Excerpt from "Indian Music"

[kvchellappa]

"Ragas have probably originated from four main sources : 1. Local tribal songs ; 2. Poetical creations ; 3. Devotional songs ; 4. Compositions of scientific musicians. Many of these sources may be traced in their names. Bhairavi means 'an ascetic'; Hindol is a swing '; Kanada refers to the Carnatic ; Multanti means ' belonging to the city of Multan'; and Megh means 'the rainy season', and so on.

We can see the same processes of formation going on to-day. Dr. Rabindranath Tagore creates new melodies from the old folk songs of Bengal. Someone finds an old Portuguese melody and puts it into an Indian setting and calls it Portuguese Tappa, as it is modelled on the well-known Hindusthani Tappa form of melody. A famous musician takes an old raga and introduces some unconventional variation, and the result becomes a new raga named after him. Miyan Tan Sen, for example, introduced Ga and both varieties of Ni into the raga Malhar, which omits them as a rule; and the result is the raga Miyan-ki-Malhar.

There are quite a number of varieties of the raga Mallhar by different musicians. Then others combined two or more ragas into a new one. Amir Khusru took Hindol and a Persian melody, Mokam, and formed Yaman. Another takes Saranga, Sindhu and Mokam, and the result is a new raga Ushaq. Or a northern musician comes across a good southern raga, and introduces it in its southern form into the northern music, as Mr. Kirloskar, the Poona dramatist, did with the southern ragas Kambodhi and Arabhi. Southern musicians do the same with the northern ragas, sometimes prefixing the term Desika or Hindusthan, as Hindusthan Bihag, Desika Khamaj and so on. This is a living process which we may watch daily all over India."

[Sreeni Rajarao]

Please provide information about the source from which you are quoting.

Thanks!

[Sreeni Rajarao]

Please provide information about the source from which you are quoting.

Thanks!

[srini_pichumani]

Sreeni,

this seems to be from Herbert Popley's book "The Music of India" published in 1921. You can read it on archive.org at

https://archive.org/stream/musicofindia ... 3/mode/2up

He is confusing in his statement about Persian "mokam"... not sure if he is referring to just some general scale or a particular melody/scale. Also, Persian music usually is referred to with terminology such as dastgahs/gushehs, even though the tonal material underneath is similar to the Arabic/Turkic maqam.

Best regards,
-Srini.

ps: BTW, how does email on rasikas.org work ? I seemed to have sent mails to you, Pasupathy Sir, and others on occasion, but not sure if it ever got to you all.

[Sreeni Rajarao]

Srini,

Thank You!

I have not received any emails from you. So, I have sent an email using the Forum email feature hoping my email will reach you!

Sreeni

[shankarank]

From Chapter 5 : Tala or Time measures

Anyone who studies the Indian prosody ( or is it actually the poetry) can see the great difficulty to say the least of obtaining a pleasurable result from combining Indian Verse with Western tunes. One of the most difficult things for the foreigner to get away from in an Indian vernacular is the stressing of the syllables. The division into words is not at all important in Indian verse, and so the music does not take particular note of this. In India words are more often set to music rather than music to words. It is easy to see then the importance of time-measure in Indian music. The westerner often finds these time measures far more difficult to master than melodies, strange though those often are

So it is the chandas that is the poison pill that preserves the identity of Indian music. Pretty evident from what is the first casualty in the fusion endeavors.

yaSchandasAm RSabhO viSvarUpah. chandObhyOdhyamRtAt sam babhUva. Bull of hymns. So is music older than the melody in sAma vEda?

vazhi maraitirukkudu - mAdu padutirukkudu.

satrE vilagi iRum piLLAi - he is just asking for it to step aside.

nandi mAdu.

Lets not banish the bull - or make a prop or a furniture out of it.

Heard in NPR : The confederates thought a black slave servant in the room where they were discussing crucial battle plans need not be a concern as he was considered a piece of furniture not a human. They were implicated!!