[Reader-list] Digital Archiving of Hindusthani Classical Music ...

[sanjay ghosh]

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20040802/9be1d04e/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
  


Digital Archiving of Hindusthani Classical Music ...

Four months ago on the request of a JNU professor, I digitised the proceedings of a seminar on 'River-Linking'. As the session advanced the speakers' alloted time got constricted. Towards the end one expert asked the restless audience (the lunch-break was around the corner) to 'fasten their seat belts' and emarked on a whirl-wind discourse in an animated high-pitched voice. Fearing something similar in the 15 min. presentation, I embark on a overview which may ease a possible 'crash landing'.

When one considers the body of recorded Hindustani Classical music some patterns become clear.

The emphasis has broadly shifted away from the drupad-dhamar based presentation. Drupad has become a niche specialisation with diminishing practitioners and khayal gayaki degenerating into what an elderly practioner describes as 'Aajkal sab hawa main gate hai'. Meanwhile some Ragas have fallen by the wayside, no longer a part of concert repertoire. The pattern of patronage shifted to corrupt bureaucracy from skewed princely support. Private initiative often expects gymnastics from musicians, the music itself receding into the background.

Another crucial aspect is the hardening of religious demarcation on the musical content. An enormous number of 'cheez' are being neglected for their religious flavour. The era of Ustad Faiyaz Khan doing Vande Nandkumaram seems almost over.

We are still to see among contemporary indian musicians, the gratitude quite lot of musicians in the west show to their past masters. When in 1999 the Detroit band, White Stripes did a cover of St. James Infirmary Blues (made famous by Louis Armstrong's 1928 recording) they tied the entire body of western recorded music together and opened the past to the teenagers who has just arrived on the scene. White Stripes continued this trend in their follow up albums, so too did Bob Dylan (with his tribute to Charley Patton, the 'father' of the Delta Blues). 

In the absence of publicity 'user friendly' distribution doesn't seem to pick up. Maybe a centralised server has to jumpstart the proceedings before P2P networks can pick up the material. The fashionable trend today is to promote one's kin. In any other field it would be called nepotism. The media too is throwing a disproportionate weight behind this trend. 

With record companies' preoccupation with profitability, the government down-sizing - archiving is increasingly becoming an amateur sport. While technology seems to hold out promise of better times, society as a whole is shaping up in strange ways. As we embrace 48 hour working weeks and such, the audience for the music is dwindling. Today it's background music, tomorrow the memory of a forgotten era.


_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Michael Kinnear's article detailing the history musical recording/labels in India is available at :
http://www.bajakhana.com.au/Sound-rec-Ind-3D.htm