Singh 1

Rajdeep Singh

Mrs. Bamert

UWP 1

5 March 2017

Discourse Community

Indian classical music is a tradition that has its roots traced back to the first millennium

B.C. (Booth). Indian Classical music is based on two main traditions which are still being used

today: Hindustani music and Carnatic music. One of the most unique characteristics of Indian

classical music is its importance on oral teaching and improvisation. Unlike Western music,

Indian classical musicians do not use sheet music when performing concerts. This is what makes

it so challenging because not only does one have to stay in rhythm, stay in the same raag, and

maintain the melody, but they also have to think of different ways to manipulate musical notes

right at that moment. Therefore, improvisation is a vital part of what Indian Classical music is

based on. Indian classical music also encompasses various written methods in which different

types of notations come into place, but the emphasis is given onto learning orally. This usually

works by the teacher reciting a specific set of notes and the student trying to copy the same

notes, melody, and minute ornaments to his/her best ability and remembering it. Usually for the

beginner students, the teaching process is more focused on written notation because it is easier

for the student to visually see the notes and follow them. However, as they get the basic

foundation of the notes, the attention is switched to oral teaching. According to Arya, this oral

method of learning and imitating without a written notation will challenge and encourage

students to train their ear to familiarize the pitch, meter, and rhythm (Arya 88). Hence, this
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concept of oral transmission builds a rigid relationship between the teacher and the student,

which is known as the guru-shishya parampara (Alter 160).

In this essay, I performed primary and secondary research on the topic of the teaching

process in Indian Classical Music. The goal of this essay is to clarify the pedagogy in Indian

classical music as a discourse community and see the different types of genres and

communication that are used throughout the process. A community is a discourse community if it

follows the following six characteristics: common public goals, specific lexis, a threshold

level of members, mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, information and

feedback, and one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aim (Swales,

2011). In addition to explaining the process of teaching in Indian classical music, I used Ali

Akbar College of Music as an example to show how Indian music is taught, learned, and

performed in that academy. Ali Akbar College of Music is an Indian Classical Music Academy in

San Rafael where the great, Ali Akbar Khan, himself, used to teach. Unfortunately, he passed

away couple of years ago, so Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, an eminent tabla player, is currently

teaching the students.

For this paper, I conducted a participant observation of the genres that are used in the

pedagogy in Indian Classical music. I attended the weekly classes every Monday in the Ali

Akbar Academy in San Rafael and accompanied my teacher with harmonium, an Indian

instrument in which notes are produced by air passing through metal tubes. I observed the

different types of genres and lexis used in the teaching process. Since I personanlly have been

learning Indian classical music for past four years, I would make an appropriate subject of this

observation. I also performed a case study on a student named Sudhakar who has been learning

tabla under the guidance of Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri over the past four years. I interviewed
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Sudhakar in the car while we were driving to the music class. Sudhakar first learned the basics of

Tabla for 8 years from Satish Tare, a disciple of Swapan Chaudhuri, but was later recommended

by Satish Tare to go to Swapan Chaudhuri. The focus of this case study is to show what genres

are used in the pedagogy in Indian classical music.

The purpose of the teaching process in Indian classical music is to be able to understand

complex rhythmic patterns and melodies, and spiritually connect with music. These goals are

achieved by having dedication, patience, and a good teacher who can guide the student to the

right path. Moreover, this process helps maintain the same traditional values of Indian classical

music that have been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years.

According to Sudhakar, the main purpose of the pedagogy in Indian music is to simply, learn.

Not only are the students learning, but the teacher is learning is as well. For example, when the

teacher is creating new compositions, he is thinking and learning different ways to move around

the notes, while still staying within the rhythmic cycle. Sudhakar says that Guruji (respectable

word for teacher) gave up the full concert life style at age 35, which is the peak age of

performing and doing concerts, and came to Academy to teach. Sudhakar believes that gurujis

is constantly learning and his teaching has helped him maintain the strength in his hands and his

mind to stay sharp.

The idea of giving and receiving feedback plays a significant role in this discourse

community. If a student is not given feedback by the teacher, then he will not know what

mistakes to fix or how to practice properly. And practicing wrong will cause the student to spend

more time to fix the mistakes. Hence, the student gives the teacher feedback by practicing

everyday and showing the results of improvement. The teacher can see what level the student is

at and how much passion he has by simply identifying if he has practiced or not. If the student is
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not practicing, then the guru feels disappointed because his precious time is being wasted. Pandit

Swapan Chaudhuri specifically once said, if you are not going to practice, then stop wasting my

time. An example of how a teacher might give feedback to a student is mentioned by Sudhakar

when he said, if I am not playing a certain bol right or dont know how to play, Ill ask guruji

and hell tell me the proper way. He further states that the opportunity of getting questions

answered by the legend himself and receiving blessings from him is unbelievable. Therefore, the

feedback in this discourse community is an essential tool to learning Indian classical music and

connecting emotionally.

In this discourse community, specialized vocabulary words are used, which are only

understood by students who are learning Indian classical music. For example, we use words as

such as kaida, chakradar, and dhere dhere in the classroom to communicate with other

students. Even though most of the teaching and learning is done orally, students do write the

compositions in their notebooks when they go home so they do not forget. Since guruji is

composing new compositions every few minutes, there are only certain amount of them one can

memorize. Sudhakar mentions a very good point that if a person recites the bols orally, then he

can visually imagine the bols inside the mind. However, if the person writes the bols, then he

cannot play with rhythm and improvise. Indian classical music is seeing the notes visually and

coming up with infinite possibilities to move around notes, instead of singing or playing direct

notes that are written on the music sheet.

Furthermore, this discourse community also uses lesson recordings as one of its genre. In

the class, we record the material that is being taught to us either on our phones or voice

recorders. For specific instruments such as tabla or sitar, some people also video record the

lessons because it is better to see how a specific note is played visually, rather than it being heard
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through the audio. Recording the lesson gives us the benefit of listening and going back to the

recording as many times as we want and lets us catch the minute details that we might have not

grasped in the class the first time. According to Sudhakars perspective, recording the lesson

during the class gives him the opportunity to learn from his mistakes. He states that I record the

lesson not only to listen to gurujis material, but also to hear what I was playing wrong. He

clarified by saying, my tempo decreases while I am playing a certain composition and I have

never noticed that until I listened to the recording and heard my tabla being unsynchronized with

rest of the students. Hence, this genre of discourse community helps students improve their

mistakes and gives them a better understanding of intricate details they might have missed during

the class.

Furthermore, the Ali Akbar Academy also sets up a live stream where people who live in

different areas and cannot make it to the class can still take the class and learn. It is a face to face

interface where the teacher can see the student and the student can see and hear the teacher. The

student can also ask questions to guruji by writing his/her comment in the textbox. As Sudhakar

mentioned, it is a great way for someone who cannot make it to the class to still take the online

class and not fall behind on the material. Of course, it is not the same experience as learning

right in front of the teacher, but it is still a great technology tool for the teacher to see if the

student is maintaining his practice or not.

In the interview, Sudhakar stated that the reason why the teaching process of North

Indian Classical Music is so fascinating is because you need to have fast pick-up power and

have the ability to improvise. According to Arya, North Indian classical music is an aural

tradition which unlike Western music, does not use sheet music (Arya 85). Arya claims that

while most of the western music is focused on writing their notes on a piece of paper, Indian
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classical music is all about learning orally and trying to remember all the information to better

understand the tone of the pitch and express musical emotion (Arya 88).

This discourse community has different genres and lexis that help explain the pedagogy

in Indian classical music. Although Indian classical music is mostly based on the method of oral

teaching, it also incorporates written text in the beginning stage of the teaching process. Since it

is challenging for someone who is a beginner in learning Indian classical music to remember the

compositions and sing/play them properly, the teacher makes him write the notation in the

notebook first, and then tells him to play it. All of the prominent Indian classical musicians

followed this pedagogy before actually performing on the stage. Hence, the written notation is

the foundation of pedagogy in the Indian classical music that later leads to the oral performance

on the stage. Therefore, the teaching process must start with written notation in order for a

person to understand the basic movement between notes and be prepared to perform on the stage

in the future.
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Work cited

Arya D. D. (2015). North Indian Classical Vocal Music for the Classroom. Music Educators

Journal, 84-89. Retrieved from

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/002743211558859688596

Booth, G., The Teaching of North Indian Music: Three Case Studies. Ohio Music Education

Association. No.10 (1983), pp.1-1. Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24127372.pdf

Kartomi M. & Alter, A. (1994). Music-Cultures in Contact. In Gurus, Shishyas, and Educators:

Adaptive Strategies in Post-colonial North Indian Music Institute. Retrieved from

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=S2E3Q62l-

lUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA158&dq=indian+music+teaching&ots=QzVg0n_vQi&sig=GhV_dH

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Perlman Marc, The Rags of North Indian Music, Forty years Later. Ethnomusicology. Vol.55,

No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2011). Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5406/ethnomusicology.55.2.0318.pdf

Swales, J. (2011). The concept of discourse community. In E. Wardle and D. Downs

(Eds.), Writing about writing (pp. 466-473). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. Retrieved

from https://canvas.ucdavis.edu/courses/99620/files/823089?module_item_id=48607