You’re a member of the Hindi film audience. You see most of the films in town. You listen to the songs regularly on the radio. And you try humming a few bars in your bathroom. How long do you actually remember the words, or the music, of a Hindi film song? Agreed there are…
Delhi University is one of the few in the country to possess a full-fledged faculty of music. But for years now, the Music Department has been rocked by a clash between the shastrakars (grammarians) and the kalavidhs (performers). At the root of the controversy lies the dilemma of whether university teachers of music ought to…
When Frenchman Bernard Bel and American Jim Arnold met by chance in a Delhi hotel in September 1979, it turned out to be a momentous occasion for Indian music. In the two years since, Bel and Arnold have together embarked on an ambitious research of Hindustani classical music’s vast oral tradition along mathematical lines. Never…