Indian Music and the West (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Rating:
Summary: Quite interesting
Review: This book presents numerous examples of interactions between Indian music and the West since the 18 th century. The book is organized into chronologically ordered chapters, starting in the late Eighteenth century, proceeding through the Nineteenth century, the early Twentieth century and the late Twentieth century. It includes a discography for the late Twentieth century chapter, as well as an extensive list of sources and bibliography. The book is scholarly in style, and well footnoted. Nevertheless, the text is quite engaging throughout.

The coverage of the material is in some places overly general, going beyond musical topics to such issues as race relations and colonialism. Early in the book, Farrell briefly discusses Edward Said's "Orientalism", and some parts of this book examine Orientalism in music in light of some of Said's ideas. On the other hand, other parts of the book are quite detailed, even discussing individual concerts that took place 100 years ago. This juxtaposition of general comments and details feels at times as if the book was actually written as individual papers, to be published separately, rather than as one long coherent work. In contrast to the broad title, the text focuses mostly on Hindustani classical music, although Carnatic classical music is occasionally mentioned, as well as film music

Farrell's discussions center around the lack of understanding of Hindustani music displayed by British and American audiences and musicians. He describes how British colonialists tried to transcribe Indian music in the Eighteenth century, how British and American audiences couldn't distinguish between fake and authentic Indian music, and how rock musicians tried to play sitar without any understanding of Indian music. He puzzles over why only jazz and rock musicians have experimented with Indian music, and not classical musicians, and why Indian classical music has been interesting to fans of world music, but not Indian pop music. I don't find such issues so mysterious- -after all, classical music is by definition based on a conventional standard, so we wouldn't expect experimentation with Indian music by Western classical musicians. On the other hand, world music fans want to hear something new and different. Indian classical music is certainly different, but Indian pop music, even though it might use some traditional instruments or rhythms, sounds too much like pop music everywhere else to be particularly interesting to outsiders.

I find other facets of the interactions between the West and Indian music to be much more interesting, such as the possible historical links between many classical Western music instruments and classical Indian instruments (the nagaswaram and the oboe, for instance, or the sitar, oud, and guitar). Or the willingness of Indian classical musicians and their audiences to adopt new instruments from the West, such as the violin, saxophone, mandolin, or even Hawaiian steel guitar. Since they are adopting these instruments into their own classical tradition, it seems very different from Western rock musicians experimenting with sitar. From the title of this book, I expected at least some exploration into issues such as these, but Farrell never mentions them.

Rating:
Summary: Quite interesting
Review: This book presents numerous examples of interactions between Indian music and the West since the 18 th century. The book is organized into chronologically ordered chapters, starting in the late Eighteenth century, proceeding through the Nineteenth century, the early Twentieth century and the late Twentieth century. It includes a discography for the late Twentieth century chapter, as well as an extensive list of sources and bibliography. The book is scholarly in style, and well footnoted. Nevertheless, the text is quite engaging throughout.

The coverage of the material is in some places overly general, going beyond musical topics to such issues as race relations and colonialism. Early in the book, Farrell briefly discusses Edward Said's "Orientalism", and some parts of this book examine Orientalism in music in light of some of Said's ideas. On the other hand, other parts of the book are quite detailed, even discussing individual concerts that took place 100 years ago. This juxtaposition of general comments and details feels at times as if the book was actually written as individual papers, to be published separately, rather than as one long coherent work. In contrast to the broad title, the text focuses mostly on Hindustani classical music, although Carnatic classical music is occasionally mentioned, as well as film music

Farrell's discussions center around the lack of understanding of Hindustani music displayed by British and American audiences and musicians. He describes how British colonialists tried to transcribe Indian music in the Eighteenth century, how British and American audiences couldn't distinguish between fake and authentic Indian music, and how rock musicians tried to play sitar without any understanding of Indian music. He puzzles over why only jazz and rock musicians have experimented with Indian music, and not classical musicians, and why Indian classical music has been interesting to fans of world music, but not Indian pop music. I don't find such issues so mysterious- -after all, classical music is by definition based on a conventional standard, so we wouldn't expect experimentation with Indian music by Western classical musicians. On the other hand, world music fans want to hear something new and different. Indian classical music is certainly different, but Indian pop music, even though it might use some traditional instruments or rhythms, sounds too much like pop music everywhere else to be particularly interesting to outsiders.

I find other facets of the interactions between the West and Indian music to be much more interesting, such as the possible historical links between many classical Western music instruments and classical Indian instruments (the nagaswaram and the oboe, for instance, or the sitar, oud, and guitar). Or the willingness of Indian classical musicians and their audiences to adopt new instruments from the West, such as the violin, saxophone, mandolin, or even Hawaiian steel guitar. Since they are adopting these instruments into their own classical tradition, it seems very different from Western rock musicians experimenting with sitar. From the title of this book, I expected at least some exploration into issues such as these, but Farrell never mentions them.