Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Lotus and the King: Imagery, Gesture and Meaning in a Hindustani Rāg

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17411910903141874

1741-1920

Laura Leante,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Abstract This article brings together investigation of gesture and imagery in the study of North Indian classical music, focusing on a particular rāg—Śrī rāg—in detail. The research, based on extensive ethnography and analysis of audiovisual recordings, reveals how the embodiment of sound as patterns of movement is a key to understanding how musicians associate particular images and emotions with rāgs, and at the same time how such processes of signification are intertwined with culturally embedded meanings. Keywords: South AsiaHindustani Classical MusicRāgaGestureImageryMeaning Construction Acknowledgements The research leading to this article has enlivened conversations and reflections with a number of friends and musicians for the past four years; in this sense I am particularly indebted to the members of the Open University's 'Experience and Meaning in Music Performance' project for the exciting team work, both in the UK and in India. All the interviews mentioned here were carried out together with Martin Clayton and—at different times—Mark Doffman, Jaime Jones, Andrew McGuiness, Tarun Nayak, and Richard Widdess. Martin and Andrew also provided insightful comments on a first draft of this paper, as did Byron Dueck. The author would also like to thank Giovanni Giuriati, Richard Widdess and Andrew Topsfield for their invaluable advice on this study. The author's gratitude goes finally to all the musicians who so enthusiastically talked to us about 'their own' Śrī rāg: Arun Badhuri, Prattyush Banerjee, Debashish Bhattacharya, Chiranjib Chakraborty, Sudokshina Chatterjee, Deepak Choudhury, Subroto Roy Chowdhury, Madhusan S. Kanetkar, Vijay Koparkar, Nayan Ghosh, Ritwik Sanyal, Veena Saharsabuddhe, Seema Shirodkar, and Viswanath Shirodkar. This research was supported by grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grants number AN6186/APN 19244 and 19110) and the British Academy (SG38692). Notes 1. Investigation of the transmission of rāgs in texts and treatises falls beyond the scope of this article; the rāgmālā tradition will be referred to in the following pages. 2. For example, Deepak Choudhury and Tarun Nayak (personal communications, February 2007). 3. Other examples include the performance of quick embellishments associated with the image and the act of 'tying knots', and the description of specific melodic phrases through comparison with the behaviour of elastic bodies and through gestural representation of object motion (Fatone et al. forthcoming). 4. The interviews were mostly carried out in the UK and in India. Fieldwork in India took place in the regions of Maharastra (May 2005 and December 2006, with Martin Clayton and Jaime Jones), and West Bengal (January/February 2007, with Martin Clayton, Tarun Nayak, Mark Doffman, and Andrew McGuiness). The interviews with Ritwik Sanyal were carried out in Rome (June 2006, with Richard Widdess and Martin Clayton). 5. See for example Bor (1999, 146–7) and Kaufman (1968, 280–4). 6. It should be mentioned that, although Srī proved to be a rāg that most interviewees were happy to talk about, some musicians preferred to discuss other rāgs or topics and did not feel compelled to provide answers to questions about Srī. In some cases this seemed to simply depend on a lesser familiarity with the rāg, especially by younger musicians who had not mastered it as part of their core performance repertory. Also worthy of note is the fact that only an extremely limited number of musicians among those interviewed mentioned the concept of rasa during our conversations, hence the decision not to discuss rasa theory in this article. 7. I am grateful to Richard Widdess for referring me to this article. 8. Apart from the interview with Kushal Das quoted above, similar concepts were brought up, for example, by Sudokshina Chatterjee (8 June 2006) or Prattyush Banerjee (28 January 2007). 9. As I pointed out above, I do not intend to suggest a simple exclusive correspondence between gesture and a specific interval of the rāg. Although here I am focusing on the possibility for gesture to express some quality of the music and some meaning associated with it, it must be kept in mind that gesture (consciously or unconsciously) is also employed by the musicians for other purposes, such as—for instance—time keeping, or interaction with fellow musicians or audience (Clayton 2007 Clayton , Martin. 2007 . Observing entrainment in music performance: Video-based observational analysis of Indian musicians' tanpura playing and beat marking . Musicae Scientiae 11 ( 1 ): 27 – 59 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Fatone et al forthcoming). 10. The performance was filmed by Martin Clayton in April 2003, in Mumbai, India (British Academy grant number SG35623). Clayton himself has made reference to this video in his 2005 article. More recently he analysed a short excerpt from the ālāp (from 12′35″ to 13′21′′) in his study of processes of entrainment between musicians in North Indian classical music (see Clayton 2007 Clayton , Martin. 2007 . Observing entrainment in music performance: Video-based observational analysis of Indian musicians' tanpura playing and beat marking . Musicae Scientiae 11 ( 1 ): 27 – 59 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 11. D. V. Paluskar. 1999. Bhajan. Payo Ji Maine Ram Ratan Dhan. The Gramophone Company of India. CDNF 150264. 12. Sanyal's reference to the Ayurvedic elements is reminiscent of a much older theoretical tradition in North Indian music tracing a link between these elements, cosmology and meanings attributed to rāgs (see, for example, Brown 2003/2004 Brown , Katherine Butler. 2003/2004 . The thāt system of seventeenth-century North Indian rāgas: A preliminary report on the treatises of Kāmilkhani . Asian Music 35 ( 1 ): 1 – 13 . [Google Scholar]). 13. The song, entitled 'Prabhu caranon mein', is taken from the movie Andolan (1951) and can be found online (http://chandrakantha.com/raga_raag/film_song_raga/shri.html) (accessed 30 January 2009). 14. Veena Sahasrabuddhe, 16 December 2006. 15. See, for example, Ebeling (1973 Ebeling , Klaus. 1973 . Rāgamala painting . Basel : Ravi Kumar . [Google Scholar], plate C42) and Waldschmidt and Leonore (1975 Waldschmidt , Arnet 1975 . Miniatures of musical inspiration in the collection of the Berlin Museum of Indian Art, Part II . Berlin : Museum für Indische Kunst . [Google Scholar], Figures 21, 23, 24). 16. See Waldschmidt and Leponore (1975, Figure 18). 17. See respectively Ebeling (1973 Ebeling , Klaus. 1973 . Rāgamala painting . Basel : Ravi Kumar . [Google Scholar], Figure 106) and Waldschmidt (1967, Figure 59). 18. See, for example, Bor (1999, Table 38). 19. See, for example, Waldschmidt (1975, Figure 18). Additional informationNotes on contributorsLaura LeanteLaura Leante is a Research Fellow in Music at the Open University, UK. She was awarded her PhD in ethnomusicology by the University of Rome, Italy in 2004 for research on issues of meaning and cross-cultural reception of music in British Asian repertories. Her research interests range over Indian classical and folk music, music of the South Asian Diaspora, music and globalisation, and popular music. Since 2005 Laura has been involved in the Open University-based AHRC-funded research project 'Experience and Meaning in Music Performance', studying processes of meaning construction in music through the analysis of performances of Hindustani classical music. This article stems directly from that work. From October 2009 she will be working on a new AHRC-funded project focusing on 'The Reception of Performance in North Indian Classical Music'