Finding the Raga

Finding the Raga
Author: Amit Chaudhuri
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 168137479X

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography An autobiographical exploration of the role and meaning of music in our world by one of India's greatest living authors, himself a vocalist and performer. Amit Chaudhuri, novelist, critic, and essayist, is also a musician, trained in the Indian classical vocal tradition but equally fluent as a guitarist and singer in the American folk music style, who has recorded his experimental compositions extensively and performed around the world. A turning point in his life took place when, as a lonely teenager living in a high-rise in Bombay, far from his family’s native Calcutta, he began, contrary to all his prior inclinations, to study Indian classical music. Finding the Raga chronicles that transformation and how it has continued to affect and transform not only how Chaudhuri listens to and makes music but how he listens to and thinks about the world at large. Offering a highly personal introduction to Indian music, the book is also a meditation on the differences between Indian and Western music and art-making as well as the ways they converge in a modernism that Chaudhuri reframes not as a twentieth-century Western art movement but as a fundamental mode of aesthetic response, at once immemorial and extraterritorial. Finding the Raga combines memoir, practical and cultural criticism, and philosophical reflection with the same individuality and flair that Chaudhuri demonstrates throughout a uniquely wide-ranging, challenging, and enthralling body of work.

Indian Music

Indian Music
Author: Emmie Te Nijenhuis
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 170
Release: 1974
Genre: Hindu music
ISBN: 9789004039780

The Dawn of Indian Music in the West

The Dawn of Indian Music in the West
Author: Peter Lavezzoli
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2006-04-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780826418159

Peter Lavezzoli, Buddhist and musician, has a rare ability to articulate the personal feeling of music, and simultaneously narrate a history. In his discussion on Indian music theory, he demystifies musical structures, foreign instruments, terminology, an

Indian Blues

Indian Blues
Author: John W. Troutman
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2013-06-14
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0806150025

From the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, the U.S. government sought to control practices of music on reservations and in Indian boarding schools. At the same time, Native singers, dancers, and musicians created new opportunities through musical performance to resist and manipulate those same policy initiatives. Why did the practice of music generate fear among government officials and opportunity for Native peoples? In this innovative study, John W. Troutman explores the politics of music at the turn of the twentieth century in three spheres: reservations, off-reservation boarding schools, and public venues such as concert halls and Chautauqua circuits. On their reservations, the Lakotas manipulated concepts of U.S. citizenship and patriotism to reinvigorate and adapt social dances, even while the federal government stepped up efforts to suppress them. At Carlisle Indian School, teachers and bandmasters taught music in hopes of imposing their “civilization” agenda, but students made their own meaning of their music. Finally, many former students, armed with saxophones, violins, or operatic vocal training, formed their own “all-Indian” and tribal bands and quartets and traversed the country, engaging the market economy and federal Indian policy initiatives on their own terms. While recent scholarship has offered new insights into the experiences of “show Indians” and evolving powwow traditions, Indian Blues is the first book to explore the polyphony of Native musical practices and their relationship to federal Indian policy in this important period of American Indian history.

Indian Sun

Indian Sun
Author: Oliver Craske
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 653
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0306874873

One of Library Journal's "Best Arts Books of 2020" The definitive biography of Ravi Shankar, one of the most influential musicians and composers of the twentieth century, told with the cooperation of his estate, family, and friends For over eight decades, Ravi Shankar was India's greatest cultural ambassador. He was a groundbreaking performer and composer of Indian classical music, who brought the music and rich culture of India to the world's leading concert halls and festivals, charting the map for those who followed in his footsteps. Renowned for playing Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and the Concert for Bangladesh-and for teaching George Harrison of The Beatles how to play the sitar-Shankar reshaped the musical landscape of the 1960s across pop, jazz, and classical music, and composed unforgettable scores for movies like Pather Panchali and Gandhi. In Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar, writer Oliver Craske presents readers with the first full portrait of this legendary figure, revealing the personal and professional story of a musician who influenced-and continues to influence-countless artists. Craske paints a vivid picture of a captivating, restless workaholic-from his lonely and traumatic childhood in Varanasi to his youthful stardom in his brother's dance troupe, from his intensive study of the sitar to his revival of India's national music scene. Shankar's musical influence spread across both genres and generations, and he developed close friendships with John Coltrane, Philip Glass, Yehudi Menuhin, George Harrison, and Benjamin Britten, among many others. For ninety-two years, Shankar lived an endlessly colorful and creative life, a life defined by musical, emotional, and spiritual quests-and his legacy lives on. Benefiting from unprecedented access to Shankar's archives, and drawing on new interviews with over 130 subjects-including his second wife and both of his daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar- Indian Sun gives readers unparalleled insight into a man who transformed modern music as we know it today.

The Music of India

The Music of India
Author: Reginald Massey
Publisher: Abhinav Publications
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1996
Genre: Music
ISBN: 8170173329

The Classical Music Of The India-Pakistan-Bangladesh Subcontinent Is One Of The New Ancient Art Forms Still Widely Practised Today. In Recent Years It Has Been Much Appreciated All Over The World. This Book, Written By Indian Writers, Serves To Deepen That Appreciation To Understanding. It Covers The Philosophy And History Of Indian Music Clearly And Concisely And Relates Its Growth And Development To Social, Cultural, Religious And Political Factors. India S Musical Contacts With The East And West Are Also Discussed And Their Value Assessed. The Technical Chapters Explain The Raga And Tala Systems, The Numerous Instruments From North And South Are Described In Detail With The Help Of Excellent Line Drawings By Eilean Pearcey, And The Glossary Of Terms Illumines The Subject In An Interesting Way. Short Biographies Of Established Musicians, Composers And Musicologists Place On Record Their Various Achievements. Apart From A Selective Bibliography And Discography For The Reader S Guidance There Is Also A List Of Useful Addresses. The Music Of India Will Prove Invaluable To The Student And Specialist Who Requires A Ready Handbook On The Subject. For The General Reader It Contains A Mine Of Information On The Musical Life Of An Entire Subcontinent. Ravi Shankar, In His Foreword, Recommends This Book To All Who Wish To Be Introduced To India S Music, Her Culture And Her Peoples. This Is A Work Of Scholarship; Lively, At Times Even Witty And Never Dull