As part of CompMusic we are organizing two concerts of Indian Art Music, one on June 19th on Carnatic music, with Vignesh Ishwar, from IITM, and another on June 21st on Hindustani music, with Kaustuv Kanti Ganguli, from IITB. Each concert will be preceded by a Lecture Demonstration. This is perhaps my first most complete experience of Hindustani music. It was much better than listening to recordings. I was able to read some of the tala and raga charts and map some scales and tala cycles. I especially appreciate the 2-3-2-3 cycles, Jhaptal, which is really inconspicuous because the melody is quite fluid, but if you pay attention you can catch the cycle. Also Kaustuv Kanti Ganguli played a little hand powered organ, which was amazing. This guy is a genius-both a high achieving vocalist and a engineer working on audio signal processing. What strikes me the most is the contrast of the situation of traditional music in China and in other cultures that we study at CompMusic, such as Indian. We have no problem to recruit from India, or Turkey, highly skilled professional or semi-professional level musicians who have greatest passion for their traditional music and at the same time are able to carry this passion into their professional career as a researcher in sound computing and MIR. In China, the prospect is pretty sad because not only we can barely find this kind of double talent, but the general number of people who are interested in traditional music is very low. Every traditional art form, almost, are marginalized and is no longer relevant to most people's modern life. Seeing the most beautiful and unique traditions of Hindustani music, I cannot help but feel that how sad would it be if every country you go (like China), people are all playing pop, rock, jazz, and classical music from the West and there is nothing unique to see at all. It's a great loss.
2 Comments
shawn
7/9/2013 07:10:59 am
http://compmusic.upf.edu/node/165
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OCEAN
8/4/2013 05:52:40 am
Recently I feel that I really respect people who pursue their dreams even though the condition is difficult. The Peking Opera actors in China are like this. They entered a profession that is marginalized in society, requires tremendous amount of hard work, and do not pay well, cannot get the attention of most people. Nevertheless they're still working hard to maintain this tradition, because of their passion. I think for any one, no matter what you do, if you are able to stick to your dream and no matter how hard it is, how many people have criticized you, you will have a life that is well respected.
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