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Welcome to Bansuri Delight! NFA Handout WELCOME TO BANSURI DELIGHT! Lyon Leifer This session is designed to, in a very short time, give you an introduction to raga music of north India (Hindustani classical music) and to its sound on the keyless, transverse bamboo flute, the bansuri. This digital handout should help you get the most out of the session. I was exposed, almost by chance, to this music in New York while training in flute and fell in love with its combination of deep emotion, spontaneity and developed structure. Its char- acter and adaptability also struck me as having great potential for someone who is recital- or chamber music-minded. After graduating from Juilliard and moving on to the St. Louis Symphony, I obtained a Fulbright to study in India and accepted it. For better or worse, the rest is history. Actually better, as love for the music and the instrument, desire to further develop this aspect of my flute playing and musicianship, and to share this great music, have only deepened through the years. Ragas are melodies that embody deep feeling and express a huge variety of moods. They have developed over centuries to enable improvised performance largely on the basis of specific melodic and metrical requirements and of composed songs that fit those require- ments. I will demonstrate briefly two or three different ragas, arising out of different scales and set in different time cycles (tala) in order to give some idea of both the scope of the system and the capabilities of the instrument. Tabla accompaniment, provided today by Abhijeet Dharmapurikar, is a basic essential for performance in Hindustani music. It pro- vides a metrical framework and adds rhythmical vitality via spontaneous interchange with the flutist or whoever else renders a raga. Tabla is one the world’s great percussive arts and bansuri/tabla is one of the great chamber genres. The charts explain how a flute with seven finger holes can play music from a fixed tonic (three holes covered) in the ten scales shown on p. 3, plus mixed scales. The instrument is also capable of glissandi, bent notes of all kinds, subtle, microtonal placement of scale steps, and occasional chromatic passages. The letters under the notes on p.3 stand for note names in the Hindustani system, sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. For convenience sake, all scales in the charts on pp. 4-6 are notated with third-space C as the tonic, with the note names given below each fingering. A C-tonic flute pitched as shown in these charts is highly recommended for beginning to play as its holes aren’t very hard to cover. However, the deep sound of the concert instrument results from using an instrument with a fundamental at or around first-line E as sa. This makes it about an equivalent of a “flûte d’amour,” sounding a minor third lower than the orchestral flute in C most of us here play. About the bansuri tradition I belong to: The flute in north India had no place on the concert stage and was only regarded as fit for folk music, until Pannalal Ghosh (1911-1960) single- handedly elevated it starting in 1930’s until his most untimely death. His herculean efforts included 1) researching and creating the concert-size instrument; 2) developing a technique for playing it; and 3) adapting to the bansuri the Maihar tradition of Ud. Allaudin Khan, a particularly noteworthy one; and 4) creating a sensation in the world of Hindustani music with his flute. As an imperfect analogy, he was Boehm, Moyse and Rampal rolled into one, plus he composed significantly. The Ghosh approach to bansuri was taken up, maintained, developed, and taught, especially by his student, Devendra Murdeshwar (1922-2000) and by a few other disciples. It was my great fortune to become Mr. Murdeshwar’s student. Bansuri playing by both of these masters can be heard by searching under their names on YouTube. Today there are many fine bansuri players, including those who follow the Ghosh/Murdeshwar approach as well as others. Every bansuri player today, whether in the direct line of transmission or not, is highly indebted to Pannalal Ghosh. The instrument I’m playing today is one I made myself, based largely on the pattern of holes, bore/length ratio and manufacturing techniques of my Guruji, Devendra Murdesh- war. In my long association with him I had numerous opportunities to watch him make flutes and to discuss flute making issues. Following his lead and experimental bent, I have continued to try to implement some recent design ideas of makers in Europe and America to the extent that I find them applicable to an instrument made out of bamboo that grew in a forest, has no mechanism, and has a bore that can’t really be modified, rather must be se- lected. It is for you to judge the success or failure of my efforts in this direction. Should we run out of time before any question you have is answered, do feel free to catch me afterwards or later during the Convention. Anyone interested in pursuing basic bansuri knowledge beyond the scope of this session is welcome to pick up a copy of my book/cd combination: How to Play the Bansuri: A Manual for Self-Instruction Based on the Teach- ing of Devendra Murdeshwar. The scale and fingering charts given here are from the man- ual. It is described on my website, www.lyonleifer.com, and available there. Some online resellers also carry it, along with inexpensive C-tonic bansuris of decent quality at varying prices. I publish some very beautiful recordings of Devendra Murdeshwar live in concert, available on my website. I can undertake residencies, concerts and lecture/demonstrations by arrangement and currently teach the music privately to a few students who have ex - pressed serious interest and committed to serious practice. As the Flute Instructor at North- eastern Illinois University in Chicago, I cover all the usual conservatory flute curriculum elements with major attention to sound production, intonation, overall musicianship and orchestral excerpts, while also making available opportunities for learning bansuri to stu- dents there who also may have interest in it. p 3 p 4 p 5 Note: These fingerings, particularly in the third octave, are subject to some vari- ation due to the differences from one bansuri to another in bore, hole size, place- ment, etc. As with the Boehm flute or the baroque flute, it’s advisable to have a collection of alternative fingerings in any event. p 6.
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