The musical centerpiece of a carnatic performance segment is the

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Week 3 Additional Assignment #1 Due Thursday 9/19

 Please Read “Written Lecture on India” (Simoncic) uploaded for you Week 3. Find it as you open the page to Week 3.

This is in lieu of a recorded lecture and in lieu of podcast. Each numbered section supplies a short but important bit of information concerning India and its music. You are to address each numbered part and in your own words describe what you learned from it. I normally upload my audio lecture but am experiencing a glitch in the recording.

Lecture notes and analysis on Carnatic music (Simoncic).

1. Culture, History, Politics

India’s almost one billion people—a fifth of the world’s population—live in an area one-third the size of the United States.

“There are fifteen major languages, almost as many alphabets, and dozens of regional dialects.”

2. “ India’s continuous history . . . stretches back five thousand years and beyond . . .”

South Asia including India is a “diamond shape with a triangular peninsula cut off from neighboring lands . . .” Owing to its isolating geography, South Asia is unique, but regionally diverse forms of culture and lifestyles have also developed in South Asia.

3. The two major regions create a regional difference between the Hindi-related language groups of the North with their related Hindustani style of Indian classical music and the Dravidian-speaking peoples of the South and their related Carnatic style of classical music.

4. Islamic conquests influenced the north reflective of the expansive improvisation in its music. British rule, Aryan influenced the south and Carnatic music built around a great repertoire of pre-composed Hindu devotional songs. The musical textures of the south are busier and active, with much ornamentation of pitch, and improvisation played within a fixed section. That would be similar to our jazz music or western classical music “variation” form.

5. Globalization and instant communication have allowed Indian musicians to become familiar with music from all over the world, including Western art music and American and European popular music, in addition to introducing the use of non-Indian musical instruments such as saxophone and various electronic instruments, which have been adapted to Indian music styles.

Foreign cultural ideas and technology have been absorbed and manipulated into a “new and undeniable Indian synthesis.”

6. The complex Indian raga system is related to the classical musical systems of other non-Indian areas such as Turkey, Iran, and North Africa. The distinctly Indian sitar and tabla have “cousins” in other parts of the world.

7. “In Carnatic music [the classical music of South India] many song texts refer to events and characters in epics.”

8. Some important religious works from India.

“The four vedas . . . and later Upanishads (or ‘Forest Books’) contain religious and abstract philosophical thought that has fascinated many Western thinkers . . . [Emerson, et al.].”

The Puranas “are filled with the myths of the gods and goddesses of popular Hinduism.”

--Indian folk music

Chennai’s street vendors play and sing folk music, with distinctive musical calls or chanted sacred songs while selling wares or services and for attention.

--Indian popular music: cine songs

Cine music falls within what general music category? From where does most popular Indian music originate? How is this music transmitted? “Pop music originates in movies . . .”

Most popular Indian music is prerecorded and played back through some mass-media format, such as cassette tape, TV, radio, or lip-sync-ed in popular movies. Western elements: American rock Indian style along with English phrases in “Shakalaka Baby”; Tamil rap in “Petta Rap”; semi-classical, classical style and instrumentation, as in the classic film Thillana Mohanambal; recent songs show a more sophisticated use of Western elements (harmony, counterpoint, or orchestration)

9. India’s Classical Music: Carnatic Music, the Classical Music of South India

The classical music of South India is called karnataka sangeeta, or in English simply Carnatic music.

It is named after the Carnatic plateau, which dominates the middle of the inland south.

Indian classical music is transmitted as an oral tradition passed down through history by memory. (The music is written down only in a sketchy form to nudge the memory.)

Since this music is not written down by a composer, no definitive version of the music exists. Therefore, the musical renditions may become highly variable with a new and unique treatment of the song coming into existence each time the music is performed.

10. The similarities and the differences between music of the classical Hindusthani style of North India and the classical music of the Carnatic style are:

10.A Similarities: Both styles use ragas (melodic mode/system) and talas (metric cycle).

10.B Differences: The Hindusthani style of north India was much more influenced by Islam with “expansive improvisations mov[ing very] gradually . . . from near immobility to sections of great speed . . .”

Carnatic music of the south is “built around an immense repertoire of pre-composed devotional songs. The musical texture in the south is more busy and active, notes are incessantly ornamented, and improvisations fall within clearly defined and relatively brief sections.”

The Sound World

11. --Melody line and ragas

Melodies tend to unfold against a drone background with rhythmic accompaniment in long, complex lines marked by pitch bending/gliding, intense ornamentation, and “zig zagging through intervals unfamiliar to Western ears [creating what are sometimes referred to as microtones—or microtonality which sounds out of tune and not common in Western tonality except in modern classical music…we call it “out of tune”. Often, when someone is singing horribly out of tune in our, 12-tone, chromatic system of western music it may sound perfectly fine in the microtonal system. It’s like singing the tones in between the cracks of the piano rather than the notes available at the piano.

--

12. “[I]mprovisation plays a key role in performance in Indian music”—spontaneously creating music with “key phrases [that] recur again and again with subtle variation and certain rules and procedures of the tradition are being followed . . . Mature musicians may not even fully plan their program in advance . . . ” As a side note, so do jazz soloists and some of the greatest improvisers of “classical” music were J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and far too many to name. Personally, in my junior year of college at a conservatory, I ran out of time writing music for my junior composition recital. So I asked a friend to sit next to the piano while I was playing and turn blank music pages as if something was actually written on them. Of all the music professors attending, only one of them wondered if “some” of it was improvised on the spot. At one time, improvisation was extremely important in western world classical music. Academia ended up destroying the concept of music improvisation. People began to rely on a formal classical education. Far too many teachers force the student to play only the “notes” on the page. I also know that many professors and private teachers in western classical music simply haven’t tried improvising. When I taught private piano to children and young people, they played the standard classical music, but they learned to improvise both classical and jazz styles. Improvisation connects the performer to the instrument in a more intimate way than just reading other people’s music. I believe that all children are at a genius level until they begin a formal education, then all is geared to the center and social pressures begin to occupy their minds.

12.--Oral tradition

Indian musicians create their music by ear in an oral tradition without reference to notated/printed music. But so do other cultures that we have studied and will study.

--Metrical units

Indian drummers play much longer metrical units/time cycles—called talas —than the common Western meters of two, three or four beats to a measure; within basic talas they play exceedingly complex rhythmic patterns on tuned drums often with a variety of percussion timbres/strokes.

13. --General form of a Carnatic music concert

A Carnatic music concert is built on a series of segments (a “string of compositions”).

• Each composition is in a specific raga, (a feeling or emotional coloring and expression: see # 16), and tala , (time cycle), which, in western music is associated with certain rhythmic patterns in specific song and instrumental forms, but sounding nothing like Carnatic music. Carnatic tala is also usually based on a song from the known repertory of Carnatic music.

• Many of these song-based compositions will be optionally extended by preceding or following the song with some improvisational form.

Carnatic concerts are sponsored by sabhas, which are cultural clubs.

The typical performance venue is in buildings owned by sabhas or in auditoriums, lecture halls, and temples.

14. The (Carnatic) Ensemble: Musical texture

Carnatic musical ensemble consists of three layers of musical texture—melody, drone, and rhythm (percussion).

. --The Melodic Layer

Principal melodic solo vocalist(s)/instrumentalist(s) dominate the ensemble, for example, “the violin, the bamboo flute, the plucked veena, the clarinet, and rarely the jalatarangam (Chinese porcelain bowls tuned by filling them with water and struck with thin sticks).”

• The melodic layer also includes a melodic accompanist, usually a violin.

. 15. --The Sruti Layer and the drone.

The drone layer consists of the sustained (continuously sounding) central tone of the composition and the perfect fifth above the central tone, either played on instruments such as the four-stringed tambura or sruti-box (small reed organ) or provided by battery-operated electronic equivalents that eliminate the need for a performer.

. --The Percussion Layer

The rhythm layer is led by the mridangam—a multi-timbral, double-headed drum with its right head tuned to the tonal center of the melodic soloist.

• sometimes joined by ghatam (large clay pot with ringing, metallic sound), the kanjira (Indian tambourine), or morsang (jew’s harp)

16. Raga: The Melodic System: In Western music, (we have our scales and modes as well as harmony, dynamics, (louds and softs), and a variety of orchestral instrumental colors reflecting and creating emotions traced back to the Greeks, BC period. For the average American listener, this is most obvious in movie music, for others it’s the symphony hall.

Indian Music Raga: Sanskrit word for “coloring, dyeing, tingeing” or that which colors “the mind and the heart . . . an expressive entity with a ‘musical personality’ all its own. . . .”

• “This musical personality is in part technical—a collection of notes, a scale, intonation, ornaments, pillar tones, and so on . . .”

• “ . . . a portfolio of characteristic musical gestures and phrases—bits and pieces of a melody—that give it a distinct and recognizable identity.”

• “Each raga has its rules about how a musician may move from one note to another . . . [and] ways of ornamenting certain notes . . .”

• Thus raga refers to an entire complex system for creating classical Indian melodies.

• Classical Indian melodies are based on ragas—specialized, complex melodic systems that include specific scale patterns (to be discussed later).

17. “In Carnatic music all ragas relate to Melakarta a mother scale of 7 notes, each scale is one of seventy-two basic ‘generative’ scales based on a parent scale.” There are 7 tones or steps of the Indian scale

seven

In India sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, da, ni a similar idea similar to do, re mi.. Western Music.

The non-movable tones are sa and pa, same as do and sol or 1 and 5 these are fixed drone tones, also used in Western music.

sa, the first scale degree and pa, the fifth scale degree, are fixed drone notes see chart Indian to Western solfeggio below:

sa = do ri = re ga = mi ma = fa pa = sol da = la ni = ti

Ri, ga, ma, da, and ni mutate (are raised or lowered) to form a particular scale.

Different forms of the scale degrees are created by lowering or raising the scale degrees a half-step. (You may be familiar with the similar manner of creating different forms of a minor scale in the Western music culture by raising or lowering the sixth and/or seventh scale degrees.)

18. There are 12 possible chromatic tones in western music and 72 possible variations using “chromatic” notes of the scale. If one plays the scale of C major, only the white keys including C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C are used. Chromatic notes are notes outside the original scale. When a “black” key on the piano keyboard is inserted into the melody of a C major scale that is a chromatic note.

Some modifications of a Melakarta scale may be skipped when the melody ascends or descends, vibrating ornaments may be added to certain scale tones of the raga, emphasized tones, resting notes, vibrations/slides, ornaments, subtle intonation and improvisations based on bits and pieces of melody. “In India’s classical music there are hundreds of such ragas in common use in the tradition.”

19. Tala: or The Time Cycle similar to western meter in that beats are grouped. Please don’t worry about trying to understand them.

Talas are regularly recurring metric cycles consisting of groups of beats.

20. The Drummer’s Art

role of drummer: The drummer must know and accompany songs/compositions in the Carnatic tradition.

drummer and melodic soloist: The percussionist must relate spontaneously to what the melodic soloist is doing, instantly calculating appropriate percussion accompaniments often made up of long, complex, and asymmetric patterns that fit within the composition’s tala.

A Carnatic Music Performance

“A concert in South India is marked by a string of compositions, each in a [specific] raga and tala, optionally extended by . . . forms of improvisation. Each section of a concert will thus have a composition, usually a kriti(a principal song of South India), as its centerpiece. An exception is the mostly improvised form called ragam, tanam, pallavi, which has a single phrase of melody and lyrics as its centerpiece.”

A mridangam is a double-headed, barrel-shaped drum. Both of its drumheads are made from multiple layers of leather with the outer layers cut with a circular hole in the middle. One head is tuned; the lower (untuned) head has a blob of wheat paste applied to its center to give it a booming sound. The use of the fingers as drum sticks allows the drummer to play with incredible speed. When less important percussion instruments are used, those players must follow the lead of the mridangam.

A veena is a plucked string instrument with seven strings—three drone strings and four playing strings (for playing melodies). The veena is designed with frets so that fingers can bend the strings and ornament the notes. (Many rock/blues guitar players bend their strings in a similar manner, creating interesting tonal distortion.)

21. Indian Music and the West

Three examples that illustrate assimilation of outside influences into India’s music culture.

1. the presence of non-Indian musical instruments such as the European saxophone, the guitar and the mandolin in Carnatic music

• 2. the all-inclusive nature of South-India’s cine and pop music industry

• 3. the globalization of music through television, movies, CDs, and cassettes

Fusion.

Fusion is a genre of music created out of an East/West interface and the connections between jazz/rock and Indian music.

• Various Indo-pop styles (for example, bhangra in Great Britain or “tassa-beat soca” in Trinidad) fuse Indian musical elements such as drone, scale, instruments and/or language with the beat and electronic sounds of mainstream rock/pop.

Ravi Shankar, a virtuoso sitar player, has moved into the worlds of Western classical and pop music. Beginning in the 1960s his concerts eventually brought him superstar status in Europe, the United States and India.

Harrison of the Beatles became a student of Shankar. As a result of his studies with the Indian sitar master, Harrison created a series of “finely crafted Indian-based songs ranging from ‘Love Me Do’ to ‘The Inner Light.’” John Lennon—also of the Beatles—showed Indian influence in his use of “drones, exotic riffs, and Indian instruments.”

“Love Me Do.”

Introduction by a sitar playing a raga-like scale in unmeasured time; sitar re-appears later in the song; background drone (on tambura and bass guitar); tabla drumbeat with tala-like cycles; and Harrison’s Indian vocal sound

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