Improvisation, Creativity, and Agency in South Indian Temple Rāga Performance

Abstract

This article explores the question of improvisation in the context of South Indian (Tamil) temple nāgasvaram music, with a focus on the genre ālāpana. It shows that improvisation and creativity rarely come into conflict with the conventions of genre, culture, and society and demonstrates—through a dialogic process between the musical analysis of the performance and the insights of the musicians on their own practice—that the emotional effectiveness of a musical phrase depends not only on its idiosyncratic qualities but also on the process that prepares it and the context in which it is enunciated. It challenges most ethnomusicological approaches, in which musical improvisation is thought in terms of models and not as much in terms of creativity and/or agency in the heat of the performance, and calls for a better articulation of explanatory models with emic perceptions and lived experiences.