North Indian Classical Music Research Articles

Cortical Sources and Autonomic Nervous System Response of Listening to North Indian Classical Music (P11-1.008)

Cortical Sources and Autonomic Nervous System Response of Listening to North Indian Classical Music (P11-1.008)

IDENTIFYING THE SPACE OF SHIVA’S RUDRA VEENA: A QUEST TO EXPLORE MYTHS, BELIEFS, AND FACTS IN THE DISCOURSE OF THIS ANCIENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

Rudra Veena, an ancient musical instrument is believed to be most widely used in North Indian Classical Music. Being one of the first musical instruments in Hindustani Classical Music, it has a significantly interesting history of its own, which is intertwined with various captivating facts, myths, and beliefs. My goal in this paper is to explore the intricacies involved in the making of this extravagant instrument, the myths and the stereotypes related to it, and the efforts of some prominent Rudra Veena players who have fought with time and defied a change that’s inclined to modern musical taste in the quest to keep the tradition of Rudra Veena alive. In my opinion, it is significant to trace these elements that are now rooted in an unspeakable silence and demand a voice of their own

Nonlinear Signal Processing Method Detects Emotional Changes Induced by Indian Classical Music

Music is one of the major activities that alters the emotional experience of a person. Musical processing in the brain is a complex process involving coordination between various areas of the brain. There are less number of studies that focus on analyzing brain responses due to music using modern signal processing techniques. This research aims to apply a nonlinear signal processing technique i.e. the Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) technique to analyze the brain correlates of happy and sad music conditions while listening to happy and sad ragas of North Indian Classical Music (NICM). EEG signals from 20 different subjects are acquired while listening to excerpts of raga elaboration phases of NICM. Along with behavioural ratings, the signals were analyzed using the Recurrence Quantification Analysis technique. The results showed significant differences in the recurrence plot and recurrence parameters extracted from the frontal and fronto temporal regions in the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Therefore, from the results, it can be concluded that RQA parameters can detect emotional changes due to happy and sad music conditions.

North Indian Classical Music and the West: The Journey from the Realm of Multicultural to Transcultural

North Indian Classical Music and the West: The Journey from the Realm of Multicultural to Transcultural

Music and Emotion-A Case for North Indian Classical Music.

The ragas of North Indian Classical Music (NICM) have been historically known to elicit emotions. Recently, Mathur et al. (2015) provided empirical support for these historical assumptions, that distinct ragas elicit distinct emotional responses. In this review, we discuss the findings of Mathur et al. (2015) in the context of the structure of NICM. Using, Mathur et al. (2015) as a demonstrative case-in-point, we argue that ragas of NICM can be viewed as uniquely designed stimulus tools for investigating the tonal and rhythmic influences on musical emotion.

North Indian Classical Music and Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s Generative Theory – a Mutual Regard

This article applies aspects ofA Generative Theory of Tonal Musicby Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff to the analysis of Hindustani (North Indian) classical music, with a double-edged purpose. On the one hand, theGTTMmethodology is used to illuminate the workings of anālāp(as performed by Vijay Rajput, a vocalist in thekhyālstyle). On the other hand, the analysis acts as a case study to assess the viability of this methodology for the analysis of Indian classical music, and in particular, to test out Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s claim thatGTTMpresents a universal musical grammar, transcending specific cultures.This pilot study considers what modifications would be necessary toGTTM’s preference rules to make a viable generative theory for Hindustani classical music—or at least for its melodic aspects, governed as these are by the principles ofrāg. With such modifications, it is possible to formally represent levels of musical knowledge involved in the production and perception of this music, and to verify the generative principles whereby a performer is able to improvise a potentially infinite number of musical utterances from a finite set of rules.The investigation also fosters a critique of Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s theories. Among the questions addressed is that of the diachronic modeling of improvised musical performance—which, unlike the score-based studies ofGTTM, cannot be analyzed entirely outside the flow of time. Consistent with this critical position is the conclusion that, rather than the pursuit of universals per se, it is an openness to the tension between universals and particulars that may lead to the most valuable knowledge.

Listening to North Indian Classical Music: How Embodied Ways of Listening Perform Imagined Histories and Social Class

Abstract With this article, I theorize the sociality of embodied ways of listening to North Indian classical music. I focus on rasikas (connoisseurs): these expert listeners are conspicuous at live performances, where they gesture and comment to express their enjoyment of the music. Based on ethnography and interviews with musicians and music lovers in Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune, I argue that rasikas’ embodied, audible listening practices enact shared imagined histories and perform expertise and social status. Moreover, these listening behaviors also sustain values of the so-called old middle class in India in the face of economic and social change.

Role, Status and Hierarchy in the Performance of North Indian Classical Music

In this article we describe and interpret the interactions that take place between participants in performances of North Indian classical music. Since this music is shaped largely in the moment of performance, its success depends on felicitous interactions between participants, so understanding these interactions is key to understanding the musical tradition. Aspects of these interactions we consider here include the roles assumed by participants and their complementarity; the various hierarchies that exist amongst participants and are related to those roles; the expression of authority and deference; and the causes and results of conflict in performance. Although some of these issues have been noted in previous academic literature, they have not previously been subjected to a sustained and wide-ranging enquiry that draws extensively on first-person accounts of performing musicians. The theoretical orientation of our interpretation owes most to the classic sociological work of Erving Goffman, with reference to the particular ways in which authority, social hierarchy and deference are understood in South Asia.

North Indian Classical Music's Singer Identification by Timbre Recognition using MIR Toolbox

Timbre recognition has always been associated with musical instrument identification. In music information retrieval (MIR) community there has always been increasing interest in identifying singers and identifying the musical instruments. There can be unending debate on, whether to consider human throat as a kind of musical instrument generating sound through air pressure and vibration or not. Any musical sound possesses Timbre, an unidentified and undefined entity which is yet non-tangible that uniquely defines the sound. A lot of research has been done on catching this fuzzy term in terms of its synonyms related to light or texture or so. MIR toolbox of MatLab provides some strong techniques to extract variety of audio attributes/characteristics from an audio file. These attributes are called as Audio Descriptors. In this paper, we have studied such audio descriptors that fall under the Timbre category and found out the most prominent audio descriptors that plays substantial role in the identification of a singer from North Indian classical music. In this system we have considered Noisy data, Noise filtered data without background instruments and noise free studio recordings with only Tanpura instrument in the background as input. We have found that roll off, brightness, roughness and irregularity are the four strong audio descriptors designated under the Timbre category of MIR Toolbox, plays vital role in the identification of a singer from North Indian Classical Music giving accuracy of identification of 96.66% for three singers trained and tested simultaneously on studio recordings containing Tanpura(a Supportive Musical instrument of the singer) each of 5 sec duration and sampling rate of 11,025Hz, 16 bits with Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) uncompressed file format. The results indicate that a singer can also be treated as a wind type of musical instrument and be successfully identified by recognizing its Timbre.

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.

Institutional Communalism in North Indian Classical Music

Institutional Communalism in North Indian Classical Music

The Fusing of North Indian Classical Music and Jazz

The Fusing of North Indian Classical Music and Jazz

The Guru Recontextualized? Perspectives on Learning North Indian Classical Music in Shifting Environments for Professional Training

In the literature on Indian music and 'world music education,' the time-honoured system of guru-sisya-parampara is often quoted as the perfect example of a close relationship between master and pupil to perpetuate a predominantly oral musical tradition. There is some justification for this: North Indian classical music has been successfully passed down as an oral tradition through guru-sisya-parampara for many centuries, and has remained a vibrant and living tradition to this day. However, with drastic changes in economic and social conditions in India (e.g. Jain, 2005), the spread and increased uptake of Indian classical music in the West for over half a century (Farrell, 1997), and emerging critical voices amongst contemporary Indian students, new conditions and contexts have arisen that challenge a system essentially based on a court patronage environment.

A Subtle Novelty: Repetition, transmission and the valorisation of innovation within North Indian Classical Music

This paper investigates the interrelation between two aspects of North Indian classical music that at first might appear to occupy opposite poles of creativity and constraint. The first is the soloist’s actual construction of melody itself, and the interpretation of this as improvised. The second is sangat, the imitative instrumental accompaniment afforded such melodies when performed by vocalists. I argue that the conventional description of North Indian music as ‘improvised’ downplays the importance of the re-presentation of fixed materials, thus underemphasising the projection of tradition and transmission. In turn, I suggest that sangat has a homologous relationship to pedagogy, the process of transmitting traditional materials. Both melodic construction and imitative accompaniment derive aspects of their overall form and quality from, and may be understood in reference to, an ideational cluster that attempts to reconcile a socially validated and hierarchically underscored conservatism with an acceptance of individual innovation. Both practices may be seen as performed subjectivities standing at temporal interstices between tradition and contemporaneity, the broadly cultural and the individual.

Companion to North Indian Classical Music (review)

Companion to North Indian Classical Music (review)

The Subjective Experience of Time in Dhrupad, a Genre of North Indian Classical Music

The Subjective Experience of Time in Dhrupad, a Genre of North Indian Classical Music

Nāda-Brahman and North Indian Classical Music

Nāda-Brahman and North Indian Classical Music

An Anthology of North Indian Classical Music

An Anthology of North Indian Classical Music

Collection Unesco - An Anthology of North Indian Classical Music. Four 12” LP Records. Stereo. Recordings and photographs by Manfred Junius. English, French and German notes by Alain Daniélou. Kassel, Musicaphon, 1975.

Collection Unesco - An Anthology of North Indian Classical Music. Four 12” LP Records. Stereo. Recordings and photographs by Manfred Junius. English, French and German notes by Alain Daniélou. Kassel, Musicaphon, 1975. - Volume 8