Thillana mohanambal western music

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.