The Rite of Spring Eastern style

The Rite of Spring is celebrated today in another culture. March 22, 2008 is the start of the Hindu spring festival of Holi (Phagwa in Bhojpuri). My photo was taken last week at the gorgeous JAS Musicals shop in London which make the sitars seen in the photo.

Now playing - Tarun Bhattacharya santoor with Shiv Shankar Ray tabla on The Art of the Indian Santoor on the wide-ranging ARC label. The santoor is a hammered dulcimer (photo below) related to the Hungarian cimbalon and Chinese yang qin and is used for Hindustani raga, four of which are heard on the CD. Now read about the perils of Eastern tuning.


Header photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

New music from the East

Hello Pliable, I read your article "Philip Glass - World Music Is The New Classical". I thought you might find this interesting - www.biswabratachakrabarti.com/composition/
Kind regards, Manuel

Nice cue for Classic misunderstandings - Eastern tunings
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Classic misunderstandings - Eastern tunings

The 85 year old Ravi Shankar's music making at his Proms debut last night was fabulous. It reminded me of a little story that goes back a few years...

The 1971 Concert for Bangladesh was the original superstars-saving-the-world event that predated Bob Geldof and all the others. Shankar and George Harrison put together the gig after Shankar, his musical mentor on the sitar, had alerted him to the plight of millions of starving and flood-afflicted Bengalis who were then locked in a short but bloody fight for independence from Pakistan.

When Shankar came to start his set there was rapturous applause for the first sounds from his sitar. "If you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you will like the playing even more" he told the audience in a deadpan voice.

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Classic misunderstandings - Hildegard