The Madras Quartet
Author: Indira Menon
Publisher:
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13:
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The Madras Quartet
Author: Indira Menon
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 196
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSocial attitudes and an attempt to view the contribution of women music makers who represent Karnatak tradition.
This Thing Called Music
Author: Victoria Lindsay Levine
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2015-05-21
Total Pages: 537
ISBN-13: 1442242086
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe most fundamental subject of music scholarship provides the common focus of this volume of essays: music itself. For the distinguished scholars from the field of musicology and related areas of the humanities and social sciences, the search for music itself—in its vastly complex and diverse forms throughout the world—characterizes the lifetime of reflection and writing by Bruno Nettl, the leading ethnomusicologist of the past generation. This Thing Called Music: Essays in Honor of Bruno Nettl salutes not only a great scholar and beloved teacher, but also a thinker whose search for the meaning and ontology of music has exerted a global influence. Editors Victoria Lindsay Levine and Philip V. Bohlman have gathered essays that represent the many dimensions of musical meaning, addressing some of the most critically important areas of music scholarship today. The social formations of musical communities play counterpoint to analytical studies; investigations into musical change and survival connect ethnography to history, offering a collection of essays that can serve as an invaluable resource for the intellectual history of ethnomusicology. Each chapter explores music and its meanings in specific geographic areas—North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East—crossing the boundaries of genre, repertory, and style to provide insight into the aesthetic zones of contact between and among the folk, classical, and popular musics of the world. Readers from all disciplines of music scholarship will find in this collection a proper companion in an era of globalization, when the connections that draw musicians and musical practices together are more sweeping than ever. Chapters offer models for detailed analysis of specific musical practices, while at the same time they make possible new methods of comparative study in the twenty-first century, together posing a challenge crucial to all musicians and scholars in search of “this thing called music.”
Historical Dictionary of the Tamils
Author: Vijaya Ramaswamy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2017-08-25
Total Pages: 519
ISBN-13: 1538106868
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Tamils have an unbroken history of more than two thousand years. Tamil, the language they speak, is one of the oldest living languages in the world. The only people comparable to the Tamils in terms of their hoary past and vibrant present would be the Jews with one marked difference. The Tamils have always had their homeland 'Tamilaham' (alternately pronounced and spelt 'Tamizhaham') known today as Tamil Nadu which to them represents their mother and is revered by them as 'Tamizh Tai' literally ‘Tamil Mother’. This is in striking contrast to the Jews who have been through a long and arduous struggle to gain their homeland, a deeply contested site to this day with Hebrewisation of Israel being a key marker of Jewish identity in the region. Tamils, by contrast have a clear numerical majority in the region that now comprises Tamil Nadu and the language unites rather than divides adherents of different faiths. The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Tamils contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Tamils.
Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern
Author: Amanda J. Weidman
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2006-07-18
Total Pages: 367
ISBN-13: 0822388057
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhile Karnatic music, a form of Indian music based on the melodic principle of raga and time cycles called tala, is known today as South India’s classical music, its status as “classical” is an early-twentieth-century construct, one that emerged in the crucible of colonial modernity, nationalist ideology, and South Indian regional politics. As Amanda J. Weidman demonstrates, in order for Karnatic music to be considered classical music, it needed to be modeled on Western classical music, with its system of notation, composers, compositions, conservatories, and concerts. At the same time, it needed to remain distinctively Indian. Weidman argues that these contradictory imperatives led to the emergence of a particular “politics of voice,” in which the voice came to stand for authenticity and Indianness. Combining ethnographic observation derived from her experience as a student and performer of South Indian music with close readings of archival materials, Weidman traces the emergence of this politics of voice through compelling analyses of the relationship between vocal sound and instrumental imitation, conventions of performance and staging, the status of women as performers, debates about language and music, and the relationship between oral tradition and technologies of printing and sound reproduction. Through her sustained exploration of the way “voice” is elaborated as a trope of modern subjectivity, national identity, and cultural authenticity, Weidman provides a model for thinking about the voice in anthropological and historical terms. In so doing, she shows that modernity is characterized as much by particular ideas about orality, aurality, and the voice as it is by regimes of visuality.
New Mansions For Music
Author: Lakshmi Subramanian
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-08-10
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 1351383124
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe essays in New Mansions for Music: Performance, Pedagogy and Criticism look at one of the most ancient and rigorous classical musical traditions of India, the Karnatik music system, and the kind of changes it underwent once it was relocated from traditional spaces of temples and salons to the public domain. Nineteenth-century Madras led the way in the transformation that Karnatik music underwent as it encountered the forces of modernization and standardization. This study also contributes to our understanding of the experience of modernity in India through the prism of music. The role of Madras city as patron and custodian of the performing arts, especially classical music offers an invaluable perspective on the larger processes of modernization in India. As the title suggests, the areas of classical music, which were most influenced by these developments were pedagogy or modes of musical transmission, performance conventions and criticism or music appreciation. Once the urban elite demanded the widening of the teaching of classical music, traditional modes of music instruction underwent a major change involving a breakdown of the gurushishya parampara or the tradition wherein the teacher imparted knowledge to a chosen few. Caste and kinship were important determining factors for the selection of these shishyas or students, but in modern institutions like the universities these boundaries had to be demolished. Simultaneously, the public staging of music brought the performer into a new relationship with his audience, especially as the art form became subject to validation and criticism by the newly emerging music critic. In an immensely readable book peppered with anecdotes and conversations with leading musicians and critics of the day, as well as humorous visual representations, part caricature, part satirical, the author describes a rapidly changing society and its new look in early twentieth century Madras.
Carnatic & Western Music
Author: V.S. Narasimhan
Publisher: Notion Press
Published: 2024-02-15
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“I too have a dream”, says V.S. Narasimhan, author of this book. Someday the sound of St. Thyagaraja’s compositions should be heard in places like Carnegie Hall! It is my desire and vision that cello should become a prominent instrument of Carnatic music both as solo and accompanying instrument just as the violin is. The grandeur of the tone of a cello in Carnatic music is something I hear in my head. Similarly bass players could incorporate Carnatic music ornamentation techniques. Viola should also become a featured component of Carnatic music as a solo and as accompaniment. If these instruments which cover a wide range of frequencies get into the hands of skillful artists, the result would be a novel symphonic style of arrangement that would gain a broader international audience and would be a transformative event bringing new dimensions to Carnatic music. What I hear in these tracks is the voice on the other side of the world, seemingly divergent yet at the same time oddly familiar, using the same classic instrumentation to provide yet another compelling new musical paradigm in the continuing evolution of the string quartet form. One can only wonder what Papa Haydn would have thought if somehow by a miracle of time travel he were to hear this music!…Grammy award winner, David Balakrishnan, Founder/ Member of Turtle Island String Quartet: Together, the musicians of the Madras String Quartet played authentic, grace oriented Carnatic music, setting off its beauty against the harmonic richness of the Western classical idiom. It was beautiful. Bangalore Mirror, March 1, 2010 A Capella twist to Thyagaraja kriti “Brova Bharamma” gets a new sound, thanks to ace violinist V. S. Narasimhan The Hindu, Chennai, Friday, July 22, 2016
From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy
Author: Lakshmi Subramanian
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2006-03-02
Total Pages: 216
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"In moving from the quiet courtyards of Tanjore to the concert halls of Madras, the social context of music and performance underwent a striking transformation. Traditional music was also used in the freedom movement as an emblem of India's uniqueness and independent identity. Departing from conventional scholarship on the subject, Lakshmi Subramnian presents a distinctive account of the making of a modern classical tradition." "Subramanian traces the changes in traditional music in south India as it adapted to the necessities of colonial and postcolonial social realities. Her engaging narrative of the production of knowledge about music and the related institution- building process raise larger questions of identify and imagination. She also discusses the influence of nationalism in the creation of an auditory habit."--BOOK JACKET.
Unfinished Gestures
Author: Davesh Soneji
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2012-01-15
Total Pages: 329
ISBN-13: 0226768090
DOWNLOAD EBOOK'Unfinished Gestures' presents the social and cultural history of courtesans in South India, focusing on their encounters with colonial modernity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Theorizing the Local
Author: Richard K. Wolf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-10-22
Total Pages: 344
ISBN-13: 0195331370
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOver the past four decades, the "globalized" aspects of cultural circulation have received the majority of scholarly-and consumer-attention, particularly in the study of South Asian music. As a result, a broad range of community-based and other locally focused performance traditions in the regions of South Asia have remained relatively unexplored. Theorizing the Local provides a challenging and compelling counterperspective to the "globalized," arguing for the value of comparative microstudies that are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital and neoliberal politics. What does it mean for musical activities to be local in an increasingly interconnected world? To what extent can theoretical activity be localized to the very acts of making music, interacting, and composing? Theorizing the Local offers glimpses into rich musical worlds of south and west Asia, worlds which have never before been presented in a single volume. The authors cross the traditional borders of scholarship and region, exploring in unmatched detail a vast array of musical practices and significant ethnographic discoveries-from Nepal to India, India to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Iran. Enriched by audio and video tracks on an extensive companion Web site, Theorizing the Local is an important study of South Asian musical traditions that offers a broader understanding of 21st-century music of the world.
