Music in South Asia

India

Hindustani Classical – Most Americans have at least heard instruments that play this kind of Indian music. The Beatles began using sitar and tabla (see instruments section) in their music after visiting north India in the 1960s, and Ravi Shankar performed with his sitar at Woodstock. Nowadays pop and rock musicians, and even Christian artists, are using sitar or tabla sometimes in their recordings. This type of music prevails in north India, a region that saw many invasions from the Middle East, Persia and the Moghuls over the centuries. Hindustani classical music shows influences from these other places and can easily be fused with other styles from around the world.

A performance of pure Hindustani classical music is a different experience for most Western listeners. Each song, whether sung or played, is based on a raga, or a scale of notes that comes with a set of rules, such as how the musician goes up and down in a song and even when in the day or year is the raga played. Some ragas are only supposed to be played in the morning or evening, or only during the rainy season. Each raga can make up many tunes within these rules, but the song usually starts out very slowly with no rhythm. It builds when a tabla enters playing a rhythm and eventually gets faster and more complex to a speedy ending that shows the skills of the vocalists and/or instrumentalists who are performing. Compositions can last 30 minutes or longer. Each song has a raga and a tala – a rhythm with a basic pattern that provides structure. The words are usually in Hindi or Urdu.

Some believe it is similar to jazz because improvisation plays a big part in its performance, but the musicians must be extremely careful to keep the rules of the raga. Though many pieces reflect a Hindu spirituality, some are love songs and others are simply vocalizing exercises. Some people believe a god or spirit embodies each raga, so many performers believe they must become part of that raga in order to release the power within it.

Carnatic Classical – Though this is found mostly in south India nowadays, it is probably the oldest and purest type of Indian classical music there is. Carnatic instruments are mostly different from Hindustani instruments. The veena is the most common stringed instrument, and the mridangam is the most common percussion instrument. Improvisation plays a part, but compositions tend to be more fixed, unlike Hindustani. The pieces are usually much more devotional and spiritual in nature and are sung in one of the south Indian languages (Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, or Malayalam).

Film (Bollywood) – If you tune into a typical Indian radio station, most likely you will hear a lot of this. Most films made in India include song and dance numbers that become hit songs and videos on radio and television. Though some are very Western in the instruments they use, many are semi-classical. They use classical instruments like the sitar and tabla and others, but have simpler melodies and rhythms. Some show regional influences, like Punjabi music, which is very danceable and sometimes includes lots of drums.  Most Bollywood actors and actresses prefer to lip-sync on top of songs recorded by other singers, called playback singers. Some of the more popular playback singers have sung thousands of film songs in their long careers, including sisters Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, who are both elderly but still often can be heard singing in the places of actresses in their twenties and thirties!

Folk and Adivasi – In a land of hundreds of people groups and scores of languages, the music people make sounds very different from one region to another. It’s impossible to cover every type of music within these two names. “Adivasi” means tribal and consists of the music of all of the small tribes that exist outside India’s caste system. Folk music appears all the time in Indian daily life. At festivals, music from percussion ensembles, single instrumentalists, and small groups always occurs. Weddings often employ brass bands. Snake charmers permeate touristy areas. One caste of musicians, called the Bauls, inspired by religious mysticism, passionately performs around the country wherever their services are needed.

Use the menu to the left to learn more about
music in other South Asia countries.