Indian music

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Classical musical culture of the Hindustani tradition found in North India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, and of the Karnatic tradition in South India and Sri Lanka. An oral culture with a long history, it is linked to Muslim traditions of the Middle East and Central Asia. It resembles the medieval European troubadour tradition of composer-performer, being an art of skilful improvisation in a given mood (rasa), selecting from a range of melody patterns (ragas) and rhythmic patterns (talas), understood in the same way as in the West ‘blues’ defines a mood, a scale, and a form, and ‘boogie-woogie’ an associated rhythm.

Indian music is geared to the time of day, and a composition/performance does not have a fixed length. An ensemble consists of a melody section, featuring voice, sitar, sarod, surbahar, violins, shrill reed woodwinds, or harmonium, solo or in combination; a drone section featuring the vina or tambura, providing a resonant harmonic ground (repeated bass line); and a rhythm section of high and low tuned hand drums. The music has a natural buoyancy, the melody effortlessly rising, while the drone has the same function as a tonic or key chord in European tonal music, exerting a gravitational pull to provide tension and release in the music. The sounds of Indian music are rich in high frequencies, giving an impression of luminous radiance. Indian music became more popular in the West after world tours in the 1950s by virtuosos Ravi Shankar (sitar) and Ali Akhbar Khan (sarod). In Britain, a tradition of both popular and classical music thrives among expatriate communities and in schools.

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