Thoughts on the soul to a tradition, and on rhythm and time

评论 "Music In Southern India"

(印度南部为传统印度音乐，北部则为穆斯林主导音乐)

The three chapters in Music in South India provide technical knowledge on raga (melody) and tala (rhythm). It also examines the contemporary state of music expression and gender-related issues. The author’s discussion on raga’s characteristic phrases is particularly interesting to me. In a way, it answers my previous questions on whether there is a soul to a tradition. Here, the signature phrase in raga can be understood as a motif in a folktale, a recognizable and consistent story element, despite the various forms it may take based on and adapted to different cultural contexts. This signature phrase, or folklore motif, can be taken as a metaphor to the soul of a tradition. No matter how different it transforms into, there are still discernable features that remain unchanged. Capturing these characteristic phrases in music is comparable to capturing the soul to a tradition. Just like analyzing how a folktale has changed by looking at different forms of the motif, one can start analyzing how a music tradition has transformed by examining the variations of the characteristic phrases.

Another food for thought in this book is the author’s discussion on svara kalpana. Particularly, how the musician expresses his own habit of passing musical time during performance, and how he adjusts the rhythm to the right timing. This makes me think about the relationship between rhythm and time. Isn’t rhythm, in essence, an art of time? As Roguet puts in his book Music and Possession, “[Music] is an architecture in time. It gives time a density different from its everyday density. It lends it a materiality it does not ordinarily have and that is of another order” (Roguet 1980, 121). Rhythm is the frame of this music-as-architecture. It is time materialized, aestheticized and experienced. If repetition is considered as a kind of resurrection as Paul Ricoeur states, grooving in the same rhythm is then an attempt to reach eternity.