India’s Instrument Contribution to World Music

As my title says, I would like to discribe about musical instruments that are originated from India and is now being  a part of global music. I would also like to focus mainly on five instruments one by one that have really paved its way into global music. These instruments has the uniqness to represent their origin mainly by the way they sound. They are :

1. Tabla

Image taken from : http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecassettesworld/

Tabla is the most famous percusion instrument in India. It is also beleived that tablas are used mainly for classical and carnatic genres of music. But the Indian music industry started using this instrument for the songs in the films to add more color to it. Now in the current trend, tablas are used to create a fusion of western and classical that sounds unique. Some of the best tabla players are Ustad Zakir Hussain, Taranath Rao, Vijay Ghate, Talvin Singh and so on. The video of Ustad Zakir Hussain one of the best tablist below gives a clear idea about the tone , style and variations used in tabla.

 

 

2. Mridhangam

 

Image taken from : http://www.flickr.com/photos/24164132@N05/

The mridangam belongs to the percussion family and has been played by Indians for more than 2000 years. It is famous for its distinctive buzzing sound and is used extensively for clasical dance performances which is the traditional dance in India called Bharadhanatiyam. Even mridhangam was also used as a weapon to compose a fusion track between classical and western. Pazhani Subramanya Pillai, Palghat Mani Iyer, RAMANATHAPURAM  C  S  MURUGABHOOPATHI, UMAYALPURAM  K  SIVARAMAN, and KARAIKUDI  R  MANI are some of the best mridangam players in India. The video below shows a fusion of western drum and amridangam.

 

3. Sitar

 

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The most popular string instrument from India is the sitar. String instruments have gained popularity because strings are considered to be the best accompaniment to singing, a prime element of Indian music. But now a days sitar is said to be more of an western instrument. It is used very effectively to change the overall mood of the song. One of the world famous sitar player is “Ravi Shankar” from India. The video below is the track composed by music director A.R.Rahman for the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” which fetched him Oscar award and the sitar played in the performance is by Asad Khan.

 

4. Harmonium

 

Image taken from : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sathyadeepmusicals/

The harmonium  is an wind instrument by nature. The basic working of a harmonium is, a wooden box in which air is trapped with the help of bellows. There are normally two to three chambers in which metal reeds are fixed; the sound is produced when the air is forced out of the reeds. The working of the reeds is controlled by the white and black keys on the surface of the instrument which looks same like an keyboard or an piano. It is a constant companion for most ghazal type of singers which is quite famous in India. The video below gives an clear idea about the use of harmonium in more of an indian style.

 

5. Shenai

 

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The shenai belongs to the woodwind family of instruments of India. It has double reeds to produce that characteristic vibrating and unique sound. The shenai is capable of producing a sound very similar to the human voice. The melody of shenai forms a integral part of music at Indian marriages. The normal shenai is about 20 inches long. It was one of the most commonly used instruments in tamil cine industries and still has its own name.  

My Identity in The Digital World.

Hi everyone,

As we all know now we have entered in the Digital world where everyone have their own  identity in different ways. We can say that due to this drastic development in the field of digital identity in the recent years the life style of the people has changed a lot and has moved to a higher standard. I am sure that we all are blessed to be in the middle of such an age because we have all the things that we want in our hands. This has also made sure that we are in regular contact with the happenings in and around the world. In my case, Digital Identity has helped me to change a lot over the years and has also enhanced me now to get more contacts with people who are in good level in my industry.

The first digital identity account that I had for my own was in the Google accounts. This account was first created not because of my interest, but I was literally in a situation to have an e-mail account for myself because wrote a common exam in India and they asked me to give my e-mail address, in order for them to mail me the marks, but at that time I did not have one and gave my friend’s account. That was the time I decided to create a new account for myself and this is how I entered into the world of Digital Identity. Slowly I started to learn many things in it and then I found out many interesting features, within this aim that I have chosen. I started to forward mails to my friends as I was doing this during my end-off- my schooling.

After my schooling I started to hear slowly about the other accounts and the wide options that they have and found out that they were mainly focused on chats, sharing pictures and files. Because of this evolution it was the introduction of Yahoo messenger and so I created an account and started to chat a lot along with my friends. We had some pictures and music sharing and it was really a new experiece for us. As soon as this was introduced google also started something similar to this called Google Chat, which is very much similar to the yahoo messenger and was amusening. After this the main social networking came which attracted everyone and I was eager to see what  Facebook could offer, in terms of the new evolution of Digital Identity. The introduction of facebook was like a forest fire in my country as it had more people accessing mainly because of its additional features like: the chat, wallpost, comments, videos, pictures, applications, games and so on. All of us including me created an account on facebook as soon as it was introduced, but still we can’t trust Facebook due to its  information which can be misleading and some of the information can also be unreal and we can not just blindly believe what people write about themeselves, and assume the same. It is really an exciting social network, however, at the same time – not a reliable one.

As I was brought up with the inspiration with a  musical background, my dad owns his very own Light Music Orchestra in India called GOLDEN RHYTHMS, and we have organised many events and have been performing for the past 15 years or more. We planned to extend our digital identity and take our orchestra to next level, therefore, we created our own webpage and as expected, we had really good feedback. We also got more events to perform so that we could prove our talent.

Here is the link to our website:  http://goldenrhythms.com/ for your reference. Then we  got more into this digital identity I thougt about the ways to extend it and then found out Orkut, but to be honest –  I was the last  person to join the Orkut, but still using it to convey messages to my friends.

The latest development of  my digital identity is twitter as it is slowly trying to impress people in our country and people start to tweet everything they do. Now twitter has become like an everyday meal and they can not survive without it. In other words, both facebook and twitter are network communities which have a major influence on its users. For me, I spend about 2 -4 hours on both twitter and facebook, which has given me a profound way to contribute my work,  as I am relatively fresh on this  twitter planet.  To speak about my current progress and development in extending my digital identity is a result of this blog.  I have also concluded that using these digital identities, in order to show my friends, family and other students at Salford University, gives me more opportunity to showcase my talent and improve more skill in my field.