Students to strum their stuff in recital

The unusual sounds and arrangements of Indian classical music
often surprise and fascinate first-time listeners. Although pop
artists like the Beatles and Sting have brought the culture’s
richly emotional tones into the Western mainstream, many people
have still not heard the inspiring art form. Tonight at Schoenberg,
the UCLA community will have the chance to hear the sounds of India
in a free show performed by students in the Music of India
class.

“(Indian classical music) is an interaction of mind and
heart and soul and spirit,” said visiting artist Nishat Khan,
who is directing the sitar and vocal sections of the ensemble.

Khan is a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist who has performed
worldwide since the age of 7. He comes from a lineage of Indian
musicians dating back to the Moghul courts, and his family has been
influential in shaping the sound of Indian classical music.

“We are lucky to have (Khan) here,” said student
Emmanuel Masongsong. “He is an honored and talented
musician.”

Masongsong is primarily a guitarist who, like all but one of the
other sitar players of tonight’s concert, picked up the
instrument under four months ago.

“Applying any sort of knowledge of guitar (to sitar)
doesn’t work at all,” he said.

Unlike guitar, which uses all fingers of the left hand, the
sitar is played with only the index and middle fingers.

“You have to unlearn the tendency to play with your other
fingers,” Masongsong said. “But after about two weeks,
I got used to it.”

Masongsong, who also plays guitar in a death-metal band, said he
became interested in Indian classical sounds about a
year-and-a-half ago.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever thought
possible with music,” he said. He was so inspired that he now
includes some “Indian stuff” in his band’s
compositions. With its unusual rhythms, Indian music is a wild
departure from anything in Western music. Traditionally not even
written down, it is passed down through generations.

“Indian music applies a structure to something that is
much greater than you can notate, so the only way you can
communicate it is by playing it,” he said.

Like jazz, it’s about taking a rigid structure and pushing
the boundaries of it, spontaneously following emotion and expanding
on a main idea, Masongsong explained.

But for Masongsong, Indian music can be even more spontaneous
than traditional jazz because of the intricate improvised
interaction between the drummers and the melodic musicians, in
which improvised rhythmic phrases are echoed back and forth between
the tabla and sitar players.

“In jazz you’re following a set rhythmic structure,
whereas in Indian music you can subdivide the beat spontaneously,
so it displaces your perception of the music and adds to the
emotional connotations,” Masongsong said.

Tonight’s show will include one or two 20- to 25-minute
ragas, arranged for voice, five sitars, three tablas (drums), and a
tanpura (drone instrument). A raga is a traditional form of
classical Indian music, which is based around melodic structures of
ascension and descension. Musicians adhere to the movements of the
song but improvise within that structure. The three tabla students,
whose playing experience ranges from six and nine years, will each
solo.

The director of the tabla section, ethnomusicology Professor
Abhiman Kaushal, will treat the audience to a demonstration of how
tabla is sometimes learned: by imitating vocal syllables uttered by
the teacher. According to Kaushal, there are about 12 distinct
syllables, called bols, that can be played on the tabla or
expressed vocally.

“Tabla taught me my philosophy in life,” said
Kaushal. “Life has become very fast. We tend to go toward
instant gratification … we don’t have much
patience.”

He explained that if one takes time to listen to complex music
like this, they will get something profound out the experience.

“When you are very thirsty, you go to a soda machine, but
that will quench your thirst only for a little while,”
Kaushal said. “But if you get a good glass of water and drink
it, that will sustain you for a long time. Our music is something
like that.”

The UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology presents Music of
India, a student ensemble recital, 7:30 p.m. ““ 9:30 p.m. in
the Jan Popper Theater in Schoenberg Hall.