has been Zakir Hussain, who has also combined with various western musicians to produce many fusion recordings. Though the tabla is an accompanying instrument, Zakir Hussain is more than capable of commanding an entire performance by himself. Also noteworthy as a performer is Shiv Kumar Sharma, who single-handedly brought the santoor, a folk instrument from Kashmir with more than 100 strings, into classical Indian music. In the West, the most well-known of all the instruments is undoubtedly the sitar, having been made famous by Ravi Shankar.
However, there have been other great performers of the sitar, and none, with the exception of Vilayat Khan, had attained such mastery in the playing of the sitar as Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. Born in 1931, Nikhil Banerjee received his musical instruction from Pandit Birendra Kishore Roy Chowdhry and, later, from Baba Allauddin Khan, perhaps the greatest name in Hindustani music. He also came under the influence of Ali Akbar Khan, the sarod maestro, and Annapurna Devi, the daughter of Allauddin Khan and the then wife of Ravi Shankar: his music also hints at the profound impact of Ustad Amir Khan. Such an extraordinary legacy was bound to show in Nikhil Banerjee's music, and no one who ever saw him in concert could fail to be impressed with his extraordinary sadhana, spiritual discipline. Nikhil Banerjee passed away at the age of 54 on 27 January 1986. The excerpt here is from "Raga Des"; the tabla accompaniment is by Pt. Samta Prasad.

Vocal Music


In South Indian music composed pieces are mainly set for the voice and have lyrics: the compositions can largely be attributed to three composers who lived from the mid 1700s to the early 1800s, Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar, and Syama Sastri. Their compositions are called krti, and these are devotional songs. In North Indian classical music, the most common form of singing is called khyal, a word which means imagination; however, the khyal is thought to have gained ascendancy only in relatively recent times, having superseded the dhrupad form of singing. Dhrupad means "fixed words". Another popular vocal form of North Indian classical music is the thumri, which derives its text, as do the bhajans, from devotional literature, and more particularly the theme of Radha and Krishna. In North Indian classical music, instrumental as well as vocal, the musicians are described as being affiliated with gharanas (literally, houses) or particular styles of music. Among the well-known gharanas are the "Kirana" gharana, whose most notable exponent was Baba Allauddin Khan and the Gwalior Gharana, immortalized by Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, whose name is more generally associated with the revival of North Indian culture; just as well-known are the Agra, Atrauli-Jaipur, and numerous other gharanas

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Indian Music

Music has always occupied a central place in the imagination of Indians. The range of musical phenomenon in India, and indeed the rest of South Asia, extends from simple melodies, commonly encountered among hill tribes, to what is one of the most well- developed "systems" of classical music in the world. Indian music can be described as having been inaugurated with the chanting of Vedic hymns, though it is more than probable that the Indus Valley Civilization was not without its musical culture, of which almost nothing is known. There are references to various string and wind instruments, as well as several kinds of drums and cymbals, in the Vedas. Sometime between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD, the Natyasastra, on Treatise on the Dramatic Arts, was composed by Bharata. This work has ever since exercised an incalculable influence on the development of Indian music, dance, and the performing arts in general.
The term raga, on which Indian music is based, was first discussed at any length in the Brhaddesi, a work from the 10th century attributed to Matanga. In the 13th century, the theorist Sarngadeva, who authored the large work Sangitaratnakara, listed 264 ragas; by this time, the Islamic presence was beginning to be felt in India. Some date the advent of the system of classical Indian music as we now know it to Amir Khusro. Muslim rulers and noblemen freely extended their patronage to music. In the courts of the Mughal emperors, music is said to have flourished, and the composer-musician Tansen was one of the jewels of Akbar's court. Though songs had traditionally been composed in Sanskrit, by the sixteenth century theywere being composed in the various dialects of Hindi -- Braj Bhasa and Bhojpuri among them -- as well as Persian and Urdu. The great poet-saints who chose to communicate in the vernacular tongues brought forth a great upheaval in north India and the bhakti or devotional movements they led gained many adherents. The lyrics of Surdas, Tulsidas, and most particularly Kabir and Mirabai would henceforth be set to music, and bhajans, or devotional songs, continue to be immensely popular.
By the sixteenth century, the distinction between North Indian (Hindustani) and South Indian (Carnatic) music was also being more sharply delineated. Though music in the north, owing to the strong Muslim presence, had been more open to outside influences, in the eighteenth century South Indian musicians were to show themselves as being quite adept in adopting foreign instruments. Sometime in the mid-eighteenth century, the violin entered the repertoire of South Indian music, an instrument which in the late twentieth century has a dazzling array of extraordinarily brilliant performers. Classical music, both Hindustani and Carnatic, may be either instrumental or vocal: the connoisseurs of music maintain, as one might expect, that the vocalists represent the music in its greatest glory, but instrumental music has at least just as large a following. Though traditionally this music would have been performed in temples, courts, residences of noblemen and other patrons, and in small gatherings (called baithaks) of music aficionados, today most classical music concerts are held in concert halls.
In the 1960s, classical Indian music entered a new phase. It found adherents in the West, and the sitar of Ravi Shankar was to be heard on the famous Beatles' album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ravi Shankar, along with other well-known musicians like the Sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan, was to make his home in the United States, and for the first time Indian classical music began to acquire Western students. Satyajit Ray, the first Indian director to acquire world fame, and a common name in repertory art cinemas, also brought classical Indian music to the attention of Westerners, for the music of some of his early films was composed by Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan, sometimes described as India's greatest sitarist. Finally, collaborations ensued between Indians musicians and Western musicians, as in the case of Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin, who collaborated on a number of East-West albums. In recent years, Ravi Shankar has collaborated with the American minimalist composer, Philip Glass, on Passages; there have also been successful collaborations between L. Shankar and L. Subramaniam, both violinists, and Western musicians. This music is now routinely described as fusion. Though a musicians such as Ravi Shankar can scarcely be described as a household name in the West, he is unquestionably one of the most well-known non- Western musicians in the West, and Indian classical music can fairly be described as having carved a niche for itself in the world of concert music.
In India, however, music is most commonly associated with film music. Popular Indian films, whether in Hindi, Tamil, or any of the other Indian languages, are most often described and understood in the West as "musicals", as they are seldom without songs, though they by no means constitute a genre as did American musicals. Also popular are ghazals, poetic compositions that aspire more than do popular film songs to poetic qualities: the subject here is usually the loss, memory, and remembrance of love. Qawaalis, compositions in which the subject is also love, though here it is understood that it is the love of man and woman for the Divine, have also attained a certain following, and in recent years the Pakistani qawaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has established a world-wide reputation.