Musical knowledge is largely implicit. It is acquired without awareness of its complex rules, through interaction with a large number of samples during musical enculturation. Whereas several studies explored implicit learning of mostly abstract and less ecologically valid features of Western music, very little work has been done with respect to ecologically valid stimuli as well as non-Western music. The present study investigated implicit learning of modal melodic features in North Indian classical music in a (...) realistic and ecologically valid way. It employed a cross-grammar design, using melodic materials from two modes that use the same scale. Findings indicated that Western participants unfamiliar with Indian music incidentally learned to identify distinctive features of each mode. Confidence ratings suggest that participants' performance was consistently correlated with confidence, indicating that they became aware of whether they were right in their responses; that is, they possessed explicit judgment knowledge. Altogether our findings show incidental learning in a realistic ecologically valid context during only a very short exposure, they provide evidence that incidental learning constitutes a powerful mechanism that plays a fundamental role in musical acquisition. (shrink)

Finding the Raga is more than a book that tries to make sense of the raga, of Indian classical music, and of how Indian music challenges Western notions of what music might be. It is a work of self-inquiry, as might be expected from Amit Chaudhuri, a musician who is also a novelist; a novelist who is also a critic and essayist; a trained and recorded performer in the Indian classical vocal tradition who was (...) also, once, a guitarist and songwriter in the American folk music style and is now a composer and recorded performer in experimental music. Each one of these undertakings and selves signifies turns at different points in life, and each turn and change of direction brings a fresh perspective on music, writing, and what it means to take on and do these things. No category-Indian, Western-is a given in this book. Partly a record of one of the most important turns in the author's life, toward North Indian music, and of its long aftermath, Finding the Raga is also part autobiography set in 1970s Bombay, part essay, and part detailed analysis of how we might grasp the conceptual underpinnings as well as the experience of music. It explores the different ways in which music relates to the world-whether it's through representation or evocation, as in Western music, or through the raga being sung at different times of day and in different seasons, as in Indian music-and also tries to understand what the act of listening involves for individuals and cultures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thinking Musically, and: Teaching Music GloballyJames AckmanBonnie C. Wade, Thinking Musically ( Oxford University Press: New York, 2004)and Patricia Shehan Campbell, Teaching Music Globally ( Oxford University Press: New York, 2004).Thinking Musically and Teaching Music Globally, the first two volumes in The Global Music Series, for which Wade and Shehan are general editors, offer concisely stated themes that permeate their texts and the authors' (...) extensive use of cross-referencing provides music educators at all levels the resources to achieve their educational and musical goals.Thinking Musically begins with Bonnie Wade's statement of the purposes of the book, which are to offer "a basis for the contrast and comparison of diverse 'musics,'" "provide a set of unifying topics that recur in multiple case studies," and "frame and complement a series of cases studies in The Global Music Series."1 Wade states unequivocally that Thinking Musically is ultimately a study of musical practices and ideas from around the world and that at its core, Thinking Musically "is a teaching book."2 A unifying theme throughout the volume is the view of how people constantly make music meaningful in their lives, including how music functions within a social group or particular society.3Thinking Musically includes a fifty-nine track CD containing musical examples that are designed for inclusion in the lessons and projects outlined in the [End Page 81] series. These provide aural illustrations of the topics discussed in each chapter. Activities include musical examples chosen by students which relate to the topic. The first chapter, "Thinking About Music," is based upon the concept of furthering students' awareness of musics beyond their everyday comfort level. Wade states that music is a process and not simply a method of organized sounds or compositions,4 and discusses music in terms of sound, values, and aesthetics.A striking aspect of this chapter is Wade's in-depth discussion of the contextual meaning of music within various cultures. Using such exotic examples as Central Javanese gamelan and a Navajo work song,5 she explores the rich variety of aural experiences available to students. The suggested activities exhibit Wade's understanding of educational philosophy and her awareness of what educators require in structuring appropriate musical experiences for their students.In Chapter 2, "Thinking About Instruments," Wade examines the roles of musical within a particular society and the topic of cultural diffusion.6 A succession of examples of instruments and musicians emphasizes her point that music has historically been interwoven with culture and society. Suggested activities include identifying extra musical links with instruments7 as a method of increasing students' awareness of music in daily life events, "the nature of the musical roles (of) musicians," and the meaning of musical terms (for example, soloist, accompanist) within the context of culture. Examples are drawn from the familiar, such as "New Orleans front-line," and the exotic, a North Indian singer.8Chapters 3–5 ("Thinking About Time," "Thinking About Pitch," and "Thinking About Structure") are devoted to the basic elements of music. Musical time is explored through its origins and function within specific cultures. Again, Wade uses an assortment of musical examples drawn from throughout the world in order to emphasize her points.Both the strongest and weakest aspects of the author's presentation style are on display in these three chapters. Wade has included an abundance of detailed suggested activities pertaining to various rhythmic concepts, such as Southeast Asian colotomic structure and Korean changdan, replete with detailed charts for presenting the material. Yet the amount of detail included borders on minutiae and the resulting format risks information overload for both teacher and student. A separate activities booklet might help reduce some of the clutter and also allow teachers to select more easily the concepts and activities they would like to use for a particular class session or unit.In chapter 6, "Thinking about Issues," Wade examines some arguably contentious topics that impact contemporary music education, including acculturation, gender, and "global versus local,"9 where her pithy assertions are eloquently presented. Student activities are designed to demonstrate the interconnectedness of musics among nations and communities as well as authenticity in their own cultures.10... (shrink)

This dissertation centres on philosophical attitudes presented by North Indian classical musicians in relation to the concept and experience of rāga improvisation. In Hindustāni music, there is a dynamic tension ideology and pragmatism, devotion and entertainment, fixity and improvisational freedom, and cognition and visceral experience. On one hand, rāga is an embodied methodological template for the creation of music. On the other hand, rāga improvisation is conceptualised as a path to metaphysical experience and as an evocation (...) of an ineffable divine presence. A masterful rendition of rāga is both a re-enactment of a systematic prescribed formula and a spontaneous flow of consciousness. This study presents these apparent dichotomies to highlight ideological concerns, while simultaneously contextualising philosophical idealism in relation to pragmatic realities. A central paradigm is the manner in which pragmatic concerns are elevated in status and given spiritual significance. The dissertation begins with a view into historical and religious context. The discussion continues with a speculative investigation positing co-relations between Hindustāni music and central tenets of Indian philosophy, considering how rāga improvisation may manifest as a philosophy of sound. The study then explores the concept of rāga, a modal and conceptual construct that forms the heart of Indian classical music. The final three sections ground the subject of spiritual ideology within the life experience of Hindustāni musicians: ‘Transmission’ looks at the learning and enculturation process, which encapsulates values intrinsic to the ethos of Hindustāni music culture. ‘Practice’ explores the discipline, science and experience of musical practice, revealing core ideological concerns connecting spirituality to musical experience; and ‘Performance’ examines the live presentation of rāga improvisation, and the relationship between music as ‘entertainment’ and music as ‘devotion’. Both ethnographic and musicological, this research is the culmination of various fieldtrips to India, extensive interviews with Hindustāni musicians, fifteen year’s sitār training, and the study of relevant musicological and philosophical texts. (shrink)

This autobiographical, sociological, and musicological essay, written for a symposium on xenophilia, concerns how the love of a foreign culture can lead to a better understanding and renewed love of one’s own. The author, a Japanese musicologist, studied Hindustani music with North Indian masters, both Hindu and Muslim, and concluded that it is the shared concept of a “sound-god” that brings them together on stage in peaceful celebration with audiences from religious communities often at odds. The author’s (...) training in ethnomusicology began in India in 1992, immediately after the violent demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya by militant Hindus, but even at that time she found no trace of such belligerence in the Hindustani musical world. Years later, while conducting research on the Shinto music rituals of her own culture, she discovered a little-known imperial and aristocratic cult of Myō’onten, a Japanese form of the Hindu goddess of music, Saraswati, who is presently an object of devotion for both Hindu and Muslim musicians in North India. This essay, based on nearly three decades of research in India and Japan, offers some answers to a question raised repeatedly in the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia: What is the source of the xenophilic impulse and the power that sustains it? (shrink)

Roger North's The Musicall Grammarian 1728, first published in 1990, is a treatise on musical eloquence in all its branches. Of its five parts, I and II, on the orthoepy, orthography and syntax of music, constitute a grammar; III and IV, on the arts of invention and communication, form a rhetoric; and V, on etymology, consists of a history. Two substantial chapters of commentary introduce the text, which is edited here for the first time in its entirety: Jamie (...) Kassler places his treatise within the broader context not only of North's musical and non-musical writings but also their relation to the intellectual ferment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Mary Chan describes physical and textual aspects of the treatise as evidence for North's processes of thinking about musical thinking. (shrink)

A recent surge of research has begun to examine music participation and well-being; however, a particular challenge with this work concerns theorizing around the associated well-being benefits of musical participation. Thus, the current research used Self-Determination Theory to consider the potential associations between basic psychological needs (competence, relatedness, and autonomy), self-determined autonomous motivation, and the perceived benefits to well-being controlling for demographic variables and the musical activity parameters. A sample of 192 Australian residents (17-85, Mage = 36.95), who were (...) currently participating in a musical activity at the time, completed an online questionnaire. Results indicated that females were more likely to perceive benefits to their well-being; and that how important an individual considers music in their life was positively related to perceived well-being. Importantly, the analyses also revealed that the basic needs of competency and relatedness were related to overall perceived well-being as well as specifically social, cognitive, and esteem dimensions of well-being. Autonomous motivation demonstrated significant associations with both an overall well-being score as well as four of five specific well-being subscales measured. Collectively, the findings indicate that Self-Determination Theory offers a useful theoretical framework to understanding the relationship between musical participation and well-being. Further, the pattern of findings reiterates the positive associations between musical participation and one’s psychosocial well-being, with broad implications for people involved in the facilitation of musical activity. (shrink)

This article is focussed on the study of a particular case of shift in religious values embodied in two seventeenth-century North Indian compilations of hagiographical narratives, elaborated within...

In this article I analyse the structural and cultural conditions of low-caste women's political agency in urban north India. Whereas in Western feminist political theory, the sexual division of labour is considered to be a key constraint for women's political participation, I show how this has a secondary relevance in the context analysed. I argue that issues concerning the division of labour are intertwined with and subject to those of male consent and support for women's activities. I illustrate how (...) it is often the supposedly ‘oppressive’ household boundaries rather than alternative outer spaces that, under a series of enabling circumstances, initiate women's political activities. Against this backdrop, I show how Indian women activists’ political agency is shaped by men's role, and how agency's relational nature is embedded in women's lifecycles, everyday practices and cultural expectations; in essence, in overall gendered agency. Comparative analyses between Western and non-Western models of political participation and discourse have only just begun. In this respect, I contribute to this nascent field in the following directions: not only do the arguments I present in this article challenge the individualistic Western subject of political action, but they also complicate the idea of the resulting empowerment as a culturally constructed process whose understanding arises from the dialectics between insider and outsider values. (shrink)

This inquiry explores the terms yogakshema, sampradaya, and manodharma sangita, as well as theories and practices of improvisation and innovation in music and other fields of Hindu culture. It considers the ways Hindu traditions play out the human contradiction—that life must always combine both old and new; the ways improvising is part of the Hindu frameworks in Vedic chanting, and the performance of ragas and other cultural activities in India. Both set patterns and nuanced interpretations in literary and musical (...) works present processes which suggest models of progress and renewal in various fields of human endeavor. I am unpacking the scholar V. Raghavan’s ideas about how traditions in Indian culture can adapt creatively in time. (shrink)

Background: Digital technologies such as smartphones, tablets and laptops have become a mainstay part of nearly every household and are gradually being integrated into the lives of both adults and children. We aim to determine the extent of exposure and usage of digital technology by children in their daily activities and to understand the transition in technological preferences and attitudes over the generation. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 400 children aged 05-12 years living in Prayagraj city of Uttar (...) Pradesh, India, using a pretested interview schedule. Descriptive and bivariate statistics were used for data analysis. The phenomenological method was used to understand respondents’ viewpoints about their preferences and attitudes related to technology. Results: An overwhelming majority of households have television followed by digital cameras, laptops, tablets, kindle and video games such as Playstation. Nearly half of children began to use digital devices from the age of 7 to 8 years. Nearly two-third of the children learnt to use digital devices on their own, and about 12% of them reported often practicing media multitasking. Over the generation, differences are noted in terms of possession, use and perception regarding digital technology. Conclusion: The availability of media content on such devices influences the screen time of children of all ages. The study underscores the importance of parental monitoring and devising a policy to regulate the ownership of digital devices and to reduce screen time to less than two hours per day, especially during early childhood. (shrink)

This book is a selection of papers from a conference which took place at the University of Keele in July 1982. The conference was an extraordinarily enjoyable one, and we would like to take this opportunity of thanking all participants for helping to make it so. The conference was intended to allow scholars working on different aspects of symbolic behaviour to compare findings, to look for common ground, and to identify differences between the various areas. We hope that it was (...) successful in these aims: the assiduous reader may judge for himself. Several themes emerged during the course of the conference. Some of these were: 1. There is a distinction to be made between those symbol systems which attempt, more or less directly, to represent a state of affairs in the world (e. g. language, drawing, map and navigational skill) and those in which the representational function is complemented, if not overshadowed, by properties of the symbol system itself, and the systematic inter-relations that symbols can have to one another (e. g. music, mathematics). The distinction is not absolute, for the nature of all symbolic skills is, in part, a function of the structure of the symbolic system employed. Nonetheless, this distinction helps us to understand some common acquisition difficulties, such as that experienced in mathematics, where mental manipulation of symbols can go awry if a child assumes too close a correspondence between mathematical symbols and the world they represent. 2. (shrink)

Bringing Flowers HomeWe try to put a bandage on the wound,offering a vague apology:Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.Towers turn out to have been built on sand.Regimes collapse. No use in asking whywe ripped the bandage off that bleeding wound.An earthquake followed by a hurricane,fires, floods: they've passed some of us by.Us. And who is we? And what is home?Last week an enormous yellow moonhung low in a corner of the sky.Beauty is no bandage for the wound,hole in (...) the future much too big to mendor even to imagine, though we tryto camouflage it, bringing flowers home.You said, when we were talking of the end,that no one teaches us to say goodbye,or how to ease the bandage from the wound.Forgive me, death. I brought these flowers home.Moving the PianoCompact, gleaming, black and white,this sturdy Yamaha uprightstood staunchly in one room for yearsuntil, maneuvered through several doorstoday by two young slender menand up a ramp into their van,it ventured briefly out into the world again.The change of space, the space of change:the walls look naked, empty, strange.Heavy has given way to light.Habitual soliditytoo familiar to seeyields to possibilitytoo unfamiliar to see.Late and early, early, late,end, beginning—all are swirledinto a mist that veils the world.The black and white of status quoblends to a color I don't know,transition that I cannot name,but I salute it all the same.Goodbye, piano, and hello.So where is the piano going?Where will it find another life,music and memories unpackedin an unfolding second act?North Carolina, near a riverwhose stream, like time, is always flowing.My son lives there with his wife.Beloved, nothing is forever.You can't step twice into this life.Nap at Stony PointMy cousin and my friendon their respective recent deathbedsslid from my mind. I noticedthe scarlet splash of a cardinal perched on a cannonon a bluff above the Hudson.I lay down on a picnic table,sun on my face, five turkey vulturescircling overhead, and closed my eyes.And when I opened them I felt as pleasedas if I had completed some needful taskinstead of having forgottenhow my friend in January and my cousin in March,both of them alert and wry and tranquil,had faced what each of them clearly saw approaching—more, had recognized and greeted it,instead of ignoring it by looking through it,the way some people, even iftheir office is two doors down the hall,look right through you, pretending not to see you.Or maybe they don't see youany more than one envisions deathon a sunny April afternoon.The Last Lecture HallTheaters that were never ours,classrooms empty and refill.Nor do the trees belong to us.We cross the stage and disappearor venture in among the treesand lose ourselves there.Feverish categories blur.Genre distinctions: what for?The empty theater becomesa lecture hall. A classroom morphsinto a forest murmuringwith voices. Words pelt down like rainor rise like mist and dissipate.The rustling trees swell to a roar.But they were never still.Theater, classroom, maple, fir:feverish categories blur,presences pressing through the veilof the phenomenal;a leopard padding down the aisle.Tiger-masked students fill the seatsof the amphitheater.The old professor, looking outover the upturned faces, said“You are all allegoricalfigures to me. I will not learnyour names.” Did the students laugh?Tragedy, satire, comedy:genres are deciduous.Modes blur, leaves spin and fall.The leaves of memory seemed to makeA mournful rustling in the dark(Longfellow, “The Fire of Driftwood”).Lights go on in the theater.Class is over. We stumble out.The GatesWhen I woke up I had walked through a gate.I looked around the room—trickle or torrent, stepping into time—and bent my head to drink at a black stream.I look around a roomthick with the dust of after and before.Am I meant to drink from this black stream?My lips are dry,thick with the crust of after and before,gate of ivory and gate of horn.My lips are dry, I'm thirsty.Heat, cold, fire, snow, sun.Gate of ivory and gate of horn:to cross a threshold ends one story(firelight; snow squeaking; winter sun)and begins another.To cross a threshold ends one story(ever after? or a transformation?)and begins anotherthere is no law compelling us to enter.Ever after or a transformation.Torrent, trickle: we set foot in time,but there's no law compelling us to enterstory once we've latched the gate of dream.FilamentsYour past is thickening. You can seeits filaments, as carefullyyou begin to part the strands(they're all connected) with both hands,and clear a path. Now warilyenter the web—not all the way,but toward some kind of clarity.We have been rightly taught that wecan't finish, but must do, the work.Partway through the leafy murk,crisscrossing dapple of the trees,so tough and so precarious,you find yourself in the dawn air,the circle's center everywhere.Along the PromenadeReading a book about transitioningin the twenty-first-century meaning of the wordblends with plans for my son's upcoming weddingand scraps of conversation overheardat the Japanese-themed street fair today.Somnambulists along the promenadefloat in the warm currents of Broadway,eat talk look linger in the sun and shade.Then to the park: October leaves still green(climate change or merely Indian summer?).Snatched memories, I catch them on the wing:Samos Septembers, pomegranate tree,lemon tree, okra, a chameleon,the little summer of Saint Dimitri,they called it. All this happened; but to me?Streams of conversation flowing by.The sound artist described his work like this(if work is the right word): “Accidentallyuploading seemingly private messages,”which describes, also, dreams and poetry,the drifting crowd, incessant carousel,city and weather, time and holiday,all lived, palped, tasted, tested, overheard.Somnambulists along the promenadehave set up booths, their dreams... Bookending my dawn dream: symmetricalsoaking sponges dripping... DNA?Destiny, temperament, personality:the cards we're dealt and that we have to play,except we now can change them gradually.Transition: he or she or rather they,constructed, deconstructed, rearranged,the tarot spread of genealogy,inheritance as aleatoric play.We walked west to Eleventh Avenue,drawn by rumors of Ad Reinhardt's blue,which buzzed and throbbed. Stand still: my head was spinning.Allusions to water or to sky,dense, deep, alarming, ending or beginning... I sat awhile and watched the crowd glide by,enchanted promenaders all drawn inon the exhibition's last dayby the silence's cerulean humming.And then they climbed the stairs, and so did we,to lighter textures on an upper floorwhere Ruth Asawa's baskets in midairweightlessly demonstrated gravity,twigs, trees, crowns, bubbles dancing in white space.Next week my class will read “On Being Ill.”“Blogs,” I'll tell them, is the word we nowuse, not “essay,” for the moving mind,that saunterer who takes note and leaves behindand doubles back and ponders and regretsamidst the wash of vision, the flowand tidal pull of what we see and know,what we've dreamed, what we have said and heard,the thrumming colors and the floating crowd,as if the bubbly brew of sunny dayand anxious dreams could somehow all be caughtup in one enormous, one all-encompassing word. (shrink)

North American Indians have often been perceived as violent, bloodthirsty human beings. The horrified fascination exerted by this violence on the European imagination takes hold of all historical accounts and lies at the heart of the smallest social productions. The sports games, whose imposing corpus is intriguing to the colonists, are also perceived as a cultural element of this gratuitous violence, a biological one, even, as inherent to their “wild nature”. And yet, far from being instinctual, this violence takes (...) on a ritual and propitiatory dimension that is at the same time at the service of private interests, but also, and especially so, of tribal ones. By taking possession of the lacrosse game through its institutionalization, Canadians hope to control the violence of this emblematic game-ritual. Despite a deep transformation of the game, the instinctual manifestations in the human relationships that are supposed to decline through the internalization of restrictions subsist. The original game still seems to express itself through this violence-based relationship, no matter how codified. Drawing on archives ranging from missiological writings to anthropological documents, as well as on recent academic studies, this article tries to dispel the defining halo of a violence sometimes confused with distinct forms of aggressivity. (shrink)

Chile's ‘Indigenous Peoples Legislation’ goes back to Colonial time, when the Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown sought to ensure access to Indian souls and labour. This chapter offers an analysis of the processes that led to changes in Chile's Indigenous Peoples Legislation, which finally granted legal recognition to the Chilean indigenous population. Focusing on the Aymara of Arica, the ethnographic analysis reveals how a dominant group has tried to impose itself as the core of the newly born state, (...) by formally denying the ethnic heterogeneity of the population. The chapter analyses the Aymara's leaders' struggle for the assertion of their Indian identity, by looking at their participation in the political processes that eventually led to the 1993 Indigenous law. Finally, it examines the consequences of the implementation of the law for present-day Aymara leadership in North Chile. (shrink)

Though Indian courts at present are riddled with issues concerning music on the copyright front, significance of another aspect of music based on its essence is largely lost and unexplored. Though courts refer to popular songs in judgments, they are few and far in between. The understanding is that law today is neither poetic nor musical. Music, however, expresses mankind’s faith, hope and aspiration. The use of popular music by Indian courts to write creatively, (...) though not necessarily improve the judgment is restricted and largely unexplored. This paper proposes to explore the dimensions of labour movement through music and the role of law in the making of India as a nation. The association of political dissent through music and the determination of the nation state to procure a stake in the management of the popular music that is sought to belong to itself will be the key theme for understanding the songs that make a nation. Beginning from the struggle for India’s independence to modern day labour movements using music for critique and promoting the vernacular culture are the essence of the paper. Historically, the role of music is central for workers in any labour movement worldwide and is now explored in the Indian context, beginning from the early years of struggle in the nineteenth century to the year of independence in 1947. Recent movements including the protests against profiteering and displacement of persons will also form part of the discussions in this paper. The roles of music and the law have periodically been addressed in the scholarly legal arena but the topic has seldom been explored in-depth from a labour perspective, as paper ventures to do. (shrink)

Classic ethnological study of the idea that Native Americans and other cultures in distant parts of the world have created identical ritual patterns to express their separate discoveries of a single insight. "For anyone who wishes a good, readable technical introduction to the spiritual side of the Indian, this is the book."-San Francisco Chronicle. For students and general readers interested in Native American thought. Notes. Index.

Among Western philosophers, Schopenhauer is one of the few who seeks to clarify the nature of music, and its effects upon us. He claims that music is the most important of all the arts; and he argues that music is a kind of metaphysics that allows us to experience the ultimate reality of the world. In this essay, I evaluate Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music in the context of his overarching philosophy. Then I discuss the relevance of (...) traditional Indian philosophies -- including Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism -- which Schopenhauer recognized as forerunners to his own philosophical system. Here, the discussion of Om is particularly important. Schopenhauer’s discussion of music is insightful. But his insistence on the priority of the will is problematic. I suggest another perspective on willing, ultimate reality and music which follows the classical Indian philosophies that he affirms. (shrink)