Microtonality in Indian Music: Myth or Reality

by Suvarnalata Rao and Wim van der Meer Paper presented at FRSM Gwalior 2009 Abstract Microtonality (shruti) is regarded as an essential and core aspect of the raga performance in Indian art music. In fact, musicians invariably refer to and rely on specific intonations as an identifying feature for certain ragas, like the komal Gandhar (flat third) in raga Darbari. 
In this paper an attempt is made to ascertain the validity of this assumption with an empirical case study of intonation of komal Dha (flat sixth) in five different ragas, [...]

Microtonality in Indian Music: Myth or Reality2021-06-06T07:35:40+02:00

Shruti and Svara

Shruti is a sacred revelation, that which is heard, heard by the sages who passed on this knowledge to their disciples and the people in general. Much later, this manifestation in sound was committed to writing. In the Indian tradition this written form is not really reliable, much is missing from it. Nicholas Cook remarked that "the score conceals as much as it reveals"Cook, 81 and this can be applied to that idea of shruti, the full monty comes only in the oral tradition. Leo Treitler challenges the reliability [...]

Shruti and Svara2021-06-08T08:41:14+02:00

Works and Ragas

The key concept of Indian music is the raga. The European tradition doesn't have ragas, but somewhat similar is the work1 or piece. With European tradition I mean the type of music we generally call "classical music". It doesn't include popular music which also has a somewhat similar concept that we call song. The Indian music that is raga-based is also generally referred to as "classical", a concept borrowed from the European tradition. In India it takes two main variants: Hindustani in the North and Carnatic in [...]

Works and Ragas2021-06-07T08:33:47+02:00

Kishori Amonkar interview 2011

Kishori Amonkar on culture Times of India SATURDAY, JAN 15 2011 page 23 MUSIC, RHYTHM & RAGA HARKIRAN SINGH BHASIN NAMITA DEVIDAYAL Kishori Amonkar, the irascible diva who has just received the NCPA Lifetime Award, talks about her love for Maugham and her complex relationship with her mom, Mogubai. I grew up to Kishori Amonkar's voice. Every time my mother placed the Thorens needle on the long playing record, and the crackling gave way to the slow cadences of Sahela Re in raga Bhoop, I suspect the ferns [...]

Kishori Amonkar interview 20112021-05-23T10:44:09+02:00

Discretisation, Perfection, Standardisation and other Miseries

Holland (Nederland) is famous for its cheese. Nonsense. There is hardly any dutch cheese worthy of the name. Well, that is, if we are talking about typical dutch cheeses, because there are some very nice blue, red and white cheeses made there by enthusiasts. Typical dutch cheese like Gouda and Edam, or its farmhouse biological versions made with unpasteurised milk used to be highly diverse from one to the other. Sometimes they would be very pungent, with a strong smell of cows, stables, pastures, and the like. And they could [...]

Discretisation, Perfection, Standardisation and other Miseries2020-06-22T18:39:55+02:00

Mindless

"There is too much noise", my guru Pandit Dilip Chandra Vedi said on his deathbed. And it only got worse over the past decades. People buy machines for doing things and then they have to put those machines to work. Grass mowers, hole drillers, electric saws, hedge trimmers. They love noise. Ghetto blasters and car-radios with power woofers. There is too much mindlessness. People do things before they think about it. They say things before they think about it. They don't think. They are mindless, most of the time. Perhaps [...]

Mindless2021-05-22T10:36:45+02:00

La Musique Barbare

Hell is other people's music  Paraphrasing Kristeva – the barbarian is the subject whose music is so unknown to us that it doesn’t even appear to be music. It sounds like “noise”.  The question of cross- or transcultural listening to music is hopelessly confused. Moreover, we can extend this problem to cross-subcultural listening and also historical listening. When the journalist Momus noted:  ‘Hell,’ said Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘is other people’. I'd qualify that slightly. People are fine; it's their music that's hell”, he was talking about a subcultural issue: “When I [...]

La Musique Barbare2020-06-22T08:43:27+02:00
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