Indian Music and Dance

The notes on the pages which follow are only intended as a general introduction. You are recommended to read more authoritative texts for greater detail.

 

There are two great traditions of music on the Indian sub-continent, North Indian or Hindustani music and South Indian or Carnatic music, with common origins but differing approaches and styles.

 

In his book, 'The Penguin Dictionary of Indian Classical Music', Raghava Menon says

'The Carnatic tradition is based on fully composed musical pieces called krutis which, like the sonata or fugue, have certain well-established structures that fully elaborate the raga in all its emotional and textual remifications.

 

The Hindustani concert on the other hand is based more on the raga than on the original compositions.'

 

In Indian tradition vocal and instrumental music and dance collectively are called Sangeet. The continuing development of Sangeet is probably the world's longest recorded performing arts evolution and its melodic development among the significant in all the world's music. These days the influence of Indian classical music pervades most international 'literate' cultures.

For Hindus music was given to Lord Brahma by the gods and goddesses. The Vedic people, from whom modern Indian culture derives, lived in India from more than thre e thousand years ago. Their civilisation flourished for many centuries. The performing arts were crucial to their religious ceremonies. Vedic Chants were the source of many of the principles and concepts which continue to apply in modern Indian Music. With a vast array of instruments available professional musicians thrived, supported by the ordinary people.

Because Indian society is a collectivist one Indian philosophy regards individual genius less critically than west-centric philosophy. Consequently it has few 'Bachs' or 'Mozarts'. When a classical raga, its most profound musical form, is performed, it is an already partly composed musical piece, possibly first realized by some unnamed musician and progressively refined through the centuries. How ever, because performance is an improvising or creative process, each presentation is in itself an act of creation.

Time is not conceived of as linear in the way it is in west-centric culture which in turn seems almost obsessed, for example, by 'keeping time', not ' wasting time, and by memorised dates. Indian history is less concerned with the date or time of an event than with the consequence. Consequently there is no concern for fixing patterns. An Indian musician may improvise around one theme in a raga for hours. The 'end' comes only when he or she feels that the particular moods have been expanded and expressed satisfactorily. A performance is attended with the realisation that it may end in a relatively short period of time or take many hours. Such a conce pt is alien to Western culture and can be difficult to encompass.

So for Hindus time, manifested in their belief in reincarnation, is cyclical and recursive. On the other hand west-centric time gives every event a beginning and an end. To contemplate anyt hing else is barely within thinking. West-centric art reflects this in novels, poems, plays, operas and songs which all have definite beginnings, developmental sections, and conclusions.

Indian music has no written tradition in the way that west-centric music has. It should not really surprise us that west-centric musicians should feel a need to record their music 'in time', initially by printing it to paper and, in more recent years, recording it on disk and tape. Had we not been preoccupied with time would we have invented recording devices?

Ravi Shankar, among the greatest presenters of Indian music expressed concerns about the recording of his performances saying that his intention was to perform for a particular moment in the living continuum of time.

Musical knowledge of Indian music continues to be passed from one generation of musicians to the next through 'gurus', highly regarded teachers dedicated to the continuance of Indian music in the cosmology of Hinduism. This also applies to an extent to Islamic music in the north. The notion of the 'guru' is very important to any study of Indian Sangeet