Word: ragas
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...Williams solemnly reported that sides two and four consisted entirely of single tones, "presumably produced electronically." Their pitch, he noted, varied by microtones and "this oscillation produces an almost subliminal uneven 'beat' which maintains interest." Added Williams: "You could have a ball by improvising your very own raga, plainsong, or even Gaelic mouth music against the drone...
...Shankar demonstrated at his sixday "Festival from India" in Manhattan last week, he is the farthest thing imaginable from a pop musician. Rather, he is the foremost practitioner of one of the world's oldest and most sophisticated musical arts. Weaving the melodies of the classic raga into the intricate rhythms of the tala, he improvised compositions of the utmost subtlety, reveling in the musical growth that was taking place under his fingers, glorying in the sweat on his swarthy face. Playing a raga can be "like mounting a fiery horse," he says. His audiences could tell what...
...vocal music, Shankar presented ten masters of strange-sounding wind and percussion instruments-the sarod, santoor, shehnai, sarangi, mri-dangam and venu. It was a first of sorts when the players all padded onstage to perform Shankar's ensemble piece, V-7½, a vigorous ten-minute raga played at a tricky 7½ beats to the bar. It was also the first time that so many Indian musicians had been seen west of Bombay on one Oriental...
...Western music is an ex pressive artistic message delivered-as if in a package-directly to the listener. Indian music attempts to induce a loftier, more profound emotional and spiritual state in the listener through a steady, stroboscopic kind of rhythmic and melodic bedazzlement. At the height of a raga, says Shankar, "it is utter joy, uninhibited, that an artist experiences. The raga, the musician, the listeners, all become one." That is something that India's Ravi Shankar may say without offending anyone...
...slightly raised platform a musician (Jeff Fuller) sits improvising, in an appropriate raga, a preludial alapa on his sitar. Gradually a number of young men enter, wearing leis of orange and yellow flowers, and assume yoga positions. As bowls of incense waft their frangance, the sitar is joined off-stage by the traditional tambura drone and tabla rhythms...