Rocking the Ragas
The joy of crossing cultures solo from Afro-American to Indo-Pakistani
It came from a passing remark in a campus hallway. I’d been representing the humanities on a committee that included a member from each university department. In the hallway, one committee colleague from the College of Business introduced me to another, mentioning the World Music course I had introduced into the curriculum.
Turns out, the second colleague, a finance professor, was also a poet. He mentioned that some of this poetry was being set to raga music and would be performed as part of a North Indian recital that weekend. He invited me. Thrilled, I attended.
As the crowd milled around, buzzing with excitement anticipating the new work, it was clear I was the only person in the Indo-Pakistani audience that was not from the culture. BTW, this happens a lot when you begin your trek into music of the wider world. Since much of my travel is solo and, as a woman, I’m not seen as a threat, I’ve often chanced upon experiences I feel sure wouldn’t have happened had I had a travel partner, like that time in the countryside outside Milan Italy at a family liqueur business where the family invited me to join them in their lunchtime break for freshly cooked pasta.
Everyone was welcoming, but peered, curious about my interest. Most probably thought it was superficial.
This was understandable because the performances of non-Western music in the U.S. are commonly shortened if the performance has been widely advertised outside the culture. I’ve seen this at Japanese Kabuki performances in New York and at Indonesian Gamelan concerts in Houston as well.
But in their own countries, most non-Western cultures see a musical performances as a full-evening, 4–6 hour event, with a meal or sizeable snack included. Interestingly, this is exactly how Western music was until the 20th century.
Typical Italian theatrical productions in the 17th-century included five-act plays, musical interludes, a banquet, and dancing afterwards. One all-Beethoven concert in 1808 was four hours long, including two symphonies, a piano concerto, choral works in German and Latin, an Italian aria, and a piano fantasy Beethoven himself improvised. Performances of traditional arts in Asia still follow this tradition of lengthy works.
Back to the concert.
As with traditional ragas, the concert featured only three players — a singer, a drummer, and a drone to keep the fundamental pitch stable. As the performance proceeded, and I started using the traditional hand gestures (in concept, similar to a conductor in Western music beating a meter’s pattern) that outline the rhythmic patterns called “tala” for some ragas, I noticed people gently glancing over and smiling. It was clear that they understood that I was not there to make some intercultural statement, but to truly and sincerely enjoy the music, one of the world’s great classical traditions.
At the end, my cultural slip started showing as people twice my age easily rose from the floor, while I strained to hobble to my feet. They chuckled and so did I. Time to get back to my morning yoga.
Since then, I have been invited to several Indian music concerts and some of the audience began to come to my Western classical concerts as well. This happens a lot as well. Once your interest is known, people will continue to contact you and you will find that your understanding of the cultural context of their music and their understanding of yours will grow and flourish. (Remind me to tell you sometime about my experience playing with Indonesian gamelan musicians on an 18th-century Western flute.)
For more on my musical adventures and explorations, see:
