Music of India: Ravi Shankar

Posted on February 22, 2021 by marmstr3

Ravi Shankar
(April 7, 1920 – December 11, 2012)

Ravi Shankar was a master of the sitar and composer and one of the best known Indian musicians in the world. His rich musical career spanned nine decades and he spent much of his career bridging the gap between the musical cultures of West and East.

Born in 1920 to a Bengali Brahmin family, Shankar was the youngest of seven brothers. At the age of 13, he joined his brother Uday Shankar‘s Compaigne de Danse et Musique Hindou (Company of Hindu Dance and Music) as a dancer and spent several years touring India and Europe with his brother’s group. The extensive touring allowed Ravi to learn about Western classical music and jazz while he travelled.

In 1938, Shankar gave up dancing to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After completing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer – working several genres including for Indian films like The Apu Trilogy and serving as musical director of All India Radio.
During this period, Shankar founded the Indian National Orchestra, and composed for it; in his compositions he combined Western and classical Indian instrumentation.

Sitar of Pandit Ravi Shankar (1920–2012). Commissioned by Shankar from the instrument maker Nodu Mullick in Calcutta. Made in 1961. (Gift to the British Museum from Shankar’s family )

Concurrently, Shankar’s international fame was on the rise. In 1954, he performed in the Soviet Union. In 1956, he played his debut solo concerts in Western Europe and the U.S. Within two decades, he was probably the most famous Indian musician in the world.

Shankar was not one-dimensional and his great genius was his openness to other musical traditions. His liberal musical outlook brought him into musical collaborations with a diverse set of musicians. He was so confidently grounded in his own tradition, that he felt unthreatened and completely secure in presenting it to the world as well as by collaborating with others. This is most remembered in his teaching of, and collaboration with the Beatles, above all George Harrison (who became Shankar’s student).

Guitarist George Harrison poses for a portrait with Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar in circa 1975. Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Ravi Shankar also worked with classical musicians like Yehudi Menuhin, Zubin Mehta and Philip Glass. He composed music for several films, including Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, for which he received an Academy Award nomination and also composed three concertos and a symphony for sitar and Western orchestra as well as pieces pairing the sitar with the Western flute and the Japanese koto.

Shankar received many honors and awards during his lifetime including the Bharat Ratna (India’s highest civilian honor) in 1999, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for “services to music” in 2001, the Fukuoka Prize and five Grammy awards.

Here is a sampling of library resources featuring Shankar from our collection:

– My Music, My Life by Ravi Shankar (1968) (Book)
– Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar West Meets East (1999, p1966) (CD)
– Pandit Ravi Shankar (2002) (DVD)
– Ravi Shankar: The Concert for World Peace (2007) (DVD)
– The Concert for Bangladesh – George Harrison and Friends (2005) (DVD)
– Rāgas & Tālas Ravi Shankar (2000, p1964) (CD)
– Orion Philip Glass (2005) (CD)
– Pandit Ravi Shankar: A Portrait of the Maestro of the Sitar (1986) (Streaming video via Medici.TV)
– Sitar Concertos Etc (2005) (Streaming audio via Alexander Street)

Music of India: Lata Mangeshkar

Posted on February 19, 2021 by marmstr3

Lata Mangeshkar
b. September 28, 1929

Lata Mangeshkar is the best-known and respected female singer in the history of Indian film music. She is probably best known as a playback singer for Bollywood films. Playback singers often record songs for use in films.

The Indian Hindi-language film industry is referred to as Bollywood and is based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and is one of the largest centers of film production in the world. The word is a portmanteau of “Bombay” and “Hollywood”. The most popular commercial genre of Bollywood is the masala film, which freely mixes action, comedy, drama, romance, and melodrama along with musical numbers. Masala films can generally be considered musicals. Indian cinema has been the largest producer of musicals in the world since the 1960s, when it exceeded America’s musical film output. Playback singers record songs for the film soundtracks, and the actors lip-sync said songs for the cameras.

Poster for the 1947 Hindi film Aap ki sewa mein which features an early example of Mangeshkar’s work

Lata Mangeshkar is said to have recorded more film songs than any other singer. She has recorded songs in over a thousand (!!) Hindi films and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and foreign languages, though primarily in Marathi, Hindi and Bengali.

Music really has been the driving force in Mangeshkar’s life. Her father Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar was a classical singer and theatre actor. She received her first lessons in music from her father and was performing as an actress in her father’s plays by the age of five. She is the elder sister of singers Asha Bhosle, Hridaynath Mangeshkar, Usha Mangeshkar and Meena Mangeshkar, all accomplished musicians and singers in their own right.

In 1942 when Mangeshkar was 13, her father died of heart disease and Lata immediately joined the Bollywood film industry as an actress-singer to help support her family.

Here is a Youtube clip from Azaad a 1955 film which features Mangeshkar’s voice:

Lata Mangeshkar has received many awards and honors during the course of her career. India’s highest award in cinema, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, was bestowed on her in 1989 by the Government of India. She also has been awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honor.

In 1974, The Guinness Book of Records listed Mangeshkar as the most recorded artist in the history, stating that she had reportedly recorded “not less than 25,000 solo, duet and chorus backed songs in 20 Indian languages” between 1948 and 1974. (The actual number of songs she has recorded is a matter of some dispute. Regardless, she is certainly ONE of the most recorded artists in the world.)

Here is a Youtube clip of the song “Tujhe Dekha To Ye Jaana Sanam” (“My love, when I saw you then I realized” per Google translate) sung by Mangeshkar and Kumar Sanu from the 1995 Bollywood film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (transl. The Big-Hearted Will Take the Bride, per Wikipedia):

In addition to singing, Mangeshkar has composed music for five films and also produced four films. Her career spans over seven decades now and she has only recently begun to show signs of slowing down (a bit) at the age of 91. Her influence on Indian film and popular music is profound.

Here is a small sampling of library resources concerning Lata Mangeshkar, Bollywood, and Indian popular music:

– “Lata Mangeshkar”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001) (Reference entry)
– Global Divas: Voices from Women of the World (1995) (CD)
– “Lata Mangeshkar”, The Palgrave Dictionary of Women’s Biography (2005) (Reference entry)
– Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song by Jayson Beaster-Jones (2015) (Book)
– Rough Guide to Bollywood (2002) (CD)
– There’ll Always Be Stars in the Sky: The Indian Film Music Phenomenon (2003) (DVD)
– More Than Bollywood: Studies in Indian Popular Music edited by Gregory D. Booth and Bradley Shope (2014) (Book)
– Focus: Popular Music in Contemporary India by Natalie Rose Sarrazin (2020) (Book)

Music of India: Indian Classical Music

Posted on February 17, 2021 by marmstr3

Indian classical music is the classical music of the Indian subcontinent. It has deep roots in Hinduism.

Saraswati is the goddess of music and knowledge in the Hindu tradition.

In general, Indian classical music has three foundational elements:

1) Raga: a series of five or more musical notes used to form a melody — similar to modes or scales in Western music. Raga make much more use of microtones than Western music (many notes fall in between notes in Western scales in terms of pitch). Raga are often associated with specific times of day and/or seasons.

2) Tala: a rhythmic pattern that determines the larger rhythmic structure of a piece. Tala literally means “clap”.

3) Improvisation around a raga is the basis for most Indian classical music.

Indian classical music has two major traditions:

* North Indian music is also called Hindustani is influenced by Arabic and Persian musical practice as a result of the Islamic conquest of the region in the Middle Ages. Hindustani music emphasizes improvisation and exploration of all aspects of raga and gives slightly more prominence to instrumental forms.
Here are a couple of links to catalog records for Music Library resources featuring Hindustani music:
– India: Hindustani Music (streaming via Alexander Street)
– North Indian Classical Music (CD)

* South Indian music is also called Carnatic music. It is much more oriented toward vocal music (even when instruments are played alone, they are played in a style meant to imitate singing). Improvisation is employed but Carnatic music also makes use of composed devotional pieces.
Here are a couple of links to catalog records for Music Library resources featuring Carnatic music:
– Flowers of Southern Indian Classical Carnatic Music(CD)
– Ragas from South India (streaming via Alexander Street)

The types of instruments used in North and South Indian music also differ.
Hindustani music makes use of the sitar, sarod, tabla and tampura.

A sampling of instruments most commonly used in Hindustani music

Carnatic music makes use of instruments like the vina, mridamgam, and shruti.

A sampling instruments most commonly used in Carnatic music

Here are a few more resources the on Indian classical music that can be found in the Music Library’s holdings:
– Indian Classical Music (DVD) (also available streaming via Infobase)
– The Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music (Book)
– The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas (Book)
– Classical Music of India (Book)
– “Music and Emotion: A Case for North Indian Classical Music” (journal article)
– “Perception of Modulations in South Indian Classical (Carnātic) Music by Student and Teacher Musicians: A Cross-Cultural Study” (journal article)

One might also stop by Parsons Music Library and check out our current display on the Music of India which will be available to visit until the end of February!

New CDs added – December 2020

Posted on January 19, 2021 by marmstr3

New CDs for December 2020

Black Composers Matter : Florence Beatrice Price

Posted on December 15, 2020 by marmstr3

Florence Beatrice Price
(April 9, 1877 – June 3, 1953)

Florence Beatrice Price (nee Smith) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a music teacher who guided Florence’s early musical training. Price gave her first piano recital at the age of four. Upon graduating from high school (as valedictorian, at the age of fourteen!), Price enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from the NEC in 1906 with a Bachelor of Music degree in organ and piano performance.

She returned to Arkansas, where she taught briefly before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910. There she became the head of the music department of Clark Atlanta University. In 1912, she married Thomas J. Price, a lawyer. She moved back to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he had his practice. After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, particularly a lynching of a black man in 1927, the Price family decided to leave the south and settled in Chicago.

Florence Price as a teenager

While in Chicago, Price began a period of compositional creativity and study and was at various times enrolled at the Chicago Musical College, Chicago Teacher’s College, University of Chicago, and American Conservatory of Music, studying languages and liberal arts subjects as well as music composition and orchestration.

Financial struggles and abuse by her husband resulted in Price getting a divorce in 1931. She became a single mother to her two daughters. To make ends meet, Price wrote radio jingles, popular songs under the name “Vee Jay” and also accompanied silent films at the organ. She eventually moved in with her student, friend, and fellow composer Margaret Bonds (who was profiled earlier this semester on our blog).

Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. In 1932, Pric submitted compositions for the Wanamaker Foundation Awards. Price won first prize with her Symphony in E minor, and third for her Piano Sonata, earning her a $500 prize. Her symphony was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and she was catapulted into her life as a composer.

Price’s music brings together the European classical tradition in which she was trained and the haunting melodies of African American spirituals and folk tunes. Other musical influences include African American church music and European Romantic composers like Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. During the course of her life, Florence Price wrote symphonies, concertos, instrumental chamber music, music for voice and piano, works for piano, works for organ, and arrangements of spirituals.

Her best known vocal work, the setting of the Negro Spiritual, “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord,” for medium voice and piano, was published by Gamble Hinged Music in 1937. Famed contralto Marian Anderson recorded the song for Victor that same year and regularly performed the song in concert. In 1949, Price published two of her spiritual arrangements, “I Am Bound for the Kingdom,” and “I’m Workin’ on My Buildin'”, and dedicated them to Anderson, who performed them on a regular basis.

When Price died in 1953, many of her concert pieces remained in manuscript and unpublished. Following her death, much of her work was overshadowed as new musical styles emerged that fit the changing tastes of modern society. Some of her work was lost, but as more African-American and female composers have gained attention for their works, so has Price. Many of her manuscripts and papers can now be found at the library of the University of Arkansas. Some items in this collection have been digitized and can be seen here: https://digitalcollections.uark.edu/digital/collection/p17212coll3.

In 2009, a substantial cache of Price’s works were found in a dilapidated house in Saint Anne, Illinois. The collection contained dozens of Price’s scores that had been thought to be lost. Here’s a 2018 piece from The New Yorker about the find: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/the-rediscovery-of-florence-price.

If you’d like to learn more about Florence Price, here are some items from the Music Library’s collection:

* The Caged Bird: The Life and Music of Florence Price (DVD)

* Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (Score)

* Sonata in E Minor for Piano (Score)

* Black Diamonds: Althea Waites plays music by Afro-American Composers (CD)

* Got the Saint Louis blues classical music in the jazz age / VocalEssence (Streaming audio)

Here is a recent piece about Price from NPR Music:

Black Composers Matter: Anthony Davis

Posted on December 7, 2020 by marmstr3

Anthony Davis
b. February 20, 1951

American pianist, composer and educator Anthony Davis was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1951. Davis was exposed to jazz at an early age because his father enjoyed music and knew several jazz musicians. Davis composed his first piece for piano at the age of six.

Davis studied music at Wesleyan and Yale universities and went on to teach music and African American studies at various universities. He has been a professor of music at the University of California San Diego since 1998.

Davis received acclaim as a free-jazz pianist with various ensembles and has played with other experimental jazz musicians like Anthony Braxton and Leo Smith. He founded the octet Episteme in 1981.

As a composer, Davis is probably best known for his operas. He has composed five operas to date — the first was X: The Life and Times of Malcom X (1986). His most recent opera The Central Park Five was premiered by the Long Beach Opera in 2019 and won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2020. The piece is a musical treatment of a real-life case from 1989 where five Black and Latino teens were wrongfully convicted of the horrific assault and rape of a white woman.

The Pulitzer jury cited The Central Park Five as “a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful.”

Davis is an internationally recognized composer of operatic, symphonic, choral, and chamber works. He incorporates several styles including jazz, rhythm ‘n’ blues, gospel, non-Western, African, European classical, Indonesian gamelan, and experimental music. Davis has also written film scores and written incidental music for Tony Kushner‘s play Angels In America.

If you’d like to learn more about Anthony Davis, here are some items from the Music Library’s collection:

* X: The Life and Times of Malcom X (CD)

* The Ghost Factory (CD)

* Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers (Book)

* Epistēmē Anthony Davis (CD)

* The Opera America Songbook: For Voice and Piano (Score)

* Tania: An Opera of Abduction and Revolution (CD)

* Tania (Score)

* “‘The Central Park Five’ in Song: Composer Anthony Davis on his new opera” The Washington Post (Article by Anne Midgette, Washington Post June 19, 2019, available online)

New CDs added – November 2020

Posted on December 1, 2020 by marmstr3

New CDs for November 2020

Orchestral, Concertos and Chamber Music

Black Violin – Stereotypes
Black Violin – Take The Stairs
Tania Leon – Indigena

Anders Miolin – Timeless Odyssey
Du Yun – Dinosaur Scar
Various Artists – Legacy: Violin Music of African-American Composers

Opera, Opera Excerpts, Choral Music and Art Songs

Du Yun – Angel’s Bone

Various Artists – Masters of the Clarinet
Various artists – Make More Noise!: Women in Independent UK Music 1977-1987

Black Composers Matter: Adolphus Hailstork

Posted on November 30, 2020 by marmstr3

Adolphus Hailstork
b. April 17, 1941

American composer and professor of music Adolphus Hailstork was born in Rochester, New York in 1941 and grew up in Albany, New York. He began his musical studies with piano lessons as a child and began composing during the 1950s as a high school student.

He studied at Howard University (1963) and the Manhattan School of Music (1965/1966). After service in the US Armed Forces in Germany (1966–1968), he returned to the United States and pursued his doctoral degree at Michigan State University in Lansing (1971).

Hailstork has served as professor at Youngstown State University in Ohio (1971-1977), as well as professor of music and Composer-in-Residence at Virginia’s Norfolk State University (1977-2000). He is currently a professor of music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Hailstork received a star on Norfolk’s Legends of Music Walk of Fame in 2017. The Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony and National Symphony Orchestra have all performed works by Dr. Hailstork over the years and he was proclaimed a Virginia Cultural Laureate in 1992.

Hailstork writes in a variety of forms and styles: symphonic works and tone poems for orchestra; a piano concerto; numerous chamber works; duos for such combinations as horn and piano, clarinet and piano, flute and piano, and others; a large number of songs including songs for soprano, baritone, mezzo-soprano, some with piano and others with orchestra or chamber group; band works and band transcriptions, and many pieces for piano.

According to his website, “Hailstork’s newest works include THE WORLD CALLED (based on Rita Dove’s poem TESTIMONIAL), a work for soprano, chorus and orchestra commissioned by the Oratorio Society of Virginia (premiered in May 2018) and STILL HOLDING ON (February 2019) an orchestra work commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is currently working on his Fourth Symphony, and A KNEE ON A NECK (tribute to George Floyd) for chorus and orchestra.”

If you’d like to learn more about Adolphus Hailstork, here are some items from the Music Library’s collection:

* Hailstork, Adolphus (Reference entry from The Grove Dictionary of American Music via Oxford Online)

* Dance Like the Wind: Music of Today’s Black Composers (CD)

* Symphonic Brotherhood: The Music of African-American Composers (CD)

* Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (Score)

* Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers (Score)

* African-American Organ Music Anthology (Score)

* Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers (Book)

* “An Interview With Adolphus Hailstork” (1999 journal article by Gene Brooks from The Choral Journal)

Black Composers Matter: Tania León

Posted on November 19, 2020 by marmstr3

Tania León
b. May 14, 1943

Tania León is a Cuban-born composer, conductor, and educator. She was born in Havana, Cuba in 1943 and began studying piano at the age of four.

She earned her B.A. and M.A. in Music in her native city (BA 1963, MA 1964) and settled in New York in 1967. She attended New York University where she studied composition (BS 1971, MS 1975). Soon after her arrival in New York, she became the rehearsal pianist for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, one of the company’s founding members and had a long and productive association with them as pianist, conductor and composer.

León has played important roles at various other New York institutions, including the Brooklyn Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra and its Sonidos de las Américas festivals, and the New York Philharmonic, where she served as New Music Advisor. Additionally, she conducted on Broadway (perhaps most notably for The Wiz in the late 1970s).

León’s compositional style absorbed American influences such as jazz and gospel. Her work also includes textual and rhythmic elements from her African and Cuban cultural heritage alongside contemporary classical techniques. Grove Music Online refers to her works as “technically demanding, and characterized by dense textures, angular melodies, dissonant harmonies and colourful orchestration.”

Her works include ballets, chamber music, orchestral music, music for solo instruments, vocal music, electro-acoustic music and also an opera, Scourge of Hyacinths.
According to León’s website, “Recent commissions include: the score for the opera, The Little Rock Nine, with a libretto by Thulani Davis, and historical research by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., commissioned by the University of Central Arkansas‘s College of Fine Arts and Communication.” Here’s a 2017 article about a performance of excerpts from this work-in-progress: https://arktimes.com/rock-candy/2017/09/26/a-glimpse-of-the-little-rock-nine-opera-at-uca.

Tania León & Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in conversation at a UCA event in 2017.

Tania León is also the founder and artistic director of Composers Now, a non-profit dedicated to empowering all living composers and celebrating the diversity of their voices.

If you’d like to learn more about Tania León here are some resources available in the Music Library:

* In Her Own Words: Conversations with Composers in the United States (Book)

* Indígena (CD)

* Batá: for Orchestra (Score)

* Pet’s Suite: Flute and Piano (Score)

* Mística: for Solo Piano (Score)

* The Sensual Nature of Sound: 4 composers, Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros (Streaming Video via Kanopy)

* In Motion (CD)

Black Composers Matter: J. Rosamond Johnson

Posted on November 11, 2020 by marmstr3

J. Rosamund Johnson
(August 11, 1873 – November 11, 1954)

John Rosamond Johnson was one of the most successful African American composers of the early 20th century.

Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 11, 1873. He began playing the piano at age four, studied at the New England Conservatory from 1890-1896. He began his career as a music teacher in Jacksonville public schools but in 1899 moved to New York with his brother, James Weldon Johnson, to pursue a career in show business.

The Johnson brothers established a song writing partnership with Robert “Bob” Cole, a lyricist and vaudeville entertainer. Their working relationship lasted until Cole’s death in 1911 and would prove to be quite profitable, producing two popular all-black operettas on Broadway, The Shoo-Fly Regiment (1906) and The Red Moon (1908).

Johnson is best known today as the composer of “Lift Every Voice And Sing” also known in the U.S. as the “Black National Anthem” because of its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African-American people. His brother James Weldon wrote the lyrics and the song was first performed by 500 schoolchildren on Lincoln’s birthday (February 12th) in 1900. The song is featured in 39 different Christian hymnals, and is sung in churches across North America.

The_Obamas_sing_with_Smokey_Robinson,_Joan_Baez_and_others,_2014

President Barack Obama and the First Family join Smokey Robinson, Joan Baez and other performers on stage in the East Room of the White House as they sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the conclusion of “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement,” Feb. 9, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Johnson also wrote popular songs, musicals, works for piano and wore other musical hats as well, working as a vaudeville and Broadway performer. He also founded a school in Harlem called the New York Music School Settlement for Colored People.

As an editor, Johnson collected four important works of traditional African-American songs. The first two of these song collections he compiled along with his brother James: The Book of American Negro Spirituals (1925) and The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (1926).

Here is a clip featuring a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by Alicia Keys with narration by Anthony Mackie which aired during Week 1 of the NFL 2020 regular season:

If you’d like to learn more about J. Rosamond Johnson, here are some items from the Music Library’s collection:

* Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing: The Culture of Uplift, Identity, and Politics in Black Musical Theatre by Paula Marie Seniors (Ebook)

* The Book of American Negro Spirituals edited with an introduction by James Weldon Johnson; musical arrangements by J. Rosamond Johnson (Score)

* May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem by Imani Perry (Book)

* “Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Concert” University of Richmond, Schola Cantorum (Recording of concert recorded in Camp Concert Hall at UR, on January 20, 2003).

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