Orality in Indian Music

by Kelly Moody

I’m in the Indian Music Ensemble here at CNU, and while taking this class and that one in unison, it has made me analyze Indian Music in light of the orality/literacy dichotomy. I took band all throughout middle and high school so I have knowledge of Western music coming into this class, a highly literate, writing based music for the most past. Indian music is just the opposite. I had trouble 1st, I wanted to see the notes in front of me, be able to read, recite, memorize, like I had learned before. But Indian Music is highly improvisional and highly listening based. When learning instruments in Indian Music, you learn to sing 1st. You learn pitch and harmony, its all in your head. The way this music originated, was not literate based, it coorelated with religion, sacred sounds, uncommunicable feelings and emotions, the cycles of day and night and moods, it was all a kind of intuitive insyncness—ability to connect with the mood and sounds of the raag (like the scales, or key) and portray it in a passionate exuberant manner. I feel like Western music and Indian music work on two different spectrums. Western music is highly structured and objective, only on occasion does one improv, it is mostly reading sheet music, and practicing the unision of all of the instruments, and the large voice that it creates together, the focus is the sheet, the writing. I’m not trying to give Western music a bad rap by any means, it is just done in a different way, connection comes from objectivity, this kind of music is like how art is experienced for literate people. In Indian music, a person is given a raag which is a set of notes, each raag is played a specific way, symbolized a certain mood, and a certain time of day. It also has rules on how the notes flow from one to the other, like characteristics of that raag. When ones plays it, they can stir it up, manipulate it, open up a world with it, in any way they want, but still adhering to the mood of the raag, creating within a flexible malleable structure. You also have taals, which are the beats or rhythms that the tablas (a kind of drum) play while the other instruments (sitar, voice, others) play the raag. Certain taals coorealate with certain raags(though they can change around), and they usually stick to a certain beat, but add their own creative spurts according to the mood that is created by the relationship between the beat and the raag. No two Indian performances are alike. You also never know how long they will be, sometimes the mood sends them into another creative world, and the musicians can play back and forth between the notes and each other for long periods of time.