The
drama of “East meets West” has a long pedigree, one rooted in tectonic
frictions and overthrusts. But there’s a very personal element, too. For me, it
all hit during one cultural exchange of the 1960s and 1970s. Sure, it’s an old
rap: Sitarist Ravi Shankar and his disciple George Harrison were opening the
Western mind further to the riches of Indian classical music. But I was too
highbrow to pay attention.
           It took an old classmate,
percussionist Bob Becker of Nexus fame, to turn me on to the Indian tradition.
Becker had just gotten out of the US Marine Corps Band, and, with hair and
beard flowing like John Lennon’s (and like my own, soon enough), he immersed
himself in Asian music. I felt his career shift was an antidote for a time
dominated by militarism and war. (None of us realized how long the antidote’s
shelf life would need to be.)
           In any case, the man who already was
a virtuoso of the marimba and xylophone put his skills into the Indian tabla, a pair of small, tunable drums
played with the hands. It was no self-demotion. Indian music’s rhythmic
structures require great concentration and discipline, and Becker always had
plenty of both.
           But the spirit, his and the music’s,
was the thing that moved me.
           It wasn’t a fleeting sensation,
either. I’m still moved when I attend Indian concerts in the Rochester area —
wonderful opportunities that, as you’ll see, are increasing.
The musical
epics that unfolded in Becker’s accompaniments — even then he was playing with
world-class Indian musicians — were a little different from the dramas of
Beethoven string quartets, Schubert songs, etc., that were my universe. Indian
music made a dramatic impact on me for sure, but the effect was less episodic,
more cumulative, more unnerving in some way.
           A typical Indian composition is
highly improvisatory, though its building blocks of melody and rhythm are
highly systematized. But somehow these demanding compositions that can last an
hour or more are also consolations.
Here I’m thinking not of Lisztian piano pieces but of Boethius, for whom
philosophy was the ultimate consolation, and musica an ethereal “harmony of the spheres.” Indian music is
grounded in texts written before Boethius lived (6th century C.E.), and I’d
like to think the old Roman would have been as good a listener as he was a
thinker.
           In the real world, Indian music has
been making journeys to Western culture for a long time, since well before the
Beatles, even before Ravi Shankar’s 1950s exchanges with the cosmopolitan
violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin. But it’s really making a second or third home
in the United States today. Look in the record catalogs or at the CD shop, in
the “world music” bin. Then recall that master sitar player Ravi Shankar won a
Grammy this year.
           Yet many listeners still find Indian
music mysterious or alienating. Robert Morris, head of the Eastman School of
Music’s composition department and an ardent fan of Indian music, tells of a
conversation he overheard in an elevator the day after an Indian concert at the
school: Two string department people were doing some Monday-morning
quarterbacking. “What did you think of the concert last night,” said one. “It’s
like cats meowing over a C-sharp,” said the other. (Morris adds, though, that
Ravi Shankar and the equally esteemed Ali Akbar Khan filled the Eastman Theatre
on separate occasions.)
           But what makes Indian music work —
and makes it please or offend Western ears?
           First, the Indian tradition rests on
an impressive armory of musical instruments. The tabla and the large, lute-like sitar are pretty familiar anywhere. But there’s also the sarod, another lute-like solo instrument favored by Ali Akbar Khan.
Indian ensembles, which generally have only a few players, rely heavily on the tambura, an unfretted string instrument
that supplies a drone or harmonic backdrop.
           There are also wind instruments like
the shanai, a double reed (compare
the oboe) with a piercing, haunting sound; you’ve got to hear players like the
famed Bismillah Khan to appreciate what this once-lowly instrument can do.
There are flutes, too, that can do amazing things with the breath of stars like
Hariprasad Chaurasia.
           The human voice is also at center
stage; singers like the famed Bimsen Joshi have rivaled the speed, flexibility,
and range of any melodic instrument. And surprise: The Western violin is big in
south India, where it was brought by Portuguese colonizers centuries ago; one
leading violinist is the much-recorded L. Subramaniam, who’s played in
Rochester.
           Indian classical music lives through
two grand traditions, Hindustani and Carnatic. Hindustani music comes from a
multi-ethnic, multi-religious territory across north India and neighboring
lands. Carnatic music, by contrast, is hailed or criticized as being “purer,”
through association with a geography less impacted by change. But that, too, is
debatable: South India and Carnatic music alike were heavily influenced by the
Portuguese.
           As you’d expect, the two traditions
come with enough technical details to fill a library. But basically, they both
rest on music’s inescapable foundations: what goes on “horizontally” (that is,
melody and rhythm) and “vertically” (harmony and its alter ego, dissonance).
           To check out the horizontal, you
can’t do better than look at a phenomenon whose name has entered the English
language, among many others: raga. On
one level, a raga is a kind of scale
— notes ascending and descending. But on another level, it’s a mode with a certain character and
emotive power. Compare our “major” and “minor” modes, the first loosely
expressing happiness and the latter, sadness. The raga repertoire, which is
huge, has these two modes/characters, plus many gradations.
           However you construe them, the
scalar patterns in Indian music have more flexibility than what Westerners can
easily comprehend. Think of a piano keyboard, each octave of which has 12 fixed
notes. The Indian octave, though, is said to have 22 notes, counting fixed
pitches and some extras that are interpolated. The higher total may reflect
some numerical sleight-of-hand. But there’s a real musical practice behind it:
Indian musicians sharpen or flatten notes for effect, producing a range of
“microtones” that traditional Western performers — especially those who play
“fixed pitch” instruments like the piano or organ — can only dream of.
           But the meaning of all this
transcends technique and arithmetic. A raga
derives spiritual and emotional meaning from its notes and intervals. There
are many dozens of ragas (but not scores — forgive the wordplay — since ragas as performed are not written down). And so the meanings multiply infinitely:
Each raga is taken to illuminate a spiritual state, mood, season, and time of
day. An illustration: According to an essay by Nasreen Rehman on shanai player
Bismillah Kahn, the raga Bhimpalasi is for the late afternoon, is “pensive” in mood, and evokes “wandering,”
separation, and reunion.
           Indian compositions often start with
a long, slow, rhythmically free section. Then comes a long, fast section with a
strong and steady beat.
           You hear the term tala almost as often as you do raga. Tala is a general term for rhythmic patterns and cycles. Sometimes the
rhythmic framework of Indian music is regular and predictable; take teental, which has 16 beats in four
units, like the Western “4/4” meter. But there can be odd-number totals, as
well, a fact that makes things harder for the unpracticed ear to follow. Yes,
there’s no doubt that, to mix some metaphors, Indian rhythms keep your ears on
your toes. But don’t worry. Lose yourself in the musical progressions,
remembering that everything’s rooted in instinctive physical movement. By the
way, Ravi Shankar started as a dancer.
           Now to hazard the impossible
question: What does Indian classical music sound like? Never mind that business about “meowing” and its cousin among insults,
“chicken scratching.” The first thing to affirm is that Indian music sounds
beautiful beyond words.
           Still, a technical phrase can help.
Eastman School of Music ethnomusicologist Ellen Koskoff uses the descriptor
“drone polyphony.” Think of a bagpipe: endlessly sustained low notes (the
drone) that undergird a high-pitched tune (make that more than one tune
simultaneously, and you’ve got “polyphony”). Then imagine a typical Indian
ensemble: The tambura supplies the drone. And a sitarist or shanai player adds
a flowing melody above, or melodies, if both instruments play simultaneously.
           Last, there’s one element that bears
repetition: repetition. “People should understand that the music is cyclical,
it keeps repeating,” says Koskoff. Indeed, the music is blessedly obsessive;
and this, like a heartbeat or the unforced breath, makes it more accessible and
universal: Like a high-church litany or lowdown rock beat, Indian music
insistently grabs and holds the spirit.
Only a few
weeks ago,
Eastman’s World Music Series presented sitarist Kartik Seshadri in Kilbourn
Hall. The series offers a range of global musics every year, among which the
Indian tradition is well represented. Seshadri’s performance was stunning;
Kilbourn was not quite filled, though; the empty seats represented lost
opportunities to hear Indian music as good as it gets.
           But more local opportunities for
Indian music are coming up at the India Community Center, located in Perinton
on the Monroe-Wayne county line. The ICC, as its members call it, is growing in
other ways, too.
           Henrietta resident Shruti Date (said
DAH-tay) is the ICC’s education and social events coordinator. She says the
center hosts eight concerts per year in its own 250-seat hall. Four concerts
are Hindustani and four are Carnatic, she says. At this writing, the rest of
this year’s schedule has not been released.
           Date is not a musician herself, but
she’s committed to Indian musical culture and to its transmission. “The kids,”
she says, “especially want to go to the concerts and understand the role the
music plays in Mom and Dad’s lives. They want to know, is there a teacher who
can teach it to us?”
           But Date has her own stake. “When
you listen to the music,” she says, “it touches your heart as you start the
day, a spiritual touch that gives you peace of mind, eternal satisfaction; it
takes you away from all the things going on in this materialistic world.” She
adds that the “same kind of feeling” can arise when she listens to Western
classical music. But she says Indian music “takes you to a kind of peace.” She
says Western music is different — more “energetic.”
           In two senses, the spiritual peace
Date describes is non-sectarian. Indian classical music “has nothing to do with
religion or language,” she says. Rather, she says, the tradition brings Hindus,
Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs together, and it unites Indians, Pakistanis, and
other groups across national boundaries. She says, though, that most of the
capacity audiences at ICC concerts are Indians.
           S. Kumar, a South Indian by birth
and an RIT mathematics teacher by trade, is another Rochesterian deeply
involved in the local musical scene. (Like L. Subramaniam and other South
Indians, Kumar uses a first initial only; he explains it stands for a paternal
name.) Kumar says he’s only an amateur who plays tabla with Carnatic folk song
ensembles. “I just play for the fun of it,” he says.
           Kumar does acknowledge that Indian
music’s structures are related to mathematics. “But that is certainly not why I
love the music,” he says. “I listen pretty much every day. Most of my interest
comes from listening.” He also enjoys shepherding some of the ICC’s visiting
artists around town. Who are Kumar’s own favorite performers? He mentions the
vocalist Srinivasa Iyer, a monument of the Carnatic tradition at age 90-plus.
           Now in his late 40s, Kumar is
pleased his two middle-school-age daughters are studying the vina, an analogue of the sitar. He says the girls are studying
violin at school, as well.
           In the Carnatic tradition, says
Kumar, “most of the compositions are religious.” The vocalists, he says, “sing
in praise of deities.”
           With this point, is Kumar
contradicting Date? Not really. “One doesn’t have to be religious to appreciate
the music,” though it may help, he says.
The ICC’s
musical activities, says Shruti Date, are inwardly focused. “We’re not
advertising locally,” she says.
           “If we did,” she says, “there would
be no room; we’re just keeping it to the members… but we have some non-Indian
members who joined [primarily] for the music.” In any case, she says, the ICC
may expand its offerings and widen its audience, especially for fundraising.
           S. Kumar refers to one sign of
growth. Next year, he says, the ICC will be using its newly christened cabins
for a youth music camp.
           These and other local developments
are the microcosm of what’s happening on the global stage between Indian and Western
music. And the process of mutual enrichment has been going on a long time
already, with stylistic fusion in the forefront.
           Take L. Subramaniam’s concept of
“neo-fusion,” as he himself calls it. In the 1980s, Subramaniam collaborated
with jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, for example. Subramaniam also has taken
up the electric violin. He’s got a “Spanish Wave” CD on the market, too, done
not only with Western musicians but with Alla Rakha, the late tabla virtuoso. Alla Rakha was known for
his work with Ravi Shankar and many other musicians, and for his efforts to
bridge the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions.
           Western musicians are building
bridges, too. The Eastman School’s Robert Morris says some composers are imbued
in Indian and Asian styles. He mentions some of his own compositions from the
1970s, like Varnum, for melody
instruments, drone, and percussion. Many avant-garde techniques, he says, “are
actually traditional in other musics.”
           Indeed, some Western composers have
taken a page from Indian music’s “microtonal” qualities and other features.
More often, as Morris says, composers internalize the Indian aesthetic. But
whatever they adopt or emulate, Indian-influenced Western composers aren’t a
new breed. Established masters like Albert Roussel, Olivier Messiaen, and John
Cage were part of this movement. The aging Philip Glass has made his mark in
this arena, too.
           And speaking of minimalists: The New
York City-based MELA Foundation boosts the work of the late Pandit Pran Nath.
MELA performances also feature works by Idaho-born minimalist La Monte Young
and the well-known Terry Riley.The famed Kronos Quartet — which like
Nexus is a great assimilator — has a working relationship with this
supranational group of musicians.
Early this
year,
Ravi Shankar took home a Grammy award for his CD Full Circle. The CD immortalizes a Carnegie Hall performance.
           A Grammy is no small thing in the
music biz. But in this case, the award might be taken as another sort of
affirmation. Indian music is hitting the heights in a global musical culture.
           (“Globalized,” as well.
Ethnomusicologist Koskoff decries the export of “commercialism” to Asia and
elsewhere. “I am often confused and dismayed how Western music controls
things,” she says.)
           But Indian music is also rounding
home, as anyone can hear occasionally in venues like Kilbourn Hall and the ICC.
           For
upcoming ICC concerts, go to the center’s website, www.icor.org.
n
This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2002.
