Why Carnatic Music? | Hacker News Reader

Why Carnatic Music?

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98 pointsfractalb23 comments

By the very nature of Indian Classical music and its traditional style of performance, be it Carnatic or Hindustani, it is hard to create studio-grade records. There is heavy improvisation and musicians have opportunity to create quite unique performances each time they perform, even if the Raga is same. This is what makes it hard to re-create an Indian Classical music piece in a studio setting. And so, only well recorded live performances can offer the most authentic experience of Indian music. Here are some high quality recordings of live performances from some of the best artists of Carnatic music.

- From the NCPA Archives - M.S. Subbulakshmi - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/from-the-ncpa-archives/id9...

- From the NCPA Archives - Balamuralikrishna - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/masterworks-from-ncpa-arch...

Apart from the Ragas and Nuances in the music, the poetry in the music is scintillatingly beautiful too, exposing Indian Conception of God and philosophy. Saint Thyagaraja from 16th century is one of famous Carnatic music composers. Celebrating his compositions is one of the oldest and largest musical festival in the world called Thyagaraja Aradhana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyagaraja_Aradhana that happens once every year in Southern part of India, and its sister festival all across world including in Cleveland. If you are visiting India to experience its culture, then its music should be an essential experience you should be taking home. All major cities in South India will have Carnatic music events all year long. Delhi and other north Indian metros too have quite vibrant Carnatic music scene, though you have to really search to find events. Delhi on the other hand has year-long Hindustani music scene.

For the more curious, here is a course on Carnatic Music from IIT Madras - Appreciating Carnatic Music - https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/noc15_hs03/preview - it assumes no prerequisites and starts from very basics of sound. It exposes some of the young contemporary Carnatic musicians and their performances.

I'm not following, how does a piece being somewhat unique each time it's performed lead to a) harder to record in a studio setting and b) live performances provide authentic experiences? Are you saying that the audience of a live performance adds feedback that the artist can't replicate in isolation, or that the audiences own audio affects the performance, or both, or something else?

Perhaps that a recorded version of the song is the same each time you listen to it, whereas listening to multiple live performances of the same song will capture the improvisation/variance that is so important.

If that's true, then much of jazz music should have never translated on recordings. It also was not uncommon for multiple takes of the same song be recorded for jazz as well. I feel like that should apply here, unless there's another distinguishing factor.

Jazz (which I am more familiar with) is a reasonable analogy. And I agree. You should be able to capture a good studio performance just the way Ornette Coleman and Coltrane could.

One thing to note is that jazz has more structure. There is improvisation around that structure. Indian classical music is structured around rhythms and scales (and Carnatic music is microtonal) so it gets pretty out there.

recorded live performances were mentioned, but I could see how hearing multiple recordings of a particular song in a style that is known to change performance to performance could give you more appreciation, I'm just not sure how multiple recorded live performances differ from multiple studio recordings. Maybe the implication was that there are multiple recorded live performances for most popular artists compared to a single or very few studio recordings from that artist for a song, and so it's worth listening to the good live recordings to hear the variation?

Nitpicking - Thyagaraja was born in the 18th century and lived well into the 19th century. To put it in perspective, this is at least 100 years after the Johann Sebastian Bach.

The only Carnatic music I'm really familiar with is that of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Shankar

Can anyone familiar with the topic tell me if pieces such as Raga Aberi, Pancha Nadai Pallavi and the pieces on the 'Who's to Know' album are 'authentic' Carnatic classical music?

I've listened to (and enjoyed) some other Carnatic violinists but I find the tone of the more traditional violins a little hard to take - it's very thin and piercing to my ears - whilst Shankar's electric violin and very 'studio recorded' sound is something I find more accessible.

So - I'm curious if the melodic and structural elements in the above pieces are reasonably representative of the carnatic tradition.

The instrumentation is different from tradition (both tone-wise and the fact that he's using a double violin for Aberi), but for the most part the melodic and structural elements are fairly representative. The feel of the raga is definitely conveyed accurately.

That said, the pieces you mentioned are heavily focused on the improvisational elements like the alaapana and the kalpanaswaram. There are also more structured and lyrical songs and keerthanas that you'll see a lot of recordings of.

Thanks so much. This is exactly the kind of reply I was hoping for.

Is there anything you would recommend I listen to next?

Depends on what you're looking for. If you want to hear some of the more improvisational pieces, I like these two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUMGnUAVDeE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDsjQvt2g6o. In my opinion, finding live recordings of concerts gets you a lot of the playful and melodic aspects of the tradition. It's also helpful to listen to the same raga by multiple artists across songs to develop a feel for the emotion in the raga.

If you want to go for structured, sometimes more religious, songs, you can find good stuff on Spotify and YouTube. This (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqsAvDRjJ04) is one I like, sung by the same artist who performed Pi's Lullaby in Life Of Pi.

The improvisional stuff is definitely more what I was looking for.

Does this style of singing have anything in common to Qawwali? To my untutored ear it sounds not dissimilar to the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan I've heard - but I'm assuming that's closer to Hindustani music (at least geographically speaking)?

I suggest Madurai Mani Iyer's renditions if you are looking for expertly rendered (from a puritan's POV) and hugely entertaining introduction. Two sample songs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya5fDVfmx_g and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7shwQLX6DTA.

Qawwali is similar to accapella and thrives on a cyclic rendition (similar to nordic "Yoikking"). Thematically, it takes both God and Love as themes and treads softly. Most Carnatic songs are directly about God and builds on the listener's knowledge acquired elsewhere to bring "completion". An example is "Hecharikaga Rara" depends on you knowing the statue of Rama was lost in the River Cauvery and Thiagaraja, the composer finds it and welcomes the deity home)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti_%28band%29 is a great band and has some awesome musical pieces. What I find amazing about Carnatic music is how it compliments jazz pieces.

Its good to see people who were born and brought up in West have such an appreciation for Carnatic Music. Its a lovely music, for me a musical illiterate, Carnatic music is nostalgic. I grew up listening to Thyagaraja Kritis and Annamachari Kirtanas, the most sweetest of the lyrics and music.

This is an excellent article, I fully agree. I also think that the key to success is mastering one language instead of trying to know them all.

Yes some languages are similar to others and if you can write code with one, probably you will also be able to write some code with another. But it's not just about knowing the syntax, it's also very important to understand the compiler and everything related to that language to be able to write excellent code. You won't be succesful by using "best language" it's more important to understand the language you use well.

Team work is another thing that I also find very important. Working as a freelancer can be nice, but working with a great team is a lot better. It's not just about working on the same project, it's also about exchanging knowledge and trying to be as good as the other members of a team that makes team work great. I have always had the impression that my skills improved a lot more when working with others in a team.

That comment was probably supposed to have been posted in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10207681

oups ... yes, thx

Carnatic music is the original R&B.

As far as I can tell, R&B is firmly rooted in the western tradition and has stylistic influences from African American and Cuban music. R&B does not trace an origin back to Carnatic music, making Carnatic music not the original R&B.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passages_(Ravi_Shankar_and_Phi...

As interesting as that collaboration is, I'd like to point out that Ravi Shankar is a part of the Hindustani classical tradition. The distinction between Hindustani and Carnatic music is one of the themes of the original article.

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