Plato said, “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.” Music empowers people to find beauty in their life, express feelings, and make connections with other people and themselves. Music works various parts of the brain: memory, rhythmic movement, aural discrimination, communication, patience, and cooperation. People learn to understand to work together as a whole, becoming a part of something greater than themselves. Classical music, sometimes referred to as “art music,” is at the heart of this intellectual satisfaction. When listening to classical music, one appreciates it with a process of both the mind and the heart; however, as one might listen to the song and enjoy it, they will not appreciate it as much as they should without the knowledge of its history.
Indian classical music is homophonic, focused on melody constructed from an order of notes within the raga. Raga, meaning “color” or “atmosphere,” is similar to improvisation as we see in jazz, but with a more “bounded nature.” It is a controlled process with boundaries that allow individual variations which western ethnomusicologists call mode, a system of rules used in music (Miller and Shahriari 95). Indian classical music uses a closed cycle with fixed beats called the tala and is tonal, based on one scale but can use quartertones and microtones of the scale.
Indian classical music is never written down and is played by ear; similarly, South African music do not play off a written score. They both have a call and response where in South Africa, the chorus repeats what the leader sings, and in India, the Sarod would mimic what the lead sitar plays. Just like Western music, Indian classical music has a star on a stage, performs concerts, and goes on tours. Contrary to the similarities, Western classical music is polyphonic, based on equal tempered scales with semitones, harmony, and counterpoint to create multiple rhythms, but does not use complex beat cycles like the tala.
127 our experts are availableright now
Harmony needs more preparation and planned coordination, so Western music play from sheet music. While Western classical music has melody, it is not the focus of most works like Hindustani instrumental improvisations. Western music is not as long as Indian ragas. The longest raga, according to the World Record of performing ‘longest concert of Sindhu Bhairavi Raga,’ lasted for ten hours (Golden Book of World Records). Western classical music applauds the composer and conductor of the piece while the performers play as a collaboration; performers get the spotlight only during solos.
However, Indian classical music emphasizes the individual performer through his performance while the other performers act as the accompaniment, occasionally having solos in short breaks during the raga (Palsule). While Western classical music critique on how well one plays the composed piece, Indian classical music does not judge “the genius of a performer [from] how well he or she follows established conventions, but in how those conventions are manipulated for the purpose of individual expression” (Miller and Shahriari 95). The Indian classical music is more spiritual than Western classical music and has a closer relationship with nature because ragas associate with different seasons and times of days.
If played properly, Indian people believe ragas have the power to heal, melt stones, create fire, create rain, influence personality, and bring the divine into both the performer and the listener. Indian classical music gained a lot of interest when Ravi Shankar started to tour, becoming a cultural icon when other famous artists like George Harrison, John McLaughlin, and Ricky Martin started to incorporate Indian sounds into their music (Miller and Shahriari 104). Ragas usually call for three long-necked lutes. The sarod has six fretless main strings with eleven to fifteen sympathetic metal strings, plucked with one hand while the other slides to bend the tone and is held horizontally.
The tambura, a round gourd lute with four strings creates a drone or buzz and is played by the lead instrumentalist’s spouse or a young disciple. The sitar, a deep pear-shaped gourd body with a hollow neck has five melody strings, one or two drone strings used for the pulse, and thirteen sympathetic strings beneath the frets. It is held at a forty-five-degree angle and is plucked with wire finger picks on the right hand that creates a twangy sound. The sitar is the dominant instrument used for solos accompanied with the tabla, a pair of drums that create a dry sound from a small cylindrical wooden drum, and a large round metal drum called the bala. The tabla uses drum strokes called bols, mnemonic syllables in a pattern called the theka, to keep time (Miller and Shahriari 95-100).
If I were a musician in an Indian musical ensemble, I would play the sitar because I really enjoyed the feel of the wood and how the vibrating sounds resonate inside the hollow of the guitar, and I loved to improvise on my saxophone in jazz. Improvising challenges the mind to open up and create its own melody and differs from reading off sheet music. Rabindranath Tagore said, “[Indian] music draws the listener away beyond the limits of everyday human joys and sorrows and takes us to that lonely region of renunciation which lies at the root of the universe, while European music leads us a variegated dance through the endless rise and fall of human grief and joy.”
