Writing Initiatives

In the seminal treatise Natyashastra (c. 200 BC – 200 AD), Indian aesthetician Bharata discusses the uses of various sound instruments, proposing a four-fold classification of these sound-reproduction systems: tat (strings), ghan (solid), sushir (winds), and avanaddh (covered membrane). This was a systematic attempt to taxonomise sound technologies based on the type of sound-producing material, such as strings, solid body, air column, or stretched membrane, which are made to vibrate using different techniques of interfacing such as plucking, blowing, bowing, and striking. In the 1920s, the Indian physicist Dr. C. V. Raman conducted research to uncover the unique acoustic properties of Indian string and percussion instruments and the intricate technological innovations behind making them. Raman scientifically proved that the materials and techniques used in making as well as performing on these instruments result in microtonal and timbral qualities that are unique and not found in the musical instruments of the West. The custom-made curvatures of the bridge that supports the strings, and the tensile, vibrating membrane in percussive instruments like the Madal, the Dholak, and the Dhak were significant technological contributions that India made to the world of sounds. Contemporary Music Retrieval System scholars, such as Matthias Demoucron, Stephanie Weisser, and Marc Leman identify how Indian traditional sound-producing instruments are characterised by the presence of the sympathetic multiple string clusters called taraf and the curved wide bridge called jawari (often reinforced by a cotton thread), underlining the ways in which these intricate and sophisticated innovations make the sounds of Indian traditional music uniquely complex, embedded in nature, and grounded in the philosophy of multiplicity. They are beyond the analytical comprehension of today’s simpler computational algorithms based on Western equal-temperament tuning systems. This knowledge ecosystem was transmitted orally from generations to generations resulting, in multiple schools of thought and performative interpretations, and yielding agency for the many performers.

However, such non-Western sound technologies and embedded practices were often deemed “primitive,” and termed “indigenous” in the same vein as “pre-modern,” by the dominant Eurocentric sound and music culture that bore the colonial perspective of a provincial sense of superiority. Media scholar Marshal McLuhan’s seminal admission of oral systems as “primitive” is one such reflection of this colonial attitude. The invocation of the pre-modern as an inadequately developed opposition to the modern, however, is widely condemned today as European modernity’s representation of its Other. Scholars like David Mosse and Esha Shah have shown how the currency ascribed to the idea of the pre-modern (or what is otherwise loosely termed “traditional”, “primitive”, or “indigenous”) is not only founded on a binary opposition with the modern but also embedded in particular strategies of imagining a pre-colonial “primeval” past and the lived globalised present from a Eurocentric perspective, and therefore, putting in place a power structure in which modern technologies are posed as superior and capable of saving the world. These colonially positioned perceptions and views are far from being historically accurate. The usage of the prefix “pre” before “modern” should not suggest that modernity starts from a distinct temporal point and that everything prior was primitive: this, in fact, is a grossly colonial perspective that upholds Western dominance and supremacy. South Asia, particularly the Indian subcontinent, housed sophisticated sound technologies, which is evident in pre-modern musical instruments such as the Rudraveena, the Surbahar, the Nadaswaram, and the Yaazh, among others, the tuning systems of the temple bells, North-East Indian wind chimes, and performative sonic accompaniments like Ghunghroo. All of these, and so many more, embody the handling of complex sonorities with innovative instrument design and tunings.