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.

Music and Musical Thought in Early India

Music and Musical Thought in Early India
Author: Lewis Rowell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2015-12-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226730344

Offering a broad perspective of the philosophy, theory, and aesthetics of early Indian music and musical ideology, this study makes a unique contribution to our knowledge of the ancient foundations of India's musical culture. Lewis Rowell reconstructs the tunings, scales, modes, rhythms, gestures, formal patterns, and genres of Indian music from Vedic times to the thirteenth century, presenting not so much a history as a thematic analysis and interpretation of India's magnificent musical heritage. In Indian culture, music forms an integral part of a broad framework of ideas that includes philosophy, cosmology, religion, literature, and science. Rowell works with the known theoretical treatises and the oral tradition in an effort to place the technical details of musical practice in their full cultural context. Many quotations from the original Sanskrit appear here in English translation for the first time, and the necessary technical information is presented in terms accessible to the nonspecialist. These features, combined with Rowell's glossary of Sanskrit terms and extensive bibliography, make Music and Musical Thought in Early India an excellent introduction for the general reader and an indispensable reference for ethnomusicologists, historical musicologists, music theorists, and Indologists.

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

The Music Room

The Music Room
Author: Namita Devidayal
Publisher: Random House India
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2011-11-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 818400236X

When Namita is ten, her mother takes her to Dhondutai, a respected Mumbai music teacher from the great Jaipur Gharana. Dhondutai has dedicated herself to music and her antecedents are rich. She is the only remaining student of the legendary Alladiya Khan, the founder of the gharana and of its most famous singer, the tempestuous songbird, Kesarbai Kerkar. Namita begins to learn singing from Dhondutai, at first reluctantly and then, as the years pass, with growing passion. Dhondutai sees in her a second Kesar, but does Namita have the dedication to give herself up completely to music—or will there always be too many late nights and cigarettes? Beautifully written, full of anecdotes, gossip and legend, The Music Room is perhaps the most intimate book to be written about Indian classical music yet.

Tellings and Texts

Tellings and Texts
Author: Francesca Orsini
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2015-10-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1783741023

Examining materials from early modern and contemporary North India and Pakistan, Tellings and Texts brings together seventeen first-rate papers on the relations between written and oral texts, their performance, and the musical traditions these performances have entailed. The contributions from some of the best scholars in the field cover a wide range of literary genres and social and cultural contexts across the region. The texts and practices are contextualized in relation to the broader social and political background in which they emerged, showing how religious affiliations, caste dynamics and political concerns played a role in shaping social identities as well as aesthetic sensibilities. By doing so this book sheds light into theoretical issues of more general significance, such as textual versus oral norms; the features of oral performance and improvisation; the role of the text in performance; the aesthetics and social dimension of performance; the significance of space in performance history and important considerations on repertoires of story-telling. The book also contains links to audio files of some of the works discussed in the text. Tellings and Texts is essential reading for anyone with an interest in South Asian culture and, more generally, in the theory and practice of oral literature, performance and story-telling.

The Rāga-s of Northern Indian Music

The Rāga-s of Northern Indian Music
Author: Alain Daniélou
Publisher:
Total Pages: 426
Release: 1997
Genre: Music
ISBN:

Description: The first part of the book traces the history of Indian music and the continuity of its theory and practice for more than two thousand years. It is based on many years' research into the vast ancient Sanskrit literature of music. These valuable technical treatises, which lie in the form of scarcely catalogued manuscripts throughout the public and private libraries of India, had hitherto remained unemplored. Part Two transcribes and studies in detail 50 typical Raga-s. Each is preceded by a Sanskrit poem in translation which depicts the atmosphere; then follows an analysis of the scale, covering its intervals and expression, a study of the theme with its characteristic motives and finally a typical development. The present work is based on the author's two-volume Northern Indian Music published in London (but not America) some ten years ago, but long out of print and much sought after by students. It was described by Colin Mason in the Manchester Guardian as of immense value to any practical musician and an invaluable addition to the very scanty literature of fascinating and neglected subject . This new version contains a number of additional Raga-s; the earlier text has been extensively revised and many music examples redrawn for greater clarity and accuracy. Some abridgement has taken place, but only of material which appeared originally for the benefit of Indian readers unfamiliar with Western staff notation, those able to read Sanskrit, and specialists in Sanskrit literature. The book provides modern composers outside India with a source of new inspiration and enables practising musicians to play and study some of the endlessly variegated modes for which Indian music is unique.

The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music

The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
Author: Alison Arnold
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1126
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1351544381

In this volume, sixty-eight of the world's leading authorities explore and describe the wide range of musics of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Nepal and Afghanistan. Important information about history, religion, dance, theater, the visual arts and philosophy as well as their relationship to music is highlighted in seventy-six in-depth articles.

Indian Sun

Indian Sun
Author: Oliver Craske
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 682
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 Life of Music in North India

The Life of Music in North India
Author: Daniel M. Neuman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1990-03-15
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0226575160

Daniel M. Neuman offers an account of North Indian Hindustani music culture and the changing social context of which it is part, as expressed in the thoughts and actions of its professional musicians. Drawing primarily from fieldwork performed in Delhi in 1969-71—from interviewing musicians, learning and performing on the Indian fiddle, and speaking with music connoisseurs—Neuman examines the cultural and social matrix in which Hindustani music is nurtured, listened and attended to, cultivated, and consumed in contemporary India. Through his interpretation of the impact that modern media, educational institutions, and public performances exert on the music and musicians, Neuman highlights the drama of a great musical tradition engaging a changing world, and presents the adaptive strategies its practitioners employ to practice their art. His work has gained the distinction of introducing a new approach to research on Indian music, and appears in this edition with a new preface by the author.

Music in Contemporary Indian Film

Music in Contemporary Indian Film
Author: Jayson Beaster-Jones
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1317399706

Music in Contemporary Indian Film: Memory, Voice, Identity provides a rich and detailed look into the unique dimensions of music in Indian film. Music is at the center of Indian cinema, and India’s film music industry has a far-reaching impact on popular, folk, and classical music across the subcontinent and the South Asian diaspora. In twelve essays written by an international array of scholars, this book explores the social, cultural, and musical aspects of the industry, including both the traditional center of "Bollywood" and regional film-making. Concentrating on films and songs created in contemporary, post-liberalization India, this book will appeal to classes in film studies, media studies, and world music, as well as all fans of Indian films.