The author explores a novel approach to facilitate an easy understanding of the Hindustani tradition of classical music following in the footsteps of Amarkosh (1000A.D.)-probably the first thesaurus in the world.
The strategy involves organizing the conceptual and the terminological material thematically. Three main themes and eight sections together identify and explain approximately two hundred and fifty terms and concepts fundamental to a deeper, intensive appreciation of Hindustani art music. The book contains 19 illustrations.
The first part of the work consists of thematic groupings and the explanations, while the second is devoted to a detailed index.
Principal meaning, derivation, historical background and the contemporary usage are kept in view in discussing the terms and concepts. The focus is on the contemporary performing tradition.
The book will appeal to a wide and varied readership- concert-goers, serious students of music and those who wish to understand music in a cultural setting.
Sangeetacharya Ashok Da. Ranade (1937- 2011) was an internationally renowned vocalist (Hindustani Classical), composer, musicologist, ethnomusicologist, voice- culturist and a teacher with degrees in literature, law and music. He was the author of a number of authoritative books on Hindustani music and ethnomusicology.
I learnt Hindustani vocal classical music in the well-known guru- shishya tradition. Hence I never asked questions but absorbed in- numerable insights which gradually fell into a well-knit pattern during a period of about twenty years. In a performance-oriented tradition this was but natural.
The training convinced me that theory and practice of music cohere better when performers themselves theorize. It soon became clear that the so-called 'illiterate' performers have been theorizing all through the centuries, both verbally and non-verbally! They theorized and per- formed almost simultaneously. In the final analysis, relationship of all performing arts to other life ensured that a majority of theorizations became verbalized to form a scholastic tradition.
Thus was created a majestic edifice of concepts and terms that echoes the life of music to a great extent. To understand these is to map the musical heavens!
To bring together themes, concepts and terms led inevitably to the Amarkosha-format. The original plan envisaged including sections on music education and scholarship, folk and primitive music, popular music and music and culture.
I hope to do so in the near future.
Today Indian Music has won a place of pride in the global musical heritage Hindustani classical music and its vocal stream have been major influences in creating the larger Indian musical tradition. Music being a performing art, lives in performance. These performances are obviously realized through performing ideas and their exploration by artists concerned. The identification of performing ideas provide the prime clue to the qualitative forces in any artist's work. Dr. Ranade has attempted to identify and analyze 19 major performers' performing ideas as they became accessible to him in mehfil-s, recordings or teaching sessions. Four other musicians are also briefly discussed. These music-makers and of course others not discussed here-have lit the 20th century, i. e, our immediate and adjacent living past. Hence the special contemporary quality of their work. They belong to different gharana-s and language-regions and the variety of their approaches is a challenge as well as delight.
Sangeetacharya Ashok Da. Ranade (1937-2011) was an internationally renowned vocalist (Hindustani Classical). composer, musicologist, enthnomusicologist, voice-culturist and a teacher with degrees in literature, law and music. He was the author of a number of authoritative books on Hindustani music and enthnomusicology.
THIS is an unusual book. It shows a lifetime of intimacy with not only the tone and timbre of music, its pitch and resonance, its inner depths and outer ramifications; it also shows an unusual mastery of related disciplines and areas: literature, art, cinema, the radio... It's really a sociological treatise, an indepth study of the Oral Tradition, the keertana philosophy, its sound and sweetness, how it holds people together and causes an spiritual upliftment... a popularization of music so that it becomes an integral part of the life of the community.
Divided into two parts-the first dealing with theoretical, historical, conceptual issues, the second, a practical commentary on the major exponents of prominent khayal gharanas, the book is really more than a mere analysis of music and musicians. It's a classic... a thought structure of high relevance by a vocalist whose intimacy with the performing tradition matches his depth of scholastic insight.
Classical music is and has been the author's life breath: in this volume, he has sought out its origins and worked on its techniques, instruments and implications in a manner that appears at once so natural and at the same time so deep... readers are made to feel at home as if music is or should be a normal ingredient of life: that is an unusual achievement.
...it's a treat to see the author's familiarity with the empire of music: his selection of six major vocalists of Hindustani music. Ramkrishnabuwa Vaze through Abdul Karim Khan, Faiyaz Hussain Khan, Kesarbai Kerkar, Omkarnath Thakur, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan: their various gharanas... This is done with extraordinary finesse and sophistication; and they come alive.
It's more than a book on music. Its potential with regard to developing the radio and the cinema and the connected areas, its unfoldment of the potentiality of the oral tradition with regard to, for example, the liquidation of illiteracy, social reform, family planning, show what an inter-disciplinary approach can achieve.
The book is elevating in the sense that the country censured for centuries for mass illiteracy can feel a sense of relief and upliftment that a people who can produce a whole galaxy of saint-poets, singing their way through life and suffusing the community with music at the ground level: how can such a community be called illiterate? Professor Ranade has really given us a fascinating study in cultural dynamics.
Sangeetacharya Ashok Da. Ranade (1937-2011) was an internationally renowned vocalist (Hindustani Classical), composer, musicologist, ethnomusicologist, voice-culturist and a teacher with degrees in literature, law and music. He was the author of a number of authoritative books on Hindustani music and ethnomusicology.
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