The just-launched Oxford encyclopedia of Indian music spans across raagas, rare instruments, and folk and classical musicians. For once, Bollywood music may find its attention divided.
The Oxford University Press published the Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India last month, a three volume set that promises to reveal closely guarded secrets about Indian music.
Sunday MidDay got two musicians -- Nelson OJ (31), a composer who fuses classical raagas with electronica and posts them on MySpace for everyone to hear, and Jatanil Banerjee (31), a trained Hindustani classical musician, composer and concert flute player,
to thumb through the pages for a conversational review.
Did the encyclopaedia excite you? Any first thoughts?
Nelson: My first reaction was whether it would carry information on instruments. I didn't expect anything on musicians barring the top few that India venerates.
To my surprise, the volumes carry interesting content on musicians most of us don't know of; all exponents in their fields. Several of those who find a mention are still alive, which is good -- it proves that the books offer contemporary information too.
Jatanil: I thought, 'wow!', and I expected a 20-volume tome. It's good that the process of documentation has begun. I like the presentation and layout. It contains a lot of material on personalities from a music history spanning 500 years. I've probably heard of only 10 per cent of them!
Any particularly interesting bits?
Nelson: I found some rare photographs tracing the evolution of the sitar, which I was personally excited to find. It also carries descriptions of different musical cultures within India -- tribal and folk included, that once again, most readers may not know of thanks to our fixation with classical forms of music.
Jatanil: I came across a reference to Dadra; we traditionally know of it as taal. What I didn't know was that it is actually named after a semi-folk, semi-classical genre of music that developed in western India.
Is the book only for musicians?
Nelson: The thing about this encyclopaedia is that it isn't really meant for musicians. There's a lot on offer for the music lover, and while it's exhaustive, it is also concise. When you read something on the Internet and you come across something that you seek more information on, it's a question of clicking open another screen. Here, the cross referencing is a bit tough. The other thing I thought was missing was some sort of audio accompaniment to the encyclopaedia, like CD that gives you an idea of what an instrument sounds like.
Jatanil: This book will trigger a lot of research interest. There are a few gaps that may perhaps be apparent only to a musician. For instance, even on Wikipedia, a description of Shrutis -- the frequency of specific musical notes -- provides specific frequencies. The Encyclopaedia didn't. Nor did it refer to the full forms of Sa, Re, Ga, Ma in its description of these notes. Even Grove dictionary of music, which is the first point of research for any musician, lists other research work, and recordings that one can refer to.
Any contemporary Bollywood music references in here?
Jatanil: There was a mention of SD Burman and RD Burman.
Nelson: But no trace of Shiela or Munni.
The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India is available in all leading bookstores for Rs 9,950
- http://www.flipkart.com/books/0195650980 An advantage of living in India
But we have to rely on foreign publications for such a invaluable documentation of "centuries of Indian Music Knowledge"
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