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Analysing Ṭhumrī Alaghband‐Zadeh, Chloë (2013) Analysing ţhumrī. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/16624 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Analysing ṭhumrī Chloë Alaghband-Zadeh Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Department of Music, SOAS, University of London 2 DECLARATION I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 3 ABSTRACT This thesis is a music-analytical study of the North Indian semi-classical vocal genre ṭhumrī. I am interested in the musical style of ṭhumrī, in its social environment and in how the two are related. In order to address this relationship, I advocate a multifaceted, interdisciplinary approach to music analysis, incorporating theoretical concepts from linguistics, semiotics and gender studies. Early in the thesis, I analyse the structural building blocks of ṭhumrī, drawing attention to parallels with language and other musical traditions. I then apply theories of semiotics to ṭhumrī in order to tackle age-old questions about how and why music comes to be meaningful for the people who perform and listen to it. This lays the foundations for the remaining chapters of my thesis, in which I look at how ṭhumrī participates in broader social processes. I argue that singers’ musical decisions form part of social strategies, through which singers attempt to improve their own status and negotiate a better position for ṭhumrī within North Indian classical music. Finally I consider ṭhumrī’s gendered associations and the role musical performance plays in the social construction of gender. Overall this study is an exercise in doing analysis “in context”: I suggest that the musical style of ṭhumrī best makes sense when considered in relation to issues of transmission, prestige, respectability, connoisseurship, spirituality and gender. Ultimately I argue that the musical features of ṭhumrī are not merely abstract phenomena, but are thoroughly embedded in particular historical, social and cultural circumstances. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Chapter One: Introduction 8 Chapter Two: Formulas and the analysis of ṭhumrī style 33 Chapter Three: A semiotic approach to ṭhumrī style 68 Chapter Four: Social strategies and the common wisdom about ṭhumrī 109 Chapter Five: Ṭhumrī and the musical mediation of gender 175 Chapter Six: Conclusion 237 Appendix I: Note on Transcription 262 Appendix II: Complete List of Figures 263 Bibliography 268 Discography 283 List of Formal Interviews with Musicians 285 Contents of Example CDs 286 Example CDs 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing this thesis has been enabled by the generous help and encouragement of many people, some of whom I would like to thank here. I first fell in love with North Indian classical music when I attended Sunanda Sharma’s ṭhumrī course, organised by the Asian Music Circuit in London in summer 2004. The beauty of her singing was enough to convince me to abandon my ambitions to study Western classical music and focus instead on this entirely different classical tradition. It has been a great privilege to be able to take lessons with Sharma over the years that followed: her warmth, patience and generosity towards those of us lucky enough to be her pupils are attributes of a truly great teacher and her singing has always been an inspiration to me. I am particularly grateful for the time she devoted to me while I lived in Delhi: for a relative beginner, it was a great honour to study with such an accomplished musician. I am also hugely grateful to my academic guru-jī, my supervisor Richard Widdess. His work has always been the single biggest influence on my academic development and his rigorous, elegantly worded and highly original research on North Indian classical music (and its analysis) sets a wonderful standard for scholars in the field to aspire to. He has gone far beyond what could reasonably be expected of any supervisor in assisting me with all aspects of my doctoral research and writing, as well as with all of the other activities associated with being a post- graduate student. I could not have written this thesis without his support and guidance, without his perceptive and helpful comments about my work and without the long conversations I had with him in supervisions that lasted far longer than they should have done, while I waffled about my research and Richard helped me to put my ideas in order. I would not have even attempted a PhD in Ethnomusicology had I not encountered Katherine Schofield when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Katherine introduced me to the academic study of North Indian classical music and inspired me to pursue it further. She was also the first person to try to teach me how to write. I remain enormously grateful for the times she sat me down on the banks of the Cam or in Caffe Nero and taught me what an original academic argument looks like, and also for the numerous dissertation drafts she sent back to me, covered from start to finish in red ink, highlighting the many instances in which my sentences were inelegant, or my structure unclear, or, worst of all, in which I had phrased my arguments in the passive voice. Over the subsequent years I have valued the opportunities I have had to continue to discuss my research with her and I continue to learn a great deal from her insightful comments on my ideas. 6 In India, a number of musicians were extraordinarily generous with their time in agreeing to talk with me about ṭhumrī. Amongst others, I am grateful to Rajshekhar Mansur, Ritesh Mishra, Sarathi Chatterjee, Rekha Surya, Rashmi Agarwal, Ulhas Kashalkar, Tulika Ghosh, K. Upendra Bhat, Moumita Mitra, Shubhra Guha and Ashwini Bhide Deshpande for welcoming me into their lives and sharing their thoughts with me. I am grateful to the musician and scholar Vidya Rao for a fascinating and provocative conversation over lunch in Delhi as I was starting out my research. The scholar and music-lover Deepak Raja was generous with both his time and his ideas in a stimulating discussion about ṭhumrī. The music connoisseur James Stevenson has also shared his thoughts and his vast knowledge of North Indian classical music with me, as well as enabling me to access a number of recordings of and texts on ṭhumrī which I otherwise would not have been able to find. Kishore Merchant kindly played me a number of recordings from his own collection and helped me to access other rare ṭhumrī recordings which have been invaluable in this research project. My sincere thanks are also due to the many people at sound archives and libraries in India who assisted my work and allowed me access to their collections. Spending time at the ARCE in Gurgaon has always been a highlight of my trips to India. The friendly and hugely knowledgeable staff, as well as the peaceful working environment there, makes studying in the ARCE a delight. The collection, too, of both written texts and sound recordings, is impressive; the material I studied there has been enormously helpful for my doctoral work. My thanks are due to Shubha Chaudhuri, who has created this great asset for scholars of Indian music, and all who work there, for their assistance while I was there. I am also fortunate to have been allowed to access the written and recorded material at the Sangeet Natak Akademi in Delhi. My thanks to all those who generously helped me there and made time for me to be able to sit and listen to recordings of fascinating lecture demonstrations by great ṭhumrī singers of the twentieth century. In Mumbai I found a number of useful texts in the library at the NCPA. Sreyashi Mitra, Ratnaboli Bose, Ranjan Sengupta and Aslam Ansari generously welcomed me when I visited the archive of the ITC-Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata and I am grateful that they allowed me to listen to some of the wonderful recordings housed there. Throughout my doctoral research, my friend and sometime fellow PhD-student Irfan Zuberi has been a wonderful conversant about North Indian classical music. His knowledge of music and musicians is impressive and I am grateful for him for letting me try out my ideas on him and sharing his own thoughts and ideas, whether in the coffee shops of Delhi or over gmail chat. In Delhi, I am also grateful to Arun Chandoke and Sheetal Thakur for looking after me and for making sure that my time there was fun as well as productive. In London, my postgraduate life has been enriched enormously by attending a number of reading and discussion groups.
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