Indus Musicians in Mesopotamia
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Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage and Diverse Cultural Traditions of India”
Scheme for “Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage and Diverse Cultural Traditions of India” Form for National Inventory Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage of India A. Name of the State WEST BENGAL B. Name of the Element/Cultural Tradition (in English) BENA B.1. Name of the element in the language and script of the community Concerned, if applicable 뇍যানা (Bengali) C. Name of the communities, groups or, if applicable, individuals concerned (Identify clearly either of these concerned with the practice of the said element/cultural tradition) The Bena is traditionally used by two communities - the Rajbongshis and the Meities of Manipur. The Rajbongshis are spread across North Bengal, western Assam, Meghalaya and eastern parts of Bihar and the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and Nepal. The Meiteis of Manipur have a similar instrument which they call the Pena and it plays a very important role in their culture - accompanying many of their rituals and their folk music. It continues to play a much larger role in their lives than the Bena does among the Rajbongshis. D. Geographical location and range of the element/cultural tradition (Please write about the other states in which the said element/tradition is present ) The Bena is to be found in the northern districts of Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri (which has recently been bifurcated into Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts) in West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Bihar and also neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Nepal. The Bena is traditionally an integral part of a Rajbongshi folk theatre called Kushan. However the Kushan tradition prevails only in North Bengal, Bangladesh and Assam. -
Music Initiative Jka Peer - Reviewed Journal of Music
VOL. 01 NO. 01 APRIL 2018 MUSIC INITIATIVE JKA PEER - REVIEWED JOURNAL OF MUSIC PUBLISHED,PRINTED & OWNED BY HIGHER EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, J&K CIVIL SECRETARIAT, JAMMU/SRINAGAR,J&K CONTACT NO.S: 01912542880,01942506062 www.jkhighereducation.nic.in EDITOR DR. ASGAR HASSAN SAMOON (IAS) PRINCIPAL SECRETARY HIGHER EDUCATION GOVT. OF JAMMU & KASHMIR YOOR HIGHER EDUCATION,J&K NOT FOR SALE COVER DESIGN: NAUSHAD H GA JK MUSIC INITIATIVE A PEER - REVIEWED JOURNAL OF MUSIC INSTRUCTION TO CONTRIBUTORS A soft copy of the manuscript should be submitted to the Editor of the journal in Microsoft Word le format. All the manuscripts will be blindly reviewed and published after referee's comments and nally after Editor's acceptance. To avoid delay in publication process, the papers will not be sent back to the corresponding author for proof reading. It is therefore the responsibility of the authors to send good quality papers in strict compliance with the journal guidelines. JK Music Initiative is a quarterly publication of MANUSCRIPT GUIDELINES Higher Education Department, Authors preparing submissions are asked to read and follow these guidelines strictly: Govt. of Jammu and Kashmir (JKHED). Length All manuscripts published herein represent Research papers should be between 3000- 6000 words long including notes, bibliography and captions to the opinion of the authors and do not reect the ofcial policy illustrations. Manuscripts must be typed in double space throughout including abstract, text, references, tables, and gures. of JKHED or institution with which the authors are afliated unless this is clearly specied. Individual authors Format are responsible for the originality and genuineness of the work Documents should be produced in MS Word, using a single font for text and headings, left hand justication only and no embedded formatting of capitals, spacing etc. -
The KNIGHT REVISION of HORNBOSTEL-SACHS: a New Look at Musical Instrument Classification
The KNIGHT REVISION of HORNBOSTEL-SACHS: a new look at musical instrument classification by Roderic C. Knight, Professor of Ethnomusicology Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, © 2015, Rev. 2017 Introduction The year 2015 marks the beginning of the second century for Hornbostel-Sachs, the venerable classification system for musical instruments, created by Erich M. von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs as Systematik der Musikinstrumente in 1914. In addition to pursuing their own interest in the subject, the authors were answering a need for museum scientists and musicologists to accurately identify musical instruments that were being brought to museums from around the globe. As a guiding principle for their classification, they focused on the mechanism by which an instrument sets the air in motion. The idea was not new. The Indian sage Bharata, working nearly 2000 years earlier, in compiling the knowledge of his era on dance, drama and music in the treatise Natyashastra, (ca. 200 C.E.) grouped musical instruments into four great classes, or vadya, based on this very idea: sushira, instruments you blow into; tata, instruments with strings to set the air in motion; avanaddha, instruments with membranes (i.e. drums), and ghana, instruments, usually of metal, that you strike. (This itemization and Bharata’s further discussion of the instruments is in Chapter 28 of the Natyashastra, first translated into English in 1961 by Manomohan Ghosh (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, v.2). The immediate predecessor of the Systematik was a catalog for a newly-acquired collection at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. The collection included a large number of instruments from India, and the curator, Victor-Charles Mahillon, familiar with the Indian four-part system, decided to apply it in preparing his catalog, published in 1880 (this is best documented by Nazir Jairazbhoy in Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology – see 1990 in the timeline below). -
Categorization of Stringed Instruments with Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis
CATEGORIZATION OF STRINGED INSTRUMENTS WITH MULTIFRACTAL DETRENDED FLUCTUATION ANALYSIS Archi Banerjee*, Shankha Sanyal, Tarit Guhathakurata, Ranjan Sengupta and Dipak Ghosh Sir C.V. Raman Centre for Physics and Music Jadavpur University, Kolkata: 700032 *[email protected] * Corresponding Author ABSTRACT Categorization is crucial for content description in archiving of music signals. On many occasions, human brain fails to classify the instruments properly just by listening to their sounds which is evident from the human response data collected during our experiment. Some previous attempts to categorize several musical instruments using various linear analysis methods required a number of parameters to be determined. In this work, we attempted to categorize a number of string instruments according to their mode of playing using latest-state-of-the-art robust non-linear methods. For this, 30 second sound signals of 26 different string instruments from all over the world were analyzed with the help of non linear multifractal analysis (MFDFA) technique. The spectral width obtained from the MFDFA method gives an estimate of the complexity of the signal. From the variation of spectral width, we observed distinct clustering among the string instruments according to their mode of playing. Also there is an indication that similarity in the structural configuration of the instruments is playing a major role in the clustering of their spectral width. The observations and implications are discussed in detail. Keywords: String Instruments, Categorization, Fractal Analysis, MFDFA, Spectral Width INTRODUCTION Classification is one of the processes involved in audio content description. Audio signals can be classified according to miscellaneous criteria viz. speech, music, sound effects (or noises). -
The Music of the Bible, with an Account of the Development Of
\ \ ^ \ X \N x*S-s >> V \ X \ SS^^ \ 1 \ JOHN STAINER,M.A.,MUS,.DOC., Cornell University Library ML 166.S78 3 1924 022 269 058 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ^^S/C [7BRARY Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022269058 THE MUSIC OF THE BIBLE WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE Development of Modern Musical Instruments from Ancient Types BY JOHN STAINER, M.A.. MUS. DOC, MAGD. COLL., OXON. Cassell Fetter & Galpin LONDON, PARIS & NEW YORK. V Novell o, Ewer & Co.: LONDON. [all rights reserved.] PREFACE. No apology is needed, I hope, for issuing in this form the substance of the series of articles which I contributed to the Bible Educator. Some of the statements which I brought forward in that work have received further con- firmation by wider reading; but some others I have ventured to qualify or alter. Much new matter will be fotmd here which I trust may be of interest to the general reader, if not of use to the professional. I fully anticipate a criticism to the effect that such a subject as the development of musical instruments should rather have been allowed to stand alone than have been associated with Bible music. But I think all will admit that the study of the history of ancient nations, whether with reference to their arts, religion, conquests, or language, seems to gather and be concentrated round the Book of Books, and when once I began to treat of the com- parative history of musical instruments, I felt that a few more words, tracing their growth up to our own times, would make this little work more complete and useful than if I should deal only with the sparse records of Hebrew music. -
1 Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy Of
1 Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences Early Cities: New Perspectives on Pre-Industrial Urbanism Final Revisions: Oct. 1, 2005 Indus Urbanism: New Perspectives on its Origin and Character Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison During the past two decades a variety of archaeological research projects focused on the Indus civilization have made it possible to refine earlier models regarding the origin and character of this distinctive urban society. Excavations at the major city of Harappa have revealed a long developmental sequence from its origins to its eventual decline and subsequent transformation. Recent excavations at the large urban centers of Dholavira and Rakhigarhi, along with reexamination of the largest city of Mohenjo-daro have shown that the development of urbanism was not uniform throughout the greater Indus region (Kenoyer 1998). Detailed studies within each city have revealed many shared characteristics as well as some unique features relating to the dynamic process of city growth and decline. In addition to the excavations of larger urban centers, regional surveys and extensive excavations at smaller settlements have provided a new perspective on the nature of interaction between large and small urban centers and even rural settlements. The increase in radiocarbon dates from well-documented contexts in stratigraphic excavations has helped to refine the chronology of settlements in both core areas and rural areas (Meadow and Kenoyer 2005b; Possehl 2002a; Possehl 2002c). On the basis of a more refined chronology and comparisons of the material culture, it appears that some rural settlements may have been directly linked to the major cities, while others appear to have had relatively little direct contact during some time periods (Meadow and Kenoyer 2005b). -
Gilgamesh Sung in Ancient Sumerian Gilgamesh and the Ancient Near East
Gilgamesh sung in ancient Sumerian Gilgamesh and the Ancient Near East Dr. Le4cia R. Rodriguez 20.09.2017 ì The Ancient Near East Cuneiform cuneus = wedge Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi, Ankara Babylonian deed of sale. ca. 1750 BCE. Tablet of Sargon of Akkad, Assyrian Tablet with love poem, Sumerian, 2037-2029 BCE 19th-18th centuries BCE *Gilgamesh was an historic figure, King of Uruk, in Sumeria, ca. 2800/2700 BCE (?), and great builder of temples and ci4es. *Stories about Gilgamesh, oral poems, were eventually wriXen down. *The Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh compiled from 73 tablets in various languages. *Tablets discovered in the mid-19th century and con4nue to be translated. Hero overpowering a lion, relief from the citadel of Sargon II, Dur Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad), Iraq, ca. 721–705 BCE The Flood Tablet, 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Library of Ashurbanipal Neo-Assyrian, 7th century BCE, The Bri4sh Museum American Dad Gilgamesh and Enkidu flank the fleeing Humbaba, cylinder seal Neo-Assyrian ca. 8th century BCE, 2.8cm x 1.3cm, The Bri4sh Museum DOUBLING/TWINS BROMANCE *Role of divinity in everyday life. *Relaonship between divine and ruler. *Ruler’s asser4on of dominance and quest for ‘immortality’. StatuePes of two worshipers from Abu Temple at Eshnunna (modern Tell Asmar), Iraq, ca. 2700 BCE. Gypsum inlaid with shell and black limestone, male figure 2’ 6” high. Iraq Museum, Baghdad. URUK (WARKA) Remains of the White Temple on its ziggurat. Uruk (Warka), Iraq, ca. 3500–3000 BCE. Plan and ReconstrucVon drawing of the White Temple and ziggurat, Uruk (Warka), Iraq, ca. -
NINAZU, the PERSONAL DEITY of GUDEA Toshiko KOBAYASHI*
NINAZU, THE PERSONAL DEITY OF GUDEA -The Continuity of Personal Deity of Rulers on the Royal Inscriptions of Lagash- Toshiko KOBAYASHI* I. Introduction 1. Historical materials from later periods For many years, I have examined the personal deities of rulers in Pre- Sargonic Lagash.(1) There are not many historical materials about the personal deities from Pre-Sargonic times. In as much as the materials are limited chiefly to the personal deities recorded in the royal inscriptions, not all aspects of personal deities are clear. In my paper "On Ninazu, as Seen in the Economic Texts of the Early Dynastic Lagas (1)" in Orient XXVIII, I discussed Ninazu, who appears in the administrative-economic texts of Pre-Sargonic Lagash. Ninazu appears only in the offering-lists in the reign of Uruinimgina, the last ruler of Pre-Sargonic Lagash. Based only on an analysis of the offering-lists, I argued that Ninazu was the personal deity of a close relative of Uruinimgina. In my investigation thus far of the extant historical materials from Pre-Sargonic Lagash, I have not found any royal inscriptions and administrative-economic texts that refer to Ninazu as dingir-ra-ni ("his deity"), that is, as his personal deity. However, in later historical materials two texts refer to Ninazu as "his deity."(2) One of the texts is FLP 2641,(3) a royal inscription by Gudea, engraved on a clay cone. The text states, "For his deity Ninazu, Gudea, ensi of Lagash, built his temple in Girsu." Gudea is one of the rulers belonging to prosperous Lagash in the Pre-Ur III period; that is, when the Akkad dynasty was in decline, after having been raided by Gutium. -
5. the Harappan Script Controversy
5. The Harappan script controversy (Subchapters 5.1-10 are the text of the paper “The Vedic Harappans in writing: Remarks in expectation of a decipherment of the Indus script”, written in late 1999, if I remember correctly. Instead of a postscript, subchapters 5.11-12 summarize a later development in 2003-2004, which throws an entirely different light on the meaning of the Indus script. At the time of editing this collection, I am agnostic on this question.) 5.1. Introduction In the Harappan cities some 4200 seals, many of them duplicates, have been found which carry short inscriptions in an otherwise unknown script. There is not the slightest doubt that this harvest of Harappan writings is but the tip of an iceberg, in this sense that the Harappan culture must have produced much more copious writings, but that most of them disappeared because the writing materials were not resistant to the ravages of time, particularly in the Indian climate. This fatality can still be seen today, when the libraries of many impoverished maharajas' castles are full of manuscripts which are decaying under our very eyes, turning large chunks of India's national memory and heritage into dust. Even of the oldest and most popular texts, the extant manuscripts are seldom older than a few centuries, copies made as the only guarantee to save the texts from the ravages of time which were destroying the earlier copies. It is fair to assume that a text corpus proportionate in size to the enormous extent of the Harappan cultural space, has gone the same way into oblivion. -
ICONS and SIGNS from the ANCIENT HARAPPA Amelia Sparavigna ∗ Dipartimento Di Fisica, Politecnico Di Torino C.So Duca Degli Abruzzi 24, Torino, Italy
ICONS AND SIGNS FROM THE ANCIENT HARAPPA Amelia Sparavigna ∗ Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Torino C.so Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino, Italy Abstract Written words probably developed independently at least in three places: Egypt, Mesopotamia and Harappa. In these densely populated areas, signs, icons and symbols were eventually used to create a writing system. It is interesting to see how sometimes remote populations are using the same icons and symbols. Here, we discuss examples and some results obtained by researchers investigating the signs of Harappan civilization. 1. Introduction The debate about where and when the written words were originated is still open. Probably, writing systems developed independently in at least three places, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Harappa. In places where an agricultural civilization flourished, the passage from the use of symbols to a true writing system was early accomplished. It means that, at certain period in some densely populated area, signs and symbols were eventually used to create a writing system, the more complex society requiring an increase in recording and communication media. Signs, symbols and icons were always used by human beings, when they started carving wood or cutting stones and painting caves. We find signs on drums, textiles and pottery, and on the body itself, with tattooing. To figure what symbols used the human population when it was mainly composed by small groups of hunter-gatherers, we could analyse the signs of Native Americans. Our intuition is able to understand many of these old signs, because they immediately represent the shapes of objects and animals. It is then quite natural that signs and icons, born among people in a certain region, turn out to be used by other remote populations. -
The Music of the Bible, with Some Account of the Development Of
. BOUGHT WITH THE INCOl^E .. FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUlSfD THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1891 ,. A>.3ooq..i.i... /fiMJA MUSIC LIBRARY Cornell University Library ML 166.S78 1914 The music of the Bible with some account 3 1924 021 773 290 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021773290 Frontispiece. Sounding the Shophar. (p. 224/ THE MUSIC OF THE BIBLE WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS FROM ANCIENT TYPES BY JOHN STAINER M.A., MUS. DOC, MAGD. COLL., OXON. NEW EDITION : With Additional Illustrations and Supplementary Notes BY the Rev. F. W. GALPIN, M.A., F.L.S. London : NOVELLO AND COMPANY, Limited. New York: THE H. W. GRAY CO., Sole Agents for the U.S.A. [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] 5 ORIGINAL PREFACE. No apology is needed, I hope, for issuing in this form the substance of the series of articles which I contributed to the Bible Educator. Some of the statements which I brought forward in that work have received further confirmation by wider reading; but some others I have ventured to qualify or alter. Much new matter will be found here which I trust may be of interest to the general reader, if not of use to the professional. I fully anticipate a criticism to the effect that such a subject as the development of musical instruments should rather have been allowed to stand alone than have been associated with Bible music. -
After the Battle Is Over: the Stele of the Vultures and the Beginning Of
To raise the ofthe natureof narrative is to invite After the Battle Is Over: The Stele question reflectionon the verynature of culture. Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity . ," 1981 of the Vultures and the Beginning of Historical Narrative in the Art Definitions of narrative, generallyfalling within the purviewof literarycriticism, are nonethelessimportant to of the Ancient Near East arthistorians. From the simpleststarting point, "for writing to be narrative,no moreand no less thana tellerand a tale are required.'1 Narrativeis, in otherwords, a solutionto " 2 the problemof "how to translateknowing into telling. In general,narrative may be said to make use ofthird-person cases and of past tenses, such that the teller of the story standssomehow outside and separatefrom the action.3But IRENE J. WINTER what is importantis thatnarrative cannot be equated with thestory alone; it is content(story) structured by the telling, University of Pennsylvania forthe organization of the story is whatturns it into narrative.4 Such a definitionwould seem to providefertile ground forart-historical inquiry; for what, after all, is a paintingor relief,if not contentordered by the telling(composition)? Yet, not all figuraiworks "tell" a story.Sometimes they "refer"to a story;and sometimesthey embody an abstract concept withoutthe necessaryaction and settingof a tale at all. For an investigationof visual representation, it seems importantto distinguishbetween instancesin which the narrativeis vested in a verbal text- the images servingas but illustrationsof the text,not necessarily"narrative" in themselves,but ratherreferences to the narrative- and instancesin whichthe narrativeis located in the represen- tations,the storyreadable throughthe images. In the specificcase of the ancientNear East, instances in whichnarrative is carriedthrough the imageryitself are rare,reflecting a situationfundamentally different from that foundsubsequently in the West, and oftenfrom that found in the furtherEast as well.