The two main styles of Indian classical music are Hindustani and Carnatic classical music. I am studying Hindustani classical music with the bansuri (the Indian bamboo flute) at Vrindaban Gurukul in Mumbai. This has been my school in India since late 2016. Following my earlier long stays here in 2015, this is the third time I have come here for an extended visit of intensive learning and practice.
Prior to discovering the bansuri in 2015, I did not have any music training in Western or any other area of music. I was a blank. A musical illiterate and still mostly am in Western terms. It is only as I started unwrapping and exploring this craft of playing the bamboo flute that I learnt about the actual differences between Indian classical and Western classical music. My “ear” was programmed from childhood singing in choirs and from music played around me, to be tuned to western music and its relevant styles. As a result, a large part of my training of the last 4 years has been to train this “ear” differently. This includes, how to listen and how to interpret sounds that I hear. More importantly, I am learning how to feel what I hear.
Back to some of the difference between Indian and Western classical music –
The very basic and first difference is that Indian classical music is based on melody. Melody means “one note at a time”. Western Classical music on the other hand is based on harmony. Meaning that more than one notes are connected and related to each other. This is a chord.
Western classical music is composed and written on paper with musical symbols on it. This solid musical theory has evolved and refined over time. Indian Classical music on the other hand has a lot of scope for improvisation. The musician can change or improvise the sequence of notes while singing or playing the music. This of course is not typical in Western classical music.
Indian classical music has roots in spirituality and has a close association with nature. Ragas have specific times of day or seasons associated with them. Western classical music has no such connection. This does not mean one form is deeper or more spiritual than the other. They are simply different and have evolved in different ways.
Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, musician and artist of the Indian subcontinent who lived between 1861 and 1941. He wrote:
“For us, music has above all a transcendental significance. It disengages the spiritual from the happenings of life; it sings of the relationships of the human soul with the soul of things beyond. The world by day is like European music; a flowing concourse of vast harmony, composed of concord and discord and many disconnected fragments. And the night world is our Indian music; one pure, deep and tender raga. They both stir us, yet the two are contradictory in spirit. But that cannot be helped. At the very root nature is divided into two, day and night, unity and variety, finite and infinite. We men of India live in the realm of night; we are overpowered by the sense of One and Infinite. Our music draws the listener away beyond the limits of everyday human joys and sorrows, and takes us to that lonely region of renunciation which lies at the root of the universe, while European music leads us a variegated dance through the endless rise and fall of human grief and joy.”
Most days when I walk out of my gurukul after my class, the pavement is filled with children in school after-care. They sit on the ground in neat rows, lining the fence that surrounds the building. The sweet sounds and song from the bamboo flutes inside, spills over them while they do their homework. In the picture they are lining up on the left, with a couple of stragglers caught up in their ball game. They are getting ready to go home.
No matter the style or the notes of music we play. Getting lost in melody or harmony, is a beautiful place to be.
~AvR