jwilzewske: tabla

Showing posts with label tabla. Show all posts

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Beiser/Harrison/YPC: Joyous Time Loops, Just Intonation

T his is the basic premise of the Transient Glory® project: that a child’s voice is a unique instrument during that fleeting time between childhood and after-childhood... and that this instrument can tackle the most challenging and uncompromising music written for them. Children leave something behind [as they grow up and leave childhood]. I don’t know what it is, but children are able to communicate in a way we adults have forgotten how to do.”
— Francisco Núñez, YPC, 09-MAY-2011.

T he entirety of ‘Time Loops’ is performed using ‘just intonation’ tuning, based on whole number proportions. With ‘Time Loops’ I am demonstrating the simpler and more harmonious aspects of just intonation. As a result the tunings on the CD don’t push boundaries per se, but rather they sound clearer and more direct than the normal equal-tempered scale that is used in most Western music.”
— Michael Harrison, 23-AUG-2012.

T he new recording ‘Time Loops’ is a superb stimulus to joy and reflection. Meditation to bring peace at this or any time of year.

I n concert performances, cellist Maya Beiser plays the lead part live accompanied by pre-recorded, digitally-processed tracks forming an auto-ensemble of many sonic layers. Multi-media artist Bill Morrison created a film for ‘Time Loops’ that incorporates archival footage and CGI images that illustrate the movement of the planets, celestial mechanics mathematically conforming to the integer ratios of the music’s just intonation. Composer Michael Harrison performs the piano part with sensitivity and feeling. Even amidst the complexity and conflict of everyday life, we rediscover here the beauty and solace that are immanent in the natural world—the patterns and harmonics of a clockwork Universe whose physics was first formalized mathematically by Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others—and rediscover that our own homo sapiens processes are as real and natural and immutable as those.

T he last and largest-scale work on the CD, ‘Hijaz,’ was composed by Harrison for Beiser and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City under the direction of Francisco Nuñez, as well as composer and percussionist Payton MacDonald on tabla and shaker. The text combines a prayer written by Harrison with spoken South Indian rhythmic syllables, which merge with the choral textures to evoke a sense of joy and unity and transcendence—deeply fitting for this holiday season.

E specially vivid and poignant are the perspectives of the school-age voices in the choir (see blockquote above). Wise beyond their years; empowered and uplifted by the music. To me, joy is mainly what music is for, and people should, through writing and performing music, feel joyous and acquire a better ability to create more joy. This CD—the compositions and performances—is first-class evidence supporting this idea. Evidence, too, of how crucially important opportunities are for kids to learn and perform music—before adulthood overtakes them as it does us all. Not a nostalgia for a childlike simplicity, but instead a meditation on clarity, on earnestness, on wonder, on the youthful drive to penetrate the truth of things, on receptiveness to joy.

[50-sec clip, Beiser/Harrison/YPC, ‘Hijaz’; (track 8), 2012, 1.4MB MP3]

M y intention was to invoke a sense of pilgrimage, either to a wondrous or holy place, or, metaphorically, to a sacred place within each of us. The chorus is the soul of the journeyer... The pulsing rhythms trace our footsteps, and those of our camels, as we make our way on the path of self-discovery.”
— Michael Harrison, 23-AUG-2012.

T he recent release of ‘Time Loops’ coincided with the first productions of Maya Beiser’s ‘ELSEWHERE: A CelloOpera,’ created by Maya with director Robert Woodruff, composers Missy Mazzoli and Eve Beglarian and writer Erin Cressida Wilson. For more information, visit www.elsewherecelloopera.com.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Sangam: Santoor, Bansuri, Tabla, Odissi performance in KC on Saturday

B  eautiful Syām, you have been awake all night;
  your lotus-eyes are drowsy.
Red fingernail marks are etched upon your chest
  like half-moons.
Your turban, once tied, now dangles on your head:
  your clothes are falling off, and your tilak is gone.”
  — Poem K207:P3/146:S832, quoted by A. Whitney Sanford, Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramānand’s Poetry, p. 46.

T his Saturday there will be a special performance of Indian traditional music, connected with the annual Sangam festival. The 4 performers are renowned both in India and far beyond (see links below).

W hen I have written about Indian classical music several times before in this blog, I’ve mainly focused on long time-scale rhythmic and melodic patterns... some of the features that are maybe most distinctive to a Western listener. But this time when I learned of this special performance and looked forward to the possibility of attending it, I decided to learn a bit about the history and motivations of these musical forms.

W hat great fortune I had!—namely, discovering Whitney Sanford’s excellent 2009 book ‘Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramānand’s Poetry’ (link below)! It is beautifully written—concise; clear; highly readable—and its detail and insightfulness serve as a tremendous help to the Western reader who wishes to understand performance practice for carnatic and other genres of Indian music, regardless whether it is extemporized or is performed in traditional ritual.

A lso covered at length are the motivations of the structure and orchestration of such music, engineered as it is so as to induce synaesthetic Scriabin-type “audio-visual/sound-heard-as-colors” transcendent experiences in the listener. Besides synaesthetic qualities in the medieval poet Paramānand’s writings and in music that is composed or improvised in a similar manner, Paramānand also propounds the unity of the One and the Many—a mystical oneness of all individuals with the Divine. The infinite and the finite are the same—homeomorphic, according to Paramānand.

T he classical Indian listener is ideally well-familiar with the ritual and with the spiritual context that it is meant to facilitate. Ideally, the listener is also equipped with powerful memories from previous participations in it—and all of those memories are ready to be triggered by the music and ambient sounds, and sights, and scents that are associated with the new year’s festival performance. There is, as Sanford’s book vividly attests, a tremendous physicality to the experience—the entire experience; the music, the dance, the imagery and colors, the scents, everything!—something I had not appreciated before, with my passive, CD/MP3 listening only. Multisensory overload, almost—aiming at achieving spiritual or mystical union.

I f you’re in Kansas City this Saturday afternoon, I hope you will be able to attend the performance and experience something mystical yourself. The performance promises to be deeply enjoyable at the very least! Links below, if you’re interested!

[Note: Praveen's music frequently employs the technique of singing into the flute (gayki style; resembling Judith Shatin's 'Fasting Heart' or George Crumb's 'Vox Balaenae' or Jethro Tull). He is also a master of thanthrakari flute style. Very cool, at least to us who play flute!]

Friday, July 17, 2009

Chamber Tabla and Cognitive ‘Affordances’

T he mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan looked to create some of the most complex mathematical patterns of all time. We are all looking [listening]. The question is who can see [hear].”
— Simon McBurney, Ensemble Complicite, ‘A Disappearing Number’, London, Barbican, 2007.

C ognitive phenomena do not always respect the ‘boundaries’ that are observed by textbooks and conferences in cognitive science. Consider the mirror neuron system—neurons in the premotor cortex that fire both when observing and performing an action. This discovery has challenged the assumed distinction between perception and action in the brain. While the human capacity to perceive opportunities for action (i.e., ‘affordances’; Gibson, 1979) has been extensively documented, it appears that even non-action-related judgments are in the ‘currency of action’... Cognitive phenomena do not always respect the boundaries that we draw between people either. Cognitive science has been concerned with the individual in isolation. But there have been striking insights into the brain’s sensitivity to social information and the way in which people think and act cooperatively [as exemplified in music].”
— Kevin Shockley (Center for Cognition, Action and Perception, Univ Cincinnati), Daniel Richardson (Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sci, Univ College London), Rick Dale (Dept Psychology, Univ Memphis), Topics in Cognitive Science 2009; 1:305-19.

S peed for speed’s sake—or overly complex rhythmic structures, or insincere utilization of mathematical calculations as a performance or compositional device—can justly be criticized as aesthetically weak or contrived. Authenticity is threatened by throw-down theory. Virtuosic technic can only be redeemed by genuine feeling. The person in the street needs ‘ghazals’, not maths.

A nd yet... There are some musics whose rhythmic structure is unabashedly mathematical yet deeply moving. Tabla music, for example; and particularly performances by Ustad Zakir Hussain, or his father Ustad Alla Rakha who passed away in 2001. The mathematical design takes into account the length of each phrase, the duration of each pause that comes after the last DHA of each phrase, and the starting point of each tihai (see Gottlieb's book). There is a carefully worked-out, “composed” element, but there are necessarily the wonderful, small-scale human improvisational elements as well. [It's hard to conceive of anything less musical than a MIDI drum machine tabla executing mathematics-governed tabla rhythms. Gotta be “live”.] Here is link to a figure in Robert Gottlieb’s book on tabla, showing (left hand column) the rational-number relationships of tabla rhythms/metrical patterns.

[50-sec clip, Ustad Alla Rakha & Ustad Zakir Hussain, Together, ‘Taal Rupak’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he rhythmic pattern of this MP3 clip is a 'rupak taal', with 7 matras (beats). The word 'chhand' (metrical pattern) is used when constructing the linear superposition of one taal on another--'rupak chhand'.

T abla sets consist of a smaller teak or rosewood drum (dāyāñ=right=dominant_hand) and a larger metal drum (bāyāñ=left). Each has a drumhead (shāī or gāb) and is nested in cushions (chutta or guddi). The head is tuned with a small hammer (hathodi)—traditionally by inserting tuning blocks (ghatta) into the cords fastening the drumhead to the drum; alternatively, by wrench-adjustable threaded rods on modern instruments, much like other drums. The performer’s hands are coated with talc powder to provide the right ‘touch’ and to insure that the heads don’t get damaged by skin moisture or oils.

T here are several traditional styles of playing the tabla in India, each of which entails a specific playing idiom and performance rules. Two main styles of tabla are Dilli Baj and Purbi Baj. Dilli (or Delhi) baj developed in Delhi, and Purbi (meaning eastern) baj developed in the area east of Delhi. Delhi Baj is also known as Chati baj (chati is a part of the tabla from which a particularly sonorous tone can be evoked). Musicians then recognize six gharānās (schools or traditions) of tabla playing.

Delhi gharānā
Lucknow gharānā
Ajrara gharānā
Farukhabad gharānā
Benares gharānā
Punjab gharānā

I t is the last of these that Alla Rakha and Hussain are exponents of, although there are ‘free-style’ elements in their work as well.

E ach gharānā is distinct in terms of compositional and playing styles. For instance, some gharānās involve different positionings of the tabla and ‘bol’ percussive techniques. Today many of the distinctions between the gharānā have been blurred as successive generations of players have chosen to combine aspects from multiple gharānās to evolve their own ‘voice’. Some traditionalists say the era of authentic gharānā has basically ended insofar as the unique aspects of each gharānā have been substantially corrupted by individualistic mixing of styles and current socio-economic disincentives for sustaining the old “lineal purity” of gharānā through long and rigorous apprenticeships.

P unjab gharana music bears the influence of the Punjabi language and its mathematical, long-range order-admiring temperament. These are closely linked, and in fact a number of Hussain’s and Alla Rakha’s pieces incorporate densely rhythmic vocal parts as complements to the tabla and other instruments. Among the important composition forms of this style are Punjabi-Gat and Chakradar.

A jrada gharana features ‘kaidas’ (qā’idas, al Qaedas?). Graceful figures... less intricate canonical rhythmic structures, compared to Punjab pieces—at least in the examples I’ve been able to hear so far. As a special tonal characteristics of this tabla style are the phrases: GHE NA and GHE GE, GE NA DHA and DHA GE NE, and NE DHI and DHINE DHINA.

D elhi gharana is typically crisp and brilliant—more overtly individualistic compared to ‘collectivistic’, self-effacing tendencies in other gharana. The flowing, streamlike qualities of the rhythmic arc are distinctive. The Delhi-style is also known as Kinari-ka-baj-baj Kinar, which means, more or less, ‘Kinar under control’, while Kinar (literally: the edge, shore), a hard, clear sound is concerned, on the edge of the Dayan is generated. Characteristic phrases of this style are TI TE, DHINA GINA, DHAGE DHINA GINA, DHINA NOS.

M y own fascination with tabla music, its mathematical underpinnings, its drama arising from the tensions between individualism and collectivism, and its chamber-music-like intimations of psychophysical/neurocognitive ‘affordances’ between the performers—is just beginning. If you have experience in tabla performance or composition, I would be most grateful for your comments and suggestions as to how I might better understand and learn this beautiful music. Thank you!

P eople like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
— Albert Einstein.