Thumri, Ghazal, and Modernity in Hindustani Music Culture

If historians of Indian classical music have been obliged to rely primarily upon a finite and often enigmatic set of treatises and iconographic sources, historical studies of semi-classical genres like thumri and ghazal confront even more formidable challenges. Such styles and their predecessors were largely ignored by Sanskrit theoreticians, who tended to be more interested in hoary modal and metrical systems than in contemporary vernacular or regional-language genres sung by courtesans. It is thus inevitable that attempts to reconstruct the development of such genres involve considerable amounts of conjecture, and in some senses raise more questions than they answer. Nevertheless, thumri, ghazal, and earlier counterparts, which we may retrospectively call light-classical , have played too important a role in South Asian music to be ignored by historians. Further, as I shall suggest, the study of their evolution may yield pa1ticular insights into the nature of Hindustani music history, especially of the modem period. Central to this study is a fundamental paradox characterizing thumri and ghazal history: specifically, that while both genres may be seen as mere variants or particular efflorescences in a long series of similar counterparts dating back to the early common era, there are other senses in which they are unique products of a particular historical moment marked by unprecedented socio-historical features. In this chapter, I attempt to explore this apparent contradiction, and further suggest how the divergent trajectories of thumri and ghazal in the later twentieth century illustrate the distinctive form that modernity has assumed in Indian music culture

The Intermediate Sphere in North Indian Music Culture: Between and Beyond ‘Folk’ and ‘Classical’

If in discourse about traditional music in North India, the notions of “folk” and “classical” continue to be widely used, in this essay I posit the existence of an “intermediate sphere,” comprising a heterogeneous set of traditional music genres that, in different ways, shares features with both folk and classical realms. I suggest five categories in this socio-musical stratum and provide brief glimpses of some of their constituents and distinguishing features, including the distinctive sorts of theory they embody and elite patronage that sustains them. I conclude with observations about historical changes in the status of this sphere in general

Datable "Notre Dame" Conductus: New Historical Observations on Style and Technique

One of the greatest obstacles to histories of earlier medieval music lies in the relative absence of concrete historical testimony for extant compositions. Information pertaining to the names, life spans, and working records of composers is rare, dates for the creation or performance of pieces are exceptional, and critical judgments of specific works from contemporaries almost nonexistent

The Intermediate Sphere in North Indian Music Culture: Between and Beyond ‘Folk’ and ‘Classical’

If in discourse about traditional music in North India, the notions of “folk” and “classical” continue to be widely used, in this essay I posit the existence of an “intermediate sphere,” comprising a heterogeneous set of traditional music genres that, in different ways, shares features with both folk and classical realms. I suggest five categories in this socio-musical stratum and provide brief glimpses of some of their constituents and distinguishing features, including the distinctive sorts of theory they embody and elite patronage that sustains them. I conclude with observations about historical changes in the status of this sphere in general

The Characteristics of Teacher-Directed Modeling Evidenced in the Practices of Three Experienced High School Choral Directors.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the characteristics of teacher directed modeling evidenced in the practices of three experienced high school choral directors. Research questions were: 1. What modeling activities were exhibited in each teacher's rehearsals? 2. When viewing a 45-minute composite tape of each teacher's instructional activities representative of all rehearsals, what instructional behaviors did each choral director recognize and identify as modeling? 3. What instructional episodes on the composite tape not identified by the teachers contained elements of modeling? 4. What other episodes from the remainder of each choral director's rehearsal practice contributed to an understanding of modeling? Videotapes of three high school choral directors were recorded over the course of one semester. Excerpts from rehearsals were combined to form a 45-minute composite tape of each choral director. A text transcription was made of the composite tape. Participant directors viewed their tape and identified instructional episodes that they recognized as examples of modeling. Identifications were analyzed, and descriptive categories of modeling behaviors were established. Modeling was found to be a teacher generated or delegated act of demonstration. Demonstrations were musical or non-musical and belonging to either of three distinct categories: audible, visible, or process modeling. Subdivisions of each category were found further describing modeling in the high school choral rehearsal. In addition, types of modeling were noted in increasing cognitive complexity required on the part of students beginning with simple imitation and concluding with models as tools for musical problem solving. Research is recommended on a larger sample of participants, including junior high/middle school directors to confirm categories and levels and to develop an observation tool based on results for describing, assessing, and modifying instructional techniques of practicing and pre-service music educators

The use of music in facilitating learning in the elementary content classroom

The use of music in facilitating learning in the elementary content classroom was investigated. Music has been noted to be a part of such subjects as reading, language, science, mathematics, physical education, and art. Integrating music with these subjects was discussed. Current pilot programs include the following: Learning to Read Through the Arts (LTRTA), rap, Suggestopedia, Soviet Sleep Learning, Tomatis Method, Accelerated Learning (SALT), and background music while studying. Practical music activities for the elementary content classroom were mentioned. Much of the literature reviewed included theoretical articles, research studies and articles of application. It was concluded that more statistical research is needed to strengthen the inference that music aids learning

CONSTRUCTING KURDISH NATIONALIST IDENTITY THROUGH LYRICAL NARRATIVES IN POPULAR MUSIC

This paper analyses how Kurdish ethno-nationalism and nationalist identity have been predominantly promoted through the lyrics of popular Kurdish music, with performance, sounds and rhythms as strong support for lyrical narratives depicting Kurdish nationalism. The analysis of the lyrics is to evaluate the subject from a political science perspective, which limited the author’s methodological analysis of sounds, rhythms and performances which music anthropologists or cultural studies students often utilize. In this study, the author argues that Kurdish popular music is both constitutive and represents social positioning, in the form of Kurdish nationalism. Music is thus perceived as a means and a representation of the imaginary Kurdish nation and Kurdish popular music is a form of cultural resistance for Kurds, against Turkish state policies. This investigation firstly examines traditional and popular Kurdish music, evaluates such music in Turkey and the relationship between Kurds and the Turkish state. Secondly, musical structure in general and particularly lyrics of popular Kurdish songs, are analysed, to determine the boundaries of the Kurdish nationalist identity

‘Please could you stop the noise’: The grammar of multimodal meaning-making in Radiohead’s "Paranoid Android"

This article uses Zbikowski’s (2002, 2012, 2017) theory of ‘musical grammar’ to analyse Radiohead’s song ‘Paranoid Android’ from their 1997 album OK Computer. Invoking the close structural and compositional parallels between language and music, Zbikowski’s approach appropriates some of the core elements of cognitive linguistics to provide a means of ‘translating’ music into meaning-bearing conceptual structures via the construction of ‘sonic analogs’, which are a type of conceptual construct formed when incoming perceptual information is compared to existing cognitive knowledge stored as image schemas. The result is an analysis of the interactions between the linguistic and aural constructions of a multimodal text that not only sheds new light on this text’s meaning-making devices but also endeavours to unlock the strategies through which such distinctive semiotic modes act and interact within texts to create meaning potential