Date:     13-Feb-95 10:29:44 IST (+0530)
From: Bernard Bel 
To: rrepp@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu, rrepp@rs6000
Subject: vocal music
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To: Richard Repp rrepp@ilstu.edu
P.S. Your address has changed?

Dear Richard Repp,

I am sorry for taking so long in reply your request in greater
detail.  I had already sent you a message a couple of weeks ago,
before going to Bombay, and I hope you received it because I don't
have a copy of it. We are facing lots of problems with e-mail; (I
need to clear my mail-out box regularly, so copies of out-going
mail get lost.) Your latest message reached me today after getting
lost somewhere on the host's disk. I hope we can afford a reliable
connection shortly.

Basically, as I told you in the preceding message, Indian musicians
(classical or modern) have little, if any, exposure to IT and the
electronic net. These media are still reserved to the business and
scientific communities.  Therefore there is an aura of mystery, and
some suspicion, about "the role of computers in Indian music". 
However, the situation is likely to change in the coming years.
Networking is estimated as a priority achievement in a country
facing problems with postal and telephone communication problems.
It is known to be much cheaper, and sometimes more reliable, than
fax. We may expect that even the music departments of universities
will soon benefit of such connections. However, these are not the
places where professional musicians are trained. Private tuition,
the master-disciple relationship, are still the rule when it comes
to professional standard.  We cannot expect individual teachers to
communicate as easily as in North America because of the lack of
telecom infrastructure.  (Already the situation is much worse in
Europe than in the USA.)

There are cultural factors, too: musicians who have inherited
knowledge orally from their gurus are not eager to part with it,
nor to envisage it from a critical or comparative point of view. 
This applies even more to voice culture.  I have not seen any
publication about vocal training in India, although there are so
many books on instruments, ragas, compositions, etc. Many vocalists
seem to be contented with the idea that "a good voice is a gift of
God", so all you have to do in the training is to increase pitch
accuracy and acquire a certain flexibility. Now, with the
microphone, there is an increasing interest for melodious voices,
but no more interest for its power. If you listen to old recordings
or to statements of old musicians about the previous generations,
it seems that a powerful voice was highly praised, even at the cost
of roughness...  Now we are in the opposite situation, as most
singers are gradually experiencing with using the microphone as
part of the vocal technique. It is a slow process, though, because
the quality of microphones and amplification, and the
qualifications of sound engineers, are very poor in the scene of
classical concerts or recording studios.  However, there is a lot
of potential here since an increasing number of auditoriums have
acquired better sound systems.

Electronic instruments are also being introduced (mainly in south
India); the best and the worse. Electrified stringed instruments
are increasingly used because they "solve" the problem of
microphones...  Interestingly, the electronic keyboard synthesizer
seems to have been used successfully in front of a (rather
conservative) music audience in Madras, as reported by Indian
Express Madras on 25/12/94, when Palladam Venkataramana Rao played
the keyboard in a trio with Peri Sriramamurthy (violin) and Ravi
Kiran (vichitra veena).  Reporter Subbudu wrote:

I was stunned at the expertise of Rao, the manner in which he could
make the synthesizer approximate to the 'Vichitra Veena'.  Even the
minutiest nuances that Ravi Kiran coaxed out of his instrument was
reproduced by Rao with further embellishments.  It is time that we
shed our prejudices against instruments, Indian or Western, and
searched for new vistas in the realm of sound.  I am not blaming
the antiquity and capacity of the Indian musical instruments. 
Unfortunately, they were designed only to meet the requirements of
vocal music, normally restricted only to three-and-a-half octaves. 
Of course, the veena can reach the bass register but the
synthesizer reaches the sub bass.  Phrasings in the sub bass
register mesmerise the rasikas [appreciative audience].

This comment struck me because I had never thought that it would be
possible to produce acceptable 'alankara', not to speak about
complex 'gamaka', using the pitch bender of an electronic
synthesizer.  I cannot do it myself.  But I would not do it on a
violin or a sitar either!  The secret is practice...  This implies
that, although instruments may have been designed for specific
musical contexts, musicians are able to adopt them and develop an
appropriate technique in their own environment.

In Madras I also attended a seminar on voice and rhythm held by the
Brhaddhvani society, in which Indian and foreign specialists had
been invited.  Sterling Beckwith (beckwith@HUMA.YORKU.ca) gave a
very interesting comparative study of vocal training in Indian and
western cultures, showing that there are many problems in common
even though the qualifications of a "good voice" may be different. 
The chapter of discussing voice culture in the indian context
remains to be opened, and would deserve being opened, because a few
teachers are now realising that a "gift of God" may also be
trained!

Best regards


Bernard Bel, CNRS - French Centre for Human Sciences
2, Aurangzeb road, New Delhi 110 011  India
Fax (91) 11 301 84 80   Phone (91) 11 301 4173
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