Blog Post 5

Hindustani music is unlike any other music genre I have ever listened to… and I thought polka was peculiar. Listening to Ali Akbar Khan and his performance with Swapan Chowdhury in “in Rag Zila Kafi” was a whole new experience. There really is no distinct melody that stands out, there seems to be no climax. There are elements of North Indian Classical Music in this performance. Although the whole performance seems to sound sort of the same throughout the whole song it seems as if Ali Akbar Khan is improvising a lot and adding on his own ornamentations. His improvisation is based on raga – certain notes that he plays sounds different because he is sliding his finger across the fingerboard of the Sarod. Meter is very difficult to determine here, there are so many notes being played and the rhythm seems to be rather dynamic, not really a steady tempo – it isn’t just simple quarter notes and eighth notes. The meter seems to be made up of cycles of beat groups in systems, which is tala. Swapan Chowdhury accompanies him on some sort of drums using just his palms and fingers to intricate patterns to accompany Khan’s classical performance. There is also a man sitting behind Chowdhury and Khan playing an instrument that looks like a tanpura and accompanies the performance with a constant sounding pitch, or drone, of the tonic note and maybe another pitch. Overall I thought the performance was different, I suppose Sarods are the equivalent to guitars in our music culture.