In Mint Lounge today, a Raagtime column on what makes a sad song a sad song. That would be a minor third, according to new research by the Music Cognition Lab: A few months ago, in the philosophical quest to understand why music affects us the way it does, a new scientific line of thought [...]
In Mint Lounge today, a cover story titled Real Brotherly Love, on how the Indian Freemasonry is opening itself up to the public, part of a worldwide trend in the brotherhood. In India, this has been propelled by Capt. Biswakumar, who has been the Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of India since November 2009. Last [...]
In Mint today, a Raagtime column on the music of Edith Piaf — on her oddly melancholy voice, which so often conflicted with the optimism of her lyrics: It is a peculiar quality of Piaf’s voice that even the jauntiest song seems to brim with latent pain. “I don’t regret anything at all,” she sings [...]
A couple of pieces on music, published in the last few days in Mint. First, an obituary of Manohari Singh, the man responsible for many of Bollywood’s finest saxophone solos: In 1969, a group of musicians from Mumbai accompanied Kishore Kumar on a three-month tour of performances, visiting the West Indies, the US, and the [...]
A few days late, but no matter. In Mint, an article on the Andhra Pradesh Farmer Managed Groundwater System, a successful little project that inverts the traditional logic of groundwater management: Around the centre of the village of Krishnapuram, in south-western Andhra Pradesh, the walls abutting the tapered streets are festooned with several unusual frescos—unusual [...]
In Mint today, a Raagtime column on the bewildering multiplicity of languages in Carnatic music — and how that impacts the way we listen to and appreciate the music: This assortment of tongues is daunting; it also leads to frequent friction. One of the eternal debates in Carnatic music runs roughly as follows: If a [...]
In Mint today, a Raagtime column on Bhairavi by Mike Bloomfield, The Doors’ The End, and the genre of “raga rock”: Without question, my favourite example of raga rock is The End, the final track on The Doors’ self-titled album. The End is an ode of psychedelia, winding its forlorn way over nearly 12 minutes [...]
In Mint today, an extra-long Raagtime column on David Cope, inspired by a terrific article in Miller-McCune: Music, we like to believe, is a product of the human soul and, further, a channel between composer and audience, carrying a sentiment too frail to be communicated in words. Musical genius discovers not the most efficient or [...]
In Mint today, a Raagtime column on the difficulties of notating Carnatic music: Inevitably, a song’s libretto has to be written in a particular script, but even the notes underlying those lyrics rely on the alphabet. I wrote these notes in English—“S” for “Sa” and so on—but a student in Kerala might well write them [...]
In Mint today, a Raagtime column on the famed “Airport Concert” of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer: As it turned out, the concert occurred not in an airport but near one; the mridangam player in the concert, Trichy Sankaran, once confirmed that it was held, sometime in the 1960s, in a hall in Tambaram, a Chennai suburb [...]