Every public ceremony and every important act in an India’s life was accompanied by song. For each ceremony there existed a special class or type of song and songs for individual celebrations were similarly classified. An Indian can determine at once the class of a stage song by the rhythm of the music.
In structure, the Indian song follows the out line of the form which obtain in our own music — a short melodic phrase built on related tones which are denominate chord lines, repeated with more or less variation, grouped into clauses and correlated into periods. The compass of songs varies from one to three octaves. Some songs have no words, vocables being used instead and when once set to a melody they are never changed. Plural singing is generally in unison, on the plains and else where the women using a high, reedy falsetto tone an octave above the male singers.
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