Indian Institue of Management 2000 M.B.A CAT - Question Paper

This repeated playing out of the rhythmic cycles on the tabla was inflected by the noises-an irate auto driver blowing a horn; the
sound of overbearing pigeons that were such a nuisance on the banister; even the cry of a kulfi seller in summer-entering from the
balcony of the 3rd floor flat we occupied in those days, in a lane in a Bombay suburb, before we left the city for good. These sounds,
in turn, would invade, hesitantly, the ebb and flow of silence inside the artificially heated room, in a borough of West London, in which
I used to live as an undergraduate. There, in the trapped dust, silence and heat, the theka of the tabla, qualified by the imminent but
intermittent presence of the Bombay suburb, would come to life again. A few years later, the tabla and, in the background, the
pigeons and the itinerant kulfi seller, would inhabit a small graduate room in Oxford.
The tape recorder, though, remains an extension of the oral transmission of music, rather than a replacement of it. And the oral
transmission of North Indian classical music remains, almost uniquely, a testament to the fact that the human brain can absorb,
remember and reproduce structures of great complexity and sophistication without the help of the hieroglyph or written mark or a
system of notation. I remember my surprise on discovering that Hazarilalji-who had mastered Kathak dance, tala and North Indian
classical music, and who used to narrate to me, occasionally, compositions meant for dance that were grand and intricate in their verbal
prosody, architecture and rhythmic complexity-was near illiterate and had barely learnt to write his name in large and clumsy letters.
Of course, attempts have been made, throughout the 20th century, to formally codify and even notate this music, and institutions
set up and degrees created, specifically to educate students in this "scientific" and codified manner. Paradoxically, however, this
style of teaching has produced no noteworthy learner or performer; the most creative musicians still emerge from the guru-shishya
relationship, their understanding of music developed by oral communication.
The fact that North Indian classical music emanates from, and has evolved through, oral culture, means that this music has a
significantly various aesthetic, and that this aesthetic has a various politics, from that of Western classical music. A piece of music
in the Western tradition, at lowest in its most characteristic and popular conception, originates in its composer, and the connection

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