Music and dance
We deal here only
with classical Indian music
and two classical dances.
The reasons are
simple: I could not understand light music (mainly music of films)
of India at all and the chosen two dances give a good
cross-section of what Indians express in their dances (at least we
hope so).
As far as classical
music is concerned, I was trying my best to understand it,
to learn the basics about it, but I am afraid it is better for you
to study this subject reading and listening to the sites I
recommend you.
I attended two long
sessions that start late afternoon and continue non-stop till
next morning. I could enjoy short periods of the performance of
the best musicians.
You may listen to
short passages of live music in the web-site
www.Indiatimes.com
- Jukebox - classical
I hope I shall be
able to surprise you again, this time with the news that surely
one of the best sites on Indian classical music is a Hungarian
one: www.rimpa.net , the site
of Calcutta Trio, led by Mr András Kozma. I met the
Trio when I was posted to Calcutta and the Trio came for a
training session as young Hungarians, enthusiasts of Indian music.
I watched the rise of the group, have heard a lot of them, but
realise only now that they must be the best – if not the only
– foreign (for India) musicians, performing classical music on
high level. And to my equally great surprise they proved to be
excellent in building web-sites as well. If you take the trouble
to study rimpa, you will be delighted to learn a lot from
this comprehensive work. Let me congratulate Mr Kozma for both
their achievement in performing with success such a foreign art
and the top quality site.
I do not have to do
more than to cite four more web-sites, all of the four containing
several others. You may spend days in studying Indian music not
leaving this circle of sites:
www.makar-records.com
, which is a member of “Indian Music Links – Webring”,
www.indianmelody.com/indmusic.htm
- “Indian Classical Music Links”
www.saregama.com
, (an e-commerce business site with Juke Box)
www.saigan.com/heritage/
> Indian Heritage > Music
In case you just want to enjoy yourself listening to Indian
music,
click on Raaga.com
***
Years have gone until the owner of a new Indian classical music site,
Szabolcs Tóth approached me, offering this site, the
size of which is 108 pages, containing 25 interviews. I found the
site fantastic and suggest for everyone who is really interested in
studying the music of this wonderful country to treat it as textbook.
Here it is: http://raga.hu/
***
Among Indian
classical dances Bharatya Natyam (Bharata Natya) deserves our
best attention. This dance is now prevelant mainly in Tamil Nadu. It
had royal and religious patronage for centuries, as the dance of
great temples, performed by devadasis, or temple dancers. As all
classical dances, Bharatya Natyam always portrays stories that
Indian audience easily understands, following four ways of
expression: posture of the body and gestures, spoken word (songs),
costume and facial expression. When dancers perform this dance for
foreign audience, the story to be performed is explained in advance,
to make easier to follow.
The dance at first
may prove to be strange, because it is performed without sharp
movements, but once you get accustomed to the heavy motions
of feet and body, to the beautiful gestures of hands and to the very
expressive mimics of the dancer, you start appreciating the
narrating skill and force of it.
Entirely different is
Kathakali, the dance drama of another southern state, Kerala.
The dance is based on events and episodes from the two great epics,
the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and used to be performed as an all
night performance in temples. The costumes and the facial make-ups
are just fantastic, complicated, colourful, heavy creations. To
prepare a dancer’s mask lasts for around six hours. The
dancers are selected in young age as ballet dancers in Europe and
trained for years to learn the gestures and for being able to
perform the dance for long hours. If you want to enjoy something
very unusual and exciting make a point to see a Kathakali
performance.
The best presentation
of Kathakali I found in www.cyberKerala.com
.
I just mention the
names of three more classical dances of India: Kathak, Manipuri,
Orissi.
You can study these dances and more in Artindia.net