Hindustani music

A fundamental purpose of this study was to test whether theories and principles of music cognition and perception derived using western music can be applied to other styles of music, in this case, Carnātic music. Previous investigations showed that listeners use culture-specific and low-level sensory cues to comprehend familiar music, whereas they relied mainly on sensory cues and schematic knowledge gained from listening to music of their own culture to understand unfamiliar music. Research also shows that listeners hold mental representations of the hierarchical ordering of notes in musical scales of one’s culture which they readily access when listening to familiar and unfamiliar melodies. The existence of such representations has been demonstrated in real time using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques. The goals of the present study were to 1) behaviorally track listeners’ responses to two types of modulation as they developed over time in Carnātic music and 2) identify the various cues that listeners, familiar and unfamiliar with the music, utilized in order to perceive the modulations. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to obtain baseline profiles of four rāgams (modes) and compare these against profiles of modulating excerpts containing the same rāgams in Experiment 2. Carnātic and western music teachers heard brief Carnātic excerpts in one ear while in the other ear they heard a continuously sounded probe-tone. The probe-tone was one of the twelve chromatic notes of an octave. Participants judged continuously how well the probe-tone fitted with the melody. Results showed that western teachers’ responses matched those of the Indians on rāgams that had structures similar to the western scales but differed considerably when the rāgams were unfamiliar. Also, there were differences in the two groups’ responses to modulations. These discrepancies were primarily due to the influence of culture. The findings supported previous research and identified three types of cues: 1) culture-specific cues, which included theoretical knowledge of the rāgams and familiarity with the excerpts in the study, employed by Indian teachers, 2) basic psychophysical cues of duration and frequency of note occurrence employed by both Indian and western participants, and 3) transference of schematic knowledge of western music by western participants.

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 ...

Pandits Rajan and Sajan Mishra are the leading representatives of the three hundred (300) year old tradition of khayal-gaiyiki (the singing of the predominant genre of classical vocal music today) of the Benares gharana (school of music) in India. The recipients of the Padma Bhushan, Sangeet Natak Akademi, Gandharva National and Tansen Samman awards, the two (2) maestros have released more than twenty (20) albums of their music during their illustrious career spanning five (5) decades. The duo has performed 2 virtually all over the world -Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Oman, Qatar, Singapore, the Soviet Union, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, UK, USA, and many more countries -but feel that their journey won't be complete until they perform in Pakistan. In an exclusive interview with the Friday Times, the two (2) Pandits talk about their music, their lives, their fondness for Pakistani musicians, and much else.

An animal without the heartbeats can't perform any function actively, similarly a piece of music can't become lively and complete without the rhythm or tal, talking in the context of Indian music. The secret of tals lies in the system of uniform functioning associated with tempo or lai (derived from laya-act of fusion by losing identity). The uniform regularity, which is the core feature of the movement of stars and planets and essence of day and night, is strictly maintained in music too. As abnormal pulse is a sign of unhealthy disposition, so is a piece of disturbing music, which is corrupt with erratic and irregular tempi.

Philosophical Nature of Indian Music: This article is about the diversity and the interconnectivity between various forms of classical music spread across the Indian subcontinent. It has been published in the August 2020 issue of Yojana , a monthly journal devoted to the socio-economic issues of India, published by Publication Division, India.

This paper archives the developments in India during the 1920s as technology and cinema set out to redefine the perception of music leading to a period of “musical boom” (Hughes 2002). During this decade, music became an important component in the emerging urban spaces and new media technologies like cinema and gramophone; while the ongoing reformation of Hindustani music by Vishnu Paluskar and Vishnu Bhatkhande marginalised many musicians especially the female performers, baijis. I will discuss how a new musical style emerged at this particular moment that became a dominant influence for popular music and cinematic sound. These overlapping histories will be analysed in the context of Bombay Presidency being an important site of music performance and debate and a crucial centre of filmmaking and exhibition in India.

Music and Letters 97:3 (2016)

From theoretical treatises to songbooks, literature relating to Hindustani music proliferated in nineteenth-century Bengal. With few exceptions, these innovative Bengali works have received scant attention in studies of colonial-era music, which have focused instead on Anglophone scholarship. Bringing a wider range of vernacular texts into the analysis nuances the landscape of intellectual production, and indicates that nationalist or reformist interests pertained to but one public arena, jostling against several others. This article examines treatises dealing with the theory and history of Hindustani music, demonstrating the journey of Bengali musicology from Persian antecedents to its own system. The field of print production is then diversified further through an analysis of song collections, a major genre that disrupts any notion of a uniform sphere of transmission, reading, and listening. Rather than thinking of nineteenth-century music purely in terms of the colonial relationship, this article foregrounds a wider set of competing cultural and aesthetic considerations.

Bandish (musical composition) is considered to be a blueprint of Raga elaboration and it has a great value in the tradition of Hindustani musicians.  This article gives a wider perspective on Bandish, with an elaborate discussion on various aspects and importance of Bandish.

Music is an effective, almost magical medium that can be used to learn and retain information. Music activates three different centers of the brain at the same time: the language centre, the hearing centre and the rhythmic motor control. Through effecting these neural centres, it induces emotions and creates a heightened condition of awareness and mental acuity. It is one of the best medium which helps in proper development of cognitive ability of a child. Introducing proper musical activities in the school curriculum and in daily life is proven to improve child's overall development. The present article highlights the impact of music on human brain & overall development of child in the light of various studies and researches done around the world. The aim of this article is to put forward the benefit of music in child development and inculcation of good habits. This article challenges the misconception prevalent in the society which assume music merely as a mode of entertainment and insist students to concentrate on general scholastic subjects. It further provide scientific justifications for including music as one of the core subject in school curriculum.

In Sri Lanka, the various groups of Tamils are jointly the largest minority group who migrated from different places of South India and in different time periods 1. South Indian music is widely appreciated and learnt by both the Sinhala including by large parts of the Tamil minority spread over Sri Lanka. Although a number of Sinhala people prefer and practice North Indian music geographically, and probably culturally, they are much closer to South India than to North India. Some historical sources 2 report that Sinhalese are descendants of North Indians who are believed to be Aryans who migrated from Persia to the Northern part of India in the 13 th century and later. Therefore, some scholarly authorities 3 believe that the Sinhalese 'naturally' prefer North Indian music as they also continue the suggested Aryan heritage. Nevertheless, some other sources reveal that the North Indian music was spread in Sri Lanka during the British rule with the coming of the Parsi Theatre (Bombay theatre), which largely promoted Hindustani raga-based compositions. This paper explores selected literature and opinions of some interviewees and discusses what could be the reasons for preferences of North Indian music by the Sinhalese. The interviewees were chosen according to their professional profile and willingness to participate in this research. As a result, this paper will offer insights through analysing various opinions and statements made by a number of interviewees. The research also considered some theories which may relate to the case whether Hindustani classical music is due to these reasons a dominating minority culture or a rather self-imposed musical ideology. The latter would establish an aesthetic hierarchy, which is not reflected in the cultural reality of Sri Lanka. This is a new research scrutinizing a long-term situation of performing arts education in this country taking mainly interviews as a departing point.

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.

There are many problems in trying to construct a history of female musicians and dancers in Mughal North India. Such women appear frequently in Mughal writings and apparently played an important role in elite society; there is clearly much we can learn from such sources about gender and class in the empire generally, as well as female performers more specifically. However, what evidence we have is written from the perspective of their male patrons and cast according to long‐standing rhetorical and cultural conventions concerning the fateful roles of music and love in historical events. In this article I examine how Mughal historical chronicles transform named female performers into stereotyped agents of the downfall of noblemen. Using the stories of several historical courtesans, I demonstrate how stock topoi of desire, enslavement, longing, rebellion, danger, fate and above all musical and erotic power, were used to shape all stories of courtesans into tragic cautionary tales. I aim to show that the ‘fictive’ elements of Mughal courtesan tales furthermore reveal important cultural truths about the role and meanings of music in Mughal male society.

DOWNLOAD FROM and CITE AS: Katherine Butler Schofield & David Lunn. (2018). The SHAMSA database 1.0 – Sources for the History and Analysis of Music/Dance in South Asia, c. 1700–1900. (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1445775

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  The SHAMSA* bibliographical database and digital collection has been developed as part of the European Research Council project Musical Transitions to European Colonialism in the Eastern Indian Ocean (MUSTECIO, Grant no. 263643, PI Katherine Butler Schofield, 2011–2015/16). The attached xlsx document, licensed as a CC-BY-NC resource, provides the bibliographical metadata of Version 1.0 of the database. It describes well over 300 major written sources c. 1700-1900 for the history and analysis of North Indian music and dance in Mughal and British-colonial South Asia. About one third – well over 100 – of these sources are also currently held in digital copies in the Department of Music at King’s College London. The SHAMSA digital collection already constitutes the largest single repository of major primary sources on Indian music and dance in the world, and is planned to be a major ongoing resource for future researchers on Indian music and cultural history.

The sources of SHAMSA 1.0 were located and consulted Jan 2011– Dec 2015 by members of the Awadh Case Study of the ERC Musical Transitions project, including James Kippen, David Lunn, Allyn Miner, Katherine Butler Schofield, Margaret E Walker, and Richard David Williams. The initial collection has clearly defined limits: it 1) focusses on the Gangetic plains (or Doab) region between Delhi, Lucknow, and Calcutta; 2) during the timeframe c. 1700-1900 i.e. explicitly before the era of recorded sound (but with some 17C and 20C outliers, and some materials from e.g. Hyderabad, Kashmir). 3) The linguistic focus of the collection is on works largely in Persian, Brajbhasha/Hindavi, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali, but with some works in Sanskrit, English, and other Northern Indian vernacular languages. Sources include music and dance treatises, biographical works (tazkiras), song collections, ethnographic works, department archives, encyclopedias, cosmographies, theatre scripts, moral and ethical tracts, histories, and a tiny handful of the large number of extant ragamala painting sets.

It is critically important to note that this is by no means a complete collection of everything written on music in North India in the period of transition from the Mughal to the British empires. We have been completely overwhelmed by the volume and richness of the materials we have uncovered for the history of music and dance before the period of recorded sound. This bibilography should be considered a mere starting point; we are already aware of a large number of sources, especially visual, that we have not yet included. Version 1.0 consists only of (largely) textual sources that at least one of the team members personally consulted 2011–15, and considered to include substantial and noteworthy musical and/or dance-related contents (very occasionally key sources are also included that we know about but have been unable to locate yet, despite our best efforts.)

We know that there are many more written and visual sources for North Indian music and dance beyond the geographical and temporal scope of this database – for example for Panjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, etc. – but even considering our core region and timeframe we keep uncovering more sources all the time, and aim to update the open access versions of the database periodically. We would be delighted to hear from anyone who has information about sources that are not yet in our database that we might be able to consult and include.

Well over one third of the works in the bibliographical file are already available to consult as digital copies in situ at King’s College London. The copyright statuses of these copies are exceedingly complex; but we aim to make as many of these available via Creative Commons licenses as and when we gain approval from the holders of the original documents to do so. Please do get in touch with Dr Katherine Schofield at King’s College London if you wish to consult the digital copies in the SHAMSA collection, or if you have suggestions of works whose metadata should be included in the bibliographical list. (Version 1.0 was completed 1 Jan 2016, and checked/exported 2 Oct 2018.)



*Deriving from the Persian word "shams", meaning "sun", a shamsa is both a ray of solar light often indicating the bestowal of special knowledge or enlightenment, and the technical term for an illuminated orb-like frontispiece in Islamicate manuscripts that often encloses the patron's name, titles, and/or portrait — see for example the beautiful shamsa for the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan that adorns the SHAMSA Community page (Metropolitan Museum of Art). In later lithographed works on music in Urdu, the title of the manuscript would often be enclosed in a shamsa. But the name SHAMSA also pays homage to the first Persian treatise on North Indian music written by an imperial hereditary musician, the Shams al-Aswat by Ras Baras Khan (1698), in which he named shams as the presiding star of the musical note Ma, the fourth scale degree (MUSTECIO 0131/British Library, I O Islamic 1746, f. 19r).

A short overview of results of nearly two decades of extensive research on intonation in Hindustani music. Together with my colleagues Bernard Bel and James Arnold (†) this project started out to 'prove' ancient Indian shruti theory to be right. In passing the work of Jairazbhoy, Stone and Levy had been thoroughly dismissed. However, I later fidcovered Jairazbhoy had a point, even if he exaggerated.

"My PhD on Hindustani vocal music. Not available in print anymore, though I have promised to publish a new edition with some additions and corrections. The book contains a lucid description of the workings of Hindustani music and the changes that took place over the century before its fabrication.
The book owes much, nay everything, to my teacher, Pandit Dilip Chandra Vedi - himself disciple of stalwards like Uttam Singh, Bhaskar Rao Bakhle, Faiyaz Khan and Alladiya Khan. Yet, I hope I have critically linked his views to literature and other sources, although inevitably sometimes my stance is biased. Not ashamed!"

The harmonium is both widely played and widely condemned in India. During the Indian independence movement, both British and Indian scholars condemned the harmonium for embodying an unwelcome foreign musical sensibility. It was consequently banned from All-India Radio from 1940 to 1971, and still is only provisionally accepted on the national airwaves. The debate over the harmonium hinged on putative sonic differences between India and the modern West, which were posited not by performers, but by a group of scholars, composers, and administrators, both British and Indian. The attempt to banish the sound of the harmonium was part of an attempt to define a national sound for India, distinct from the West. Its continued use in education served a some- what different national project: to standardize Indian music practice. This paper examines the intertwined aesthetic and political ideals that underlie the harmonium controversy.

Music is often invoked as the 'glue' that unites people, acting as a perennial symbol of a historically composite culture disrupted by the rupture of Partition. This view posits a kind of pluralistic and decentered South Asian 'musical citizenship' that counters the narrow, antagonistic and populist definition of citizenship tied exclusively to either India or Pakistan. We cannot easily transpose such views of cultural citizenship back into time as it leads to a gravely presentist reading of our musical pasts, and rides roughshod over the complex trajectories musicians' lives took post-1947.
Google Books Link:  https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hdFBDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Published in Hillary Rodriquez, ed., Studying Hinduism in Practice (New York:  Routledge, 2011): 118-130.

Hindus recognize an innate connection between their traditional arts, their theological understandings, and the traditions of spiritual practice that link them together. Since the time of the Upaniṣads, Hindus have recognized sound, nāda, as divine, as Brahman (Absolute Reality). A profound tradition of classical music has developed over the past 2,000 years that integrates ancient techniques of yoga with the finest technologies in musical practice, instrument design, and performance. The union of art and spirituality reached its apex in the aesthetic reflections of Abhinavagupta, and other geniuses of Hindu Tantra. In this chapter I reflect on my 20-year study of tablā and Tantra, both in academic contexts here in the United States, as well as in my field research in Nepal, India, Bhutan, and Bali.

Artistic Research Question: "How can I adapt, develop and combine the Indian rhythmic phrase ​ "Tirakite TakeTake" ​ on drumset by analysing different variations of it, such as grooves, fills and comping, based on the Indian taal called Deepchandi​ ?

Moreover, by using a tabla composition called ​ "Tirakite Tukra" ​ based thus on the analyzed phrase, how can I obtain a rhythmic crossover with the Brazilian rhythm called ​ "Maracatu de baque virado" and how can I integrate the result into my own personal language and into my own approach to the Maracatu?"

In this paper I have attempted to clarify the different meanings of shruti (≈microtone). By taking a close-up of the ga (minor third) in Darbari Kanada, as performed by Uday Bhawalkar. http://thoughts4ideas.eu/gandhara-in-darbari-kanada-the-mother-of-all-shrutis/

From ancient times till date, the language of the song in India has undergone many changes. The song texts in the ancient period were primarily Sanskrit and Prakrit. In the medieval period, due to the development of regional languages, the importance of Sanskrit as a language of the song started diminishing. Sanskrit is still in vogue as song language in Carnatic music. But it is not the case in Hindustani Art music. Except for Ashtapadi, the song-texts of major song-forms such as Dhrupad, Khayal, Tappa, Thumri are chiefly in regional dialects such as Brij, Awadhi, Mewadi, Saraiki-Panjabi, etc. In the modern period, few composers have composed Dhrupad, Khayal, and also line-components for Tarana or Chaturang in Sanskrit. One also finds the influence of Sanskrit in some Dhrupad and Khayal compositions. This paper firstly takes a brief review of Sanskrit compositions of Hindustani Art music through the ages, and secondly discusses some questions such as why Sanskrit lost the pivotal place in song-texts in Hindustani Art music and still why modern composers, though few, have tried composing Sanskrit Bandish-s. The paper also ponders upon some issues such as potentialities and limitations of any language for being a song-language, and how vocalists handle the song-texts in actual rendition.

La presente ricerca ha lo scopo di analizzare l’influenza che la musica classica dell’India del Nord ha esercitato sulla formazione e lo sviluppo dello stile musicale americano noto come minimalismo, focalizzandosi sull’opera di La Monte Young che, per un uso pionieristico e sistematico di elementi statici e ripetitivi nelle proprie composizioni, viene considerato il primo dei compositori minimalisti (PELINSKI 1985: 19, STRICKLAND 1993: 235).
Young infatti ha sviluppato quali caratteri peculiari della propria estetica compositiva alcuni concetti che presentano forti punti di contatto con la pratica e la teoria musicale indostana, che egli ebbe modo di approfondire sia da autodidatta (tramite ascolti e letture, attingendo da archivi etnomusicologici universitari durante i suoi studi all’UCLA di Los Angeles) sia attraverso un apprendistato di ventisei anni con il musicista indostano di Kirana gharana Pandit Pran Nath, aderendo al sistema tradizionale di insegnamento musicale indiano (guru-shishya) che prevede la trasmissione orale del sapere da maestro a discepolo e la condivisione di vita e spazi al servizio del guru.
In particolare abbiamo individuato tre principali aree della ricerca artistica di Young che rivelano forti affinità con la teoria ed estetica della musica classica indostana e che rappresentano al contempo i caratteri più innovativi dell’opera del compositore e quelli che segnarono la nascita del minimalismo: l’uso di bordoni, dell’intonazione “pura” in alternativa al temperamento equabile e dell’improvvisazione. La nostra trattazione si occuperà dunque di approfondire questi tre principali nuclei tematici dell’opera di Young in relazione alle affinità con la pratica della musica classica indostana, con cenni a quelle composizioni dell’autore che paiono particolarmente esemplificative in questo senso.

This dissertation examines how late nineteenth-century discourse on tuning and temperament was co-produced with the global politics of nationalism, transnationalism, colonialism, and imperialism.  I concentrate on the history of “just intonation”—a tuning system whose intervallic proportions are predicated on the logic of simple whole-integer ratios—as it was theorized by a network of musical scholars spanning Asia, Europe, and North America.  My focus on this history reveals how, on the one hand, political forces shaped the development of comparative musicology and methods of score-based analysis.  I also demonstrate, on the other, how the increasing entanglements between “Western” and “non-Western” scholarship produced new expressions of cultural hybridity that fundamentally reconfigured national politics, through the reciprocal exchange of musical ideas and instruments.  Based on my findings, I challenge persistent myths of theoretical autonomy and cultural exceptionalism, and assess both the merits and pitfalls of attempting to write a global history of music theory.
In four chapters, I examine three branches of just-intonation discourse and evaluate their connections to the political relations between indigenous—settler populations (Native American communities/United States), colonizer—colonized groups (England/India), and nation-states pursuing diplomatic relations (Germany/Japan).  Drawing on the methods of Science, Technology, and Society Studies (STS), I lay out how the epistemological frameworks of scholarship within these contexts drew upon statistical techniques, myths of cultural origins, and theories of nature that were integral to the formation of nineteenth-century nation-states and imperial regimes.  I argue that the construction of just-intonation keyboards with as many as fifty-three tones per octave played a particularly important role within this context, as tools for scientific investigation as well as for normalizing and standardizing national musical practices.  I then build on the insights of transnational historiography and post-colonial theory in examining the subaltern response to these approaches, identifying two destabilizing strategies: the provincialization of “Western” musical discourse, and the defamiliarization of “Western music.”  I conclude with reflections on my own experiences playing just-intonation instruments, suggesting how the global history of theory might incorporate insights from music cognition, critical organology, and performance studies so as to expand its purview from the history of ideas.

How can I adapt, develop and combine the Indian rhythm phrase "Tirakite Taketake" on the "​ Maracatu de baque virado"​ , by analysing different variations of it, such as grooves and fills, in order to integrate the result into my own personal language and into my own approach to the Maracatu?

This paper is part of a wider academic research, which aims to locate the Sikh musical tradition (Gurbani sangit) in the context of the medieval and early modern history of Indian music. In particular, this script focuses on kirtan, a genre of Gurbani sangit that entails the singing of the Sikh sacred hymns as a core part of the spiritual practice. Compared with other musical genres in vogue during the Sikh Gurus’ era (late fifteenth-early eighteenth century CE), Gurbani kirtan has been either neglected by past scholars, or, in more recent times, considered a subaltern expression of the better-known classical (darbari dhrupad and khyal) forms. Through the analysis of a coherent corpus of compositions set to peculiar ragas (modal melodies) and talas (rhythmic cycles), the present contribution explores the idea of an autonomous identity of the Sikh music tradition, suggesting that Gurbani kirtan evolved not as a stylistic variation of other coeval forms, but as a distinct genre with peculiar features that fit the Sikh philosophy, literature and devotional context. Please note that YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE ARTICLE FROM THE FOLLOWING LINK: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint//full

2018 Introductory Remarks to Mukund Lath, “Identity Through Necessary Change: Thinking about ‘Rāga-Bhāva,’ Concepts and Characters” Journal of World Philosophies. Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Winter 2018): 1-5


https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp/article/view/2166

David Lunn & Katherine Butler Schofield, "Delight, Devotion, and the Music of the Monsoon at the Court of Emperor Shah Alam II, in Rajamani, Pernau & Schofield, Monsoon Feelings: A History of Emotions in the Rain (New Delhi: Niyogi, 2018) * _ * _ * _ * _ * The Mughal Emperor Shah ‘Alam II, who reigned 1759–1806, was an accomplished poet and lyricist.  In this chapter, we examine some of the emperor’s many compositions in the now obsolete Rag Gaund, a musical mode intrinsically linked with the monsoon, and used in the Mughal court to evoke a complex range of feelings and associations to do not only with melancholy, longing and desire, but also with spirituality. We reflect on this old monsoon raga to open up the feelings and sensibilities of members of elite Indian society on the eve of colonialism, and explore the political, social, devotional and aesthetic worlds they inhabited.

What happened to Rag Gaund? The immense popularity of this musical mode through the course of the 18th and 19th centuries is attested by its profuse appearance in several major poetical/lyrical collections, most notably the Nādirāt-e shāhī, a compendium of the "choicest examples" of the multilingual poetry of the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II (Delhi, 1797). But by the 20th century, Gaund seems to have been confined to the Sikh tradition, preserved especially in its scriptural home, the Guru Granth Sahib.

Yet tracing the history of Rag Gaund is not merely an exercise in recovering a lost, modified, or discarded musical mode. The association of this rāga with the monsoon allows us to examine the particular associations of this mode with emotions and performance practices during the intellectual and cultural transition of paracolonial India—and in particular its place at the court of the Emperor Shah Alam II. In doing so, this paper will posit an argument for the necessity of examining multiple artistic forms—and their somewhat distinct but overlapping and inter-related genealogies of knowledge— and doing so across languages, to obtaining anything close to a nuanced picture of the intellectual and cultural endeavours that were ongoing in the transition from late Mughal to early colonial North India.

Contrary to popular belief that intercultural musical exchanges are relatively recent occurrences of the past few decades, there is enough documentary evidence to prove that this was a reality dating back several centuries. Evidently, a web of socioeconomic and political networks made these dialogues a reality. They manifested themselves in a subconscious assimilation of musical ideas across cultures or through conscious efforts on the part of musicians and musicologists to study and incorporate elements from other musical systems. Conditions in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were also conducive to similar musical exchanges and were impacted by the colonial context. Focusing on one such encounter that took place in Bombay (now Mumbai), a city that attracted diverse cultural influences, this paper examines the circumstances and conflicting ideologies that motivated the dialogue and shaped its contours. Parity between Western and Indian music The nineteenth century saw the rise of national consciousness among the Indian intelligentsia and a growing urge for social and political change. With a view to constructing a pan-Indian cultural identity, members of this social stratum promoted certain aspects of indigenous culture to challenge colonial racial superiority. Endeavors to classicize Indian music and to propagate it as a symbol of an ancient culture dating back to a glorious Hindu-Sanskritic past were part of the nationalist scheme to combat the highly prejudiced accounts of Indian history provided by British colonial administrator historians like James Mill and other writers of his ilk. 1 With particular reference to Indian music, the latter had drawn a mix of reactions from British travellers to India, ranging from indifference, ignorance, and mild curiosity, to antipathy, oblique praise. 2 The reconstruction of the past and the need to establish a national cultural identity to correct this colonial disdain of Indian civilization and culture was therefore accompanied with a strong desire to prove India's ability to be on par with Western culture. Thus, efforts were made to project Indian music as an art and science that encompassed all that Western music had to

Music’s ability to stimulate the emotions has long been fundamental to the aesthetics and reception of India’s elite rāga-based traditions. These emotions are generally studied aesthetically through the lens of ‘rasa’: the Sanskrit theory that proposes the musician’s role is to stimulate one of nine distilled emotional essences (rasas) that is ‘tasted’ by the audience. But here I ask the inverse question: what emotions arose when historical listeners were threatened with the loss of that crucial source of emotional stimulus; and how were those negative emotions expressed through historical texts? In this paper, I consider the Hayy al-Arwāh, a music treatise and tazkira (biographical collection) written by an ex-Mughal official from Delhi living in exile in Patna c. 1785–88, Miyan Zia-ud-din ‘Zia’. Zia-ud-din’s work reveals much about the emotions felt by musicians and music lovers affected by the violent political upheaval centred on late Mughal Delhi c1740–80 – but not in obvious ways. For such an emotional subject, his writing is curiously dispassionate. Nevertheless, I argue that his writing was impelled by one very powerful emotion in particular: anxiety. In order to approach the question I examine some alternative ways we might get at the emotional resonances of texts like the Hayy al-Arwāh: through genre, in this case the tazkira; the etic observations of modern neuroscience; and a turn outwards to writings of more emotionally loquacious contemporaries, here the Urdu poet Mir Taqi ‘Mir’. I argue it is precisely Zia-ud-din’s detatched attention to detail, as he traced hundreds of lost and scattered musicians and listeners, that reveals the emotional driving force behind the writing of the Hayy al-Arwāh to be a deep and abiding anxiety engendered by the very real existential threat of war and exile to the music of late Mughal Delhi. In writing the Hayy al-Arwāh, Zia-ud-din acted as witness and record keeper for his community to insure against the potential loss of the music of his beloved homeland. At the same time, the work of gathering and reporting information acted to alleviate his anxiety over the threatened disappearance of what was to him a most important source of personal solace.

In this article, Dr Chaitanya Kunte has taken elaborate review of origin and development of Tappa, a musical genre. This article also deals with influence of Tappa on various musical forms in Hindustani music such as Khayal, Tarana, Thumri; and regional variations such as Bangla Tappa, the influence of Tappa in the music of Maharashtra.

‘The Dhantal’s Irreverence: Off-Beat as the In-Between Time of Indenture’, in Maurits S. Hassankhan et al, ed., Social and Cultural Dimensions of Indian Indentured Labour and its Diaspora: Past and Present (New Delhi: Manohar, 2015)

This is a speculative exploration of the ways in which the cultural production of indentured labour diasporas from British India can hold clues as to a shared, modern, experience of temporality. it touches on issues of play as resistance and the freeing of subaltern embodied experiences that was enabled by the movement of populations outside the territorial space of 'India'. I've uploaded the paper in proof form as I don't actually have access currently to the published version. it's also something I did a long time ago! (four years to be precise)

The rich, buzzing and haunting sound, known as the javari ( ‫جوار‬ ‫ی‬ ), is perhaps the most ethereal of the many sounds of the sitar ‫ِتار(‬ ‫.)س‬ It is certainly the most exacting one for both sitar players and sitar makers. The effect is produced by the sitar strings vibrating on flat bridge, with a curved surface, known as the ghori ( ‫گهوڑ‬ ‫ی‬ ). The most radical work of a sitar maker is, undoubtedly, the construction and maintenance of the