Liora Bennett

Intro to World Musics

Hindustani Concert Review

On Saturday, February 25th I attended a traditional Hindustani music

concert in Boulder at the Nevei Kodesh Center, which is a synagogue. It
was so interesting to hear Indian classical music in a Jewish religious
environment, a rather unexpectedly enjoyable aesthetic experience.
The performers were Steve Oda on Sarod, Sarah Morelli on Tanpura,
and Ty Burhoe on tabla. For those unfamiliar with these instruments,
their roles are as follows: The tanpura is a stringed drone instrument
that is tuned to the tonic or sa of a raga. The tanpura holds space so
to speak, as an accompaniment for the other performers by providing a
constant pitch center, which could be argued also sustains the mood or
rasa of the music. The tanpura is never a solo instrument. The next
instrument is the tabla: a pair of two small drums, whose names are
Bhaya and Dhaya. The tabla is played with the hands, and a wide
array of different sounds can be made through different strokes and
strikes of the fingers. The tabla functions as both accompaniment and
solo, however the tabla does not start playing in the music until the 3rd
section of Hindustani music. Then most importantly (one might argue)
is the Sarod. The Sarod is a 25-stringed instrument, 9-11 of which are
sympathetic strings. The sarod has a steel fingerboard and a goatskin
covered gourd. The Sarod was the main melodic instrument in this
performance, and is one of the primary stringed instruments used in
Hindustani music. I really enjoyed how at this evening concert all of the
ragas that were performed were traditional evening ragas. He even
ended the concert with a piece that he said was traditionally performed
at the end of a concert.
The concert venue was a medium-sized sanctuary, not huge, but
not small either. Its worth noting that in within India, the audiences for
this type of music usually will give the performers verbal/vocal
responses, but our much more conservative western audience did
nothing more than clap at the end of each piece. Its also worth
mentioning that there was a terribly noisy small child who basically
ruined the entire concert for me. DONT BRING SMALL CHILDREN TO
CONCERTS IF YA KNOW THEYRE GONNA BE LOUD OK. Ok. Steve Oda
started a beautiful Alaap in a raga that was traditionally meant for the
evening, and also A favorite of Lord Shivas (I wish I remembered the
name).
Shortly after the beginning of the first piece, the aforementioned
demon child started to really get fussy. This disturbance could
especially be seen on Morelli and Burhoes faces. I wouldnt have been
upset if the mother had taken the child out after all of the disturbance,
but she just kept him there. The audience and performers were
perceivably upset at this, but nevertheless we tried to enjoy the music.
In Indian classical music, performances traditionally start with an out-
of-time improvised solo in the main instrument (sarod) that evokes the
raga slowly; note by note. The gentle establishing of a pulse signifies
the next section, which is called Jor. To my ears it was actually quite
challenging to decidedly discern whether or not we were yet in Jor for
each of the performances.
After Jor comes Jol, in which the tabla joins in. This is also when
meter is established. If my memory serves me correctly the meter of
the first raga performance was in the 10 beat meter called japtal. I
feel sad that I am not very familiar with Hindustani music, because a
greater understanding and feel for the sound would have helped me
appreciate the quality of the performance more. Steve Oda studied
with Ali Akhbar Khan, who is also Morellis teacher, and a Hindustani
rockstar. Its not that I didnt enjoy the performance, though, because I
definitely did! The first performance of the raga was very heady and
ethereal. The colors I would attribute to this particular performance are
dark blue, navy, periwinkle, silver, and sky blue. It very much had a
character and aesthetic I would associate nighttime with. Unfortunately
for the majority of this performance I was on edge due to the small
drooling noise machine that wouldnt let anyone forget he was there. It
seemed as though every time I surrendered myself to the music, I was
violently ripped out of my reverie by interludes from the small child.
This made it really hard to fully give my attention to the performers,
unfortunately.
Though I did really enjoy the music, I couldnt help but feel that
each of the raga performances was just slightly too long for my
attention span. However, I know from class lectures that raga
performances can last several hours (thankfully this one did not). I
remember timing each performance at around 45 minutes per raga,
which is also the same amount of time as an average western
orchestral symphony. In my own personal opinion I think a symphony is
easier to listen to, but this is blatantly because of my own socialization
around music, and the culture that I grew up in. Something feels more
comfortable about having the music compartmentalized into different
movements, rather than one fluid entity like the raga performances.
Each raga has a pakar which is similar to a catchphrase, or
identifying musical gesture, this can be confusing because each
composition has its own catchphrase which is called a Mukhra
discerning between these two was difficult for me, but it was definitely
easy to determine what was a repeated phrase, and what was
improvised. It was almost comforting to hear the repeated material,
almost like a reminder of what was happening in the music. The
musicians did a really great job of portraying different moods within
the raga: there were times that made you want to get up and dance to
the funky beats they were playing, and other times I felt like I was
going to melt into my chair!
The second Raga performance was also a darker color palette,
but I distinctly remember this one having dark greens and oranges as
the primary color focuses. This followed the traditional form of
Hindustani similar to the way
If Steve or any of the other musicians mentioned stories that were
associated with the ragas I mustve forgotten them because really to
me this seemed like a solely musical performance however I know
that Indian classical music can have very dramatic and engaging
stories to tell; much like the Kathak ensemble performance that
happened earlier in the month of March. The experience from this
concert was a predominantly aural one. Perhaps if the small child
hadnt been there, things wouldve been different. It was really
fascinating to watch my own professor perform the music shes been
teaching us about for the past several weeks , and I had a mildly
pleasant time attending this performance.