Hindustani Vocal Music: As Seen Outside India

Hindustani music has become one of the most sought-after musical systems of the world. The interest exhibited for this music is continuously on the rise. With its basic foundation on devotion and Indian philosophy, it clearly exhibits a superb quality of tranquility and meditation. This quality alone has fascinated the music connoisseurs of the world. As a Hindustani vocal musician and instructor, I was afforded the privilege of performing and teaching this music to a vast audience in India, Canada and the USA over the last three decades. I found most of the students and listeners, especially outside India, to be quite curious and interested in this music. Their genuine inquisitive nature and somewhat critical attitude towards this music provided a stimulus for formulation of many ideas that are expressed in this book. In my experience, many among them exhibited somewhat reluctance to accept the traditional explanations, which provoked further inquiry into many topics presented in this book. In my judgement, their thoughts, remarks, and inquiries and questions exhibited a potential of raising some basic issues about this music. This book details a discussion based on the analysis of hundreds of such remarks, comments and inquiries from people, primarily residing in Canada and the USA. A few of their comments and questions are given here as samples. Prior to this account, there is a brief discussion on the four fundamental concepts of Hindustani vocal music: Raga, the concept of melody; Tala, the concept of rhythm; Vistar, the unique style of Raga development and Rasa, the concept of ethos expressed through rendering of Raga. The purpose is to give the readers a full comprehension of the comments and questions presented here.  The last chapter, final reflections, gives a conclusive commentary on all the points of the research discussed in this book.