Indian Music Research Articles

A Study on Moderate Expression and Westernization of Indian Music

문화와 음악의 전지구화 현상 속에서 인도의 음악 또한 영향권에 진입하였다. 영화음악으로 점유되고 있는 현대의 인도음악 양식은 서구적 관점으로 해석해도 큰 무리가 없는 형식으로 변모하였다. 신시사이저를 바탕으로 한 팝 음악 풍미를 느낄 수 있는 사운드 구성과 BPM으로 계산 가능한 규칙적인 템포 등이 변화의 중심이 되었다. 화성이 단순하고, 선법적으로 강한 색채를 드러내며, 독특한 선율 전개를 통해 그나마도 전통성을 유지하였었던 형태도 이제는 위태롭다. 본 논문에서는 전통적으로 인도음악 선율이 지니는 특징을 탐구해보고, 그러한 선율들이 현대의 음악 속에서 어떠한 형식으로 서구화가 진행되었는지 살펴보고, 나아가 선율의 서구화가 지니는 함의를 고찰해보고자 한다. 분석을 위한 작품으로는 21세기 전후에 인도의 모차르트라 불리는 음악감독 A. R. 라만 작품 중에서 “루카 추피(Luka Chuppi)”, “카리예 나(Kariye na)”, “테레 빈나(Tere Bina)”를 선정하였으며, 이에 표현된 절제된 미분음을 통한 세계성과 사르감 가창을 통한 전통성의 혼용이 시사하는 바를 드러내고자 한다.In the globalization of culture and music, Indian music has also entered into influence. Contemporary Indian music style, which is occupied by film music, has been transformed into a form that does not seem to be large enough even if it is interpreted from a Western point of view. The composition of the sound that can feel the western pop music flavor based on synthesizer and the regular tempo that can be calculated by BPM became the center of change. It is now at stake for harmony to maintain simple, preconceived colors, and maintain its traditional style through unique melody development. In this research, we will explored the characteristics of Indian music melodies traditionally then examine how these melodies westernize within contemporary music, including the implications of westernization of melody. The works for analysis include “Luka Chuppi”, “Kariye na” and “Tere Bina” among the A. R. Rahman works of music director ‘Mozart’, India, before and after the 21st century. Also, this dissertation is shown the implication of the mixture of the world through the tempered differential sound expressed in this way and the traditionality through the sargam singing.

Heartbeat, Warble, and the Electric Powwow: American Indian Music. CraigHarris. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. 267 pp. $24.95 paperback

Heartbeat, Warble, and the Electric Powwow: American Indian Music. CraigHarris. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. 267 pp. $24.95 paperback

Raga Identification Using MFCC and Chroma features

Ragas are the heart of Indian classical music. Raga is one of the basic concepts in Indian music. Raga plays an important role in Indian classical music. It is a collection of swaras comprising of many features and is explained as melodic concept which is led to blossom by the musical artist. We have performed this approach on 3 ragas- Darbari, Khamaj, and Malhar. In this work, we propose a methodology to identify the ragas of an Indian music signal. This has several interesting applications in digital music indexing, recommendation and retrieval. In this work, we attempt the raga classification problem in a non-linear SVM (support vector machine) framework using a combination of two relevant features that represent the similarities of a music signal using two different features MFCC (Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient) and Chromagram. We assesses the proposed method on our own raga dataset achieve an improvement of 96.79% in accuracy by combining the information from two features relevant to Indian music.

An Investigation of User Comments on Facebook Pages of Trinidad and Tobago’s Indian Music Format Radio Stations

Starting in the 1990s, the Caribbean two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago witnessed the establishment of several Indian-music format radio stations, most of which now stream their content on the World Wide Web or otherwise make their content available beyond the range of their terrestrial radio transmitters. The convergence of traditional terrestrial radio with audio streaming technology combined with the spread of high speed broadband connections has expanded the audience of a typical radio station from a few kilometers to a globally dispersed set of listeners who often include those physically displaced from their native cultural programming. The present investigation examines the Facebook comments of domestic and foreign listeners to Indian-music format radio stations from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

Music: The Journey from Neural Entertainment to Therapy

Music has been intricately linked to humanity since times immemorial. Initially believed to be a pleasurable activity, there has been a paradigm shift in understanding of this mysterious entity. During ancient times music was thought to enhance ones physical, mental, spiritual and social health. This applied also to unborn child as is evident in the garbhasanskaras from ancient Indian texts. Last decade has witnessed fierce research in providing objective validation of this age old myth. Researchers have concluded that in addition to providing neural entertainment, music also has restorative and healing powers. So impressive are the results that a new branch of therapeutics has emerged called Neurologic Music Therapy. Reviewing the current body of evidence, an attempt has been made to get to the origin of music and trace its evolution and entry into therapeutics from the perspective of Neurosciences. In spite of scientifically tempered enthusiasm and technological back up there are many questions which remain unanswered. The Indian Music Industry which is currently worth 10 Billion Rupees is set to double its revenues by 2019. Why “The Gangham style” from Korea or the “Kolaveri di” from India goes on to have millions of “likes” worldwide, remains a mystery. Precise localization of the neural substrate of music at anatomical, physiological and molecular level still remains unclear. Neuroscience seems to be poised to unravel the mystery of music. Only time will tell whether sound will become music or vice versa.

Incidental Learning of Melodic Structure of North Indian Music.

Musical knowledge is largely implicit. It is acquired without awareness of its complex rules, through interaction with a large number of samples during musical enculturation. Whereas several studies explored implicit learning of mostly abstract and less ecologically valid features of Western music, very little work has been done with respect to ecologically valid stimuli as well as non-Western music. The present study investigated implicit learning of modal melodic features in North Indian classical music in a realistic and ecologically valid way. It employed a cross-grammar design, using melodic materials from two modes (rāgas) that use the same scale. Findings indicated that Western participants unfamiliar with Indian music incidentally learned to identify distinctive features of each mode. Confidence ratings suggest that participants' performance was consistently correlated with confidence, indicating that they became aware of whether they were right in their responses; that is, they possessed explicit judgment knowledge. Altogether our findings show incidental learning in a realistic ecologically valid context during only a very short exposure, they provide evidence that incidental learning constitutes a powerful mechanism that plays a fundamental role in musical acquisition.

A Study on Feature Selection and Classification Techniques of Indian Music

In this paper we present the effect of four feature selection algorithms namely genetic algorithm, Forward feature selection, information gain and correlation based on four different classifiers (Decision tree C4.5, K-Nearest neighbors, neural network and support vector machine). The feature sets used in this paper are extracted features from the preprocessed songs using MIR Toolbox in MATLAB, which encompass rhythm based, timbre based, pitch based, tonality based and dynamic features. Feature vectors are extracted from music segments from first 30 seconds and last thirty seconds of the music signal (time-decomposition). Experiments were carried out on the three dominant genres of Indian music: Carnatic, Hindustani and Bollywood. Our dataset is small with 290 songs, trimmed to extract the first and the last 30 second percepts. As pure Carnatic and Hindustani music being more prevalent in traditional settings, have limited work done to make their digital copies available but the collection of music we have used consists of songs of some of the most profound singers contributing to each of these genres. For high-dimensional feature sets, the feature selection provides a compact but discriminative feature subset which has an interesting trade-off between classification accuracy and computational effort. The experimental results have shown that the common features selected by each of the feature selection algorithms with respect to classifiers and percentage of classification accuracies for all the classification algorithms. Furthermore, it can be observed from our experiment that information gain based feature selection gives better and consistent accuracies than other feature selection algorithms and Neural network and SVM classifiers are the best suited classifiers for Indian Song dataset.

Indian Musical Instruments Recognition Using LPC and LPI

Most Significant Music Industry is today widely supported by Research in the area of Musical information Processing. In the past decade the growth of Digital Music over internet and our day-to-day life has forced researcher to explorethe diverse area of Musical Instrument Identification, Retrieval, Classification and Recognition of large sets of music. In our paper we have explored the ignored area of Indian Musical Instrument Recognition (IMIR) and attempted to build the database for the same. An innovative technique to classify the IMIR using the Modified Linear Predictor Coefficient (LPC) features and Log-Power-Intensity (LPI) is discussed. The proposed method has been tested with experimental results and technique has an accuracy of 96.11% for instrument and 92.45 for individual sound.

Structural Levels in South Indian Music

In the present study, I propose a theory of structural levels in Karnatak music, the classical music of South India. In the characteristic patterns of melodic ornamentation and phrase construction that contribute to the identity of a raga, as well as in formal approaches to composition and improvisation, Karnatak musical practice involves sophisticated elaborations of simple voice-leading strands that themselves elaborate a normative background structure. My theory draws on precedents in Indian musical scholarship, firsthand accounts of practitioners, and close analysis of performances (including those of T. M. Krishna, Bombay Jayashree, Lalgudi Jayaraman, Ranganayaki Rajagopalan, and Karaikudi S. Subramanian) and compositions (including those by Tyagaraja, Muthuswamy Dikshitar, and Papanasam Sivan).

Archive of Indian Music

Archive of Indian Music

Indian Musical Instrument Recognition using Modified LPC Features

Indian Classical Music is considered very diverse and distinct area of music across the globe. It has its indistinct melodies especially made up of unique musical instruments. It uses a wide variety of Musical Instruments to achieve this feat. In last two decades, researchers are actively associated with human perception towards the study of Musical Instruments. In this paper, we have proposed an innovative method to classify the Indian Musical Instrument Recognition (IMIR) technique using the Modified Linear Predictor Coefficient (LPC) features. The Classification algorithm has adopted Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). The proposed method has been tested with nine kinds of musical instruments. The research project involved the identification of musical sounds with experimental results using the present technique which has an accuracy of 93.04%. General Terms Indian Musical Instrument Recognition (IMIR), Linear Predictor Coefficient (LPC), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Best First Decision Tree, Temporal Features, Spectral Features, Monophonic, Polyphonic audio signal.

The Intermediate Sphere in North Indian Music Culture: Between and Beyond “Folk” and “Classical”

Abstract Abstract. If in discourse about traditional music in North India, the notions of “folk” and “classical” continue to be widely used, in this essay I posit the existence of an “intermediate sphere,” comprising a heterogeneous set of traditional music genres that, in different ways, shares features with both folk and classical realms. I suggest five categories in this socio-musical stratum and provide brief glimpses of some of their constituents and distinguishing features, including the distinctive sorts of theory they embody and elite patronage that sustains them. I conclude with observations about historical changes in the status of this sphere in general.

INNOVATIVE RECIPROCITY IN INDIAN AND WESTERN MUSIC

At present, increasing steps of innovation are being reflected in almost every field globally. Innovative experiments are being done in the field of music, due to which various concepts related to music are giving a living momentum.There was also a time when the distinction between Indian and Western music was said to be that the listeners of Indian music shook the heads of the listeners while the westerners heard the feet of the listeners. The same belief is still prevalent among the well-known siblings of music. But from the point of view of joint creativity, it gets its own opinion. The innovations in music have also knocked on the minds of traditional listeners, consequently, innovation has awakened the reciprocal sensation of the mutual audience of music towards the modern form of music.
 वर्तमान समय में वैश्विक स्तर पर प्रायः हर क्षेत्र में नवाचार के बढ़ते कदम परिलक्षित हो रहे हैं। संगीत के क्षेत्र में नवाचार को लेकर नवीन प्रयोग हो रहे हैं, जिससे संगीत विषयक विभिन्न धारणाओं को जीवन्त गति मिल रही है।एक समय ऐसा भी था कि जब भारतीय और पाश्चात्य संगीत के मध्य भेद को लेकर कहा जाता था कि भारतीय संगीत को सुनने वाले श्रोताओं के सिर हिला करते हैं जबकि पाश्चात्य संगीत को सुनने वालों के पैर हिला करते हैं। संगीत के पारखी सुधीजनों के बीच आज भी यही मान्यता स्थिर है। लेकिन प्रयोग की दृष्टि से संयुक्त सृजनात्मकता अपनी बात को मनवा ही लेती है। संगीत में आये नवाचार ने भी पारम्परिक श्रोताओं के मस्तिष्क पर दस्तकें दी हैं, फलस्वरूप नवाचार के कारण संगीत के आधुनिक स्वरूप के प्रति भी संगीत के पारस्परिक श्रोताओं का रागात्मक संवेदन जागा है।99

Immediate Effect of Indian Music on Cardiac Autonomic Control And Anxiety: A Comparative Study

Background: Many studies have shown that music experience is the key to develop future therapies in order to prevent the development of cardiovascular disorders. Aims: The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of heart rate variability (HRV) on exposure to Indian raga Bhupali with that of two control groups of pop music and no music or silence in a sample of healthy subjects. Materials and Methods: Autonomic functioning, anxiety level, and subjective feeling were assessed in 28 healthy subjects, both male and female [group mean age ± standard deviation (SD), 19.68 ± 2.57] during three sessions. The three sessions were the musical session intervention with the Indian raga Bhupali, pop music with steady beats, and no music session. Assessments were made before (5 min), during (10 min), and after (5 min) in each of the three states on 3 separate days. Results: During the Indian raga, there was a significant decrease in the low frequency (LF) power (P < 0.01) and increase in the high frequency (HF) power (P < 0.01) in the frequency domain analysis of the HRV spectrum. There was also a significant decrease in the mean heart rate (HR) (P < 0.01) and a significant increase in the NN50 (P < 0.05) and RMSSD (P < 0.05) in the time domain analysis of HRV. Both frequency and time domain measures are indicative of parasympathetic activity. The anxiety level significantly (P < 0.001) decreased post the Indian raga session and significantly (P < 0.01) increased post the pop session. The subjective assessment of perceived feeling using the visual analog scale (VAS) comparing Indian raga with pop and silence sessions showed a significant difference of feeling positive (P < 0.01). Conclusions: Exposure to the Indian raga Bhupali reduced sympathetic activity and/or increased vagal modulation with reduced anxiety levels and subjective assessment of perceived feeling showed positive changes.

Indian music and dance for inclusive development: A reflection on the Republic of Mauritius

The purpose of this article is to argue, prove and demonstrate that Indian Music and Dance have a crucial role to play in the overall development of the Republic of Mauritius.Following intensive and extensive literature search, and field study, the author shows that cultural and economic values inherent in these art-forms, if soundly and systematically explored, identified and leveraged, have the potential to create and enhance human, cultural, artistic and social capitals through arts education, besides contributing to economic development by generating jobs and earnings through the establishment of Indian Music and Dance Industries in the country. The author further argues that it is incumbent upon the government to formulate and deliver informed, evidence-based cultural policies to guide thoughts and actions in the arts, culture and economic sectors. Largely, the arguments are based on the experiences of different countries, especially those of India, and the findings of researchers in the field.

Resonances of the Raj: India in the English musical imagination, 1897-1947

Note on Companion Website Note on Spelling and Pronunciation List of Figures Permissions and Credits Acknowledgements Introduction 1 A Subtle and Exquisite Spirit: Maud MacCarthy and Indian Music in Britain 2 Elephants and Mughals, Contraltos and G-Strings: How Elgar got his Englishness 3 From India to the Planet Mars: Gustav Holst 4 Songs that Moved the World: Amy Woodforde-Finden's Four Indian Love Lyrics 5 Persian Composer-Pianist Baffles: Kaikhosru Sorabji 6 Modes, Mantras, and Gandharvas: John Foulds' Passage to India Selected Bibliography

British Asian music and its networks: Notes from a music-making workshop at the Apache Indian Music Academy, Handsworth, UK

British Asian music is a phenomenon that not only involves the scenes of entertainment, but has opened its doors to the educational panorama too. Due to the crisis this industry is facing, British Asian musician and practitioners met during the BASS ‘Made in Britain’ Festival in Birmingham, to debate the future of this industry within the local and international arenas. Led by the international Reggae star Apache Indian, the activities at the school have produced important reflections on the status of this musical landscape. This paper, via social and cultural analysis, narrates the event, and sets a series of questions on the future evolution of the British Asian music industry.

More than Bollywood: studies in Indian popular music

List of Contributors List of Figures List of Companion Media Introduction - Popular Music in India - Gregory D. Booth and Bradley Shope Part One: Perspectives on Film Song 1. A Moment of Historical Conjuncture in Mumbai: Playback Singers, Music Directors, and Arrangers and the Creation of Hindi Song (1948-1952) - Gregory D. Booth 2. Global Masala: Digital Identities and Aesthetic Trajectories in Post-Liberalized Indian Film Music - Natalie Sarrazin 3. Kollywood Goes Global: New Sounds and Contexts for Tamil Film Music in the Twenty-First Century - Joseph Getter 4. On Nightingales and Moonlight: Songcrafting Femininity in Malluwood - Kaley Mason Part 2: Audio Cultures, Music Videos, and Film Music 5. Film Song and Its Other: Tracing the Boundaries of Indian Music Genres - Jayson Beaster-Jones 6. Play it Again, Saraswathi: Gramophone, Religion, and Devotional Music in Colonial South India - Stephen Putnam Hughes 7. Filming the Bhangra Music Video - Anjali Gera Roy 8. Mimesis and Authenticity: The Case of Thanda Pani and Questions of Versioning in North Indian Popular Music - Peter Kvetko 9. Making Music Regional in a Delhi Studio - Stefan Fiol Part 3: Live Music, Performance Cultures, and Re-mediation 10. Latin American Music in Moving Pictures and Jazzy Cabarets in Mumbai, 1930s to 1950s - Bradley Shope 11. The Beat Comes to India: The Incorporation Rock Music into the Indian Soundscape - Gregory D. Booth 12. Be True to Yourself: Violin Ganesh, Fusion, and Contradictions in Contemporary Urban India - Niko Higgins 13. At Home in the Studio: The Sound of Manganiyar Music Going Popular - Shalini Ayyagari 14. The Liveness-es of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi's Popular Abhangas - Anna Schultz 15. Bollywood in the Era of Filmsong Avatars: DJing, Remixing, and Change in the Film Music Industry of North India - Paul Greene Afterword: Capitalisms and Cosmopolitanisms - Timothy D. Taylor References Films and Music Cited Index

Indian Music Reorganizes Time and Establishes Homeostasis

Indian Music Reorganizes Time and Establishes Homeostasis

Joint Recognition of Raag and Tonic in North Indian Music

In many non-Western musical traditions, such as North Indian classical music (NICM), melodies do not conform to the major and minor modes, and they commonly use tunings that have no fixed reference (e.g., A = 440 Hz). We present a novel method for joint tonic and raag recognition in NICM from audio, based on pitch distributions. We systematically compare the accuracy of several methods using these tonal features when combined with instance-based (nearest-neighbor) and Bayesian classifiers. We find that, when compared with a standard twelve-dimensional pitch class distribution that estimates the relative frequency of each of the chromatic pitches, smoother and more continuous tonal representations offer significant performance advantages, particularly when combined with appropriate classification techniques. Best results are obtained using a kernel-density pitch distribution along with a nearest-neighbor classifier using Bhattacharyya distance, attaining a tonic error rate of 4.2 percent and raag error rate of 10.3 percent (with 21 different raag categories). These experiments suggest that tonal features based on pitch distributions are robust, reliable features that can be applied to complex melodic music.