I think the key to this music is not to let yourself get tied up into knots over trying to discern elements that are beyond your capacity to appreciate. Not being native to the Indian subcontinent or part of that culture, there are obviously aspects of Asad's performance that will escape us. On the other hand we can still appreciate the emotional intensity and the passion of the music as much as we would in any other performance. In the end, music is still music, and no matter how alien the instrument being played or how foreign the ideals behind a song's conception might be, we are still able to appreciate it for those things that music stirs within all of us, no matter who we are or where we come from.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
1 - Bryan McKay
There is a valuable lesson in this end of this review that I wish more people would learn. Sometimes understanding a new genre of music requires some learning, but people seem resistant to anything that doesn't immediately appeal, even if once you understand the internal logic of the thing, it unfolds almost instantly.
Indian classical music is one of the most easily stereotyped genres of "world" music, which unfortunately has closed a lot of people off to appreciating it, even though it still probably has more fans than many other non-Western forms due to the proliferation of watered-down post-Shankar rock collaborations.
Hell, this is a lesson that ought to be applied to Western music as well. People listen to classical music as soothing background music and fail to ever understand the complexity and emotional range within. The same goes for jazz. A lot of people listen to big band/swing jazz and reject anything that comes close to free jazz, shutting themselves off to a whole wealth of melodic and harmonic expression and real emotion in the process.
2 - munnduss
Western music-CLASSICAL music is mostly based on MAJOR keys-connoting LENEAR STYLE; wheres the INDIAN TRADITION is based on MINOR keys-connoting-NON-LEANEAR=EMOTING QUALITY; it is a feel based composition; sort of like JAZZ, but with definate structured parameters and RYTHEMIC PATTERNS, with a severe PRECISION.Don't try to figure it out; it is not an intelectual pursuite; open-up and let your mind wonder. Flow with it and once you enjoy a melody and rythemic pattern; you will be then be able to learn the construct and performance rules of a given RAGA.
3 - Mario
well said Bryan