Shellac, Bakelite, Vinyl, and Paper: Artifacts and Representations of North Indian Art Music

Short songs in dialects of Hindi are the basis for improvisation in all the genres of North Indian classical vocal music. These songs, bandises, constitute a central pillar of North Indian culture, spreading well beyond the geographic frontiers of Hindi itself. Songs are significant as being the only aspect of North Indian music that is "fixed" and handed down via oral tradition relatively intact. They are regarded as the core of Indian art music because they encapsulate the melodic structures upon which improvisation is based. In this paper we aim to look at some issues raised by the idiosyncrasies of written representations of songs as they has occurred within the Indian cultural milieu, and then at issues that have emerged in the course of our own ongoing efforts to represent khyal songs from the perspectives of somewhat "insidish outsiders."