BBC Proms 2017: Prom 55 - Classical Music of India and Pakistan

A set of Hindustani (North Indian) music

Budhaditya Mukherjee (sitar)
Soumen Nandy (tabla)


A set of Carnatic (South Indian) music

Kumaresh Rajagopalan (Carnatic violin)
Jayanthi Kumaresh (Saraswati veena)
Anantha R Krishnan (mridangam)


A set of Qawwali (Sufi devotional music)

Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal and Brothers



Every time I go to an ethnic music concert, I walk out feeling like an ignorant idiot. It is easy to deceive a "third culture kid" such as yours sincerely to think that being conversant in two cultures makes one sufficiently cultivated. Sadly, for a start, coming from the Far East doesn't mean you know everything about the East. When we did GCSE Music, we had to do a section on ethnic music and we would look at Indian music amongst other things (such as Javanese gamelan and Jamaican ska). It was a section everybody ditched because chances are most 16-years-old signing up to study Mozart and Beethoven probably don't have much time and patience to immerse in the spiritual connotations of ragas and talas. When you spend so much time within the Western musical paradigm, it obscures sonic possibilities and it takes a lot of effort to get out of that mind set. A concert like this offers a very precious and comprehensive overview on the rich cultural heritage of Indian and Pakistani classical music, which shamefully I should know all about 15 years ago. Having said that, having gone through a jazz phase in the interim is very useful in appreciating this music. This late-night Prom consists of three 45-minute sets. The first set is Hindustani (North Indian) music on sitar and tabla. It is some very mesmerising explorations of melodic (raga) and rhythmic (tala) frameworks. The textural complexity is bewildering, where you have this very rich, sonorous, "polyphonic" finger-tapping on the tabla intertwining with some meditative modes of varying metres upon a drone on the sitar. It comes about as being transcendental in feeling. The Carnatic (South Indian) second set provided a stark contrast, where the material is predominantly melodic. The violin and the Saraswati veena are mostly either in unison or playing in question-and-response, supported by the hand-drum mridangam. The works are shorter and more varied in context and mood, ranging from the meditative to the hot-blooded. The amplification spoiled the sound somewhat, as it rendered the veena to sound like an electric guitar, but it can't be helped in RAH. The third set is Pakistani qawwali, a form of devotional music. It is vocally driven, supported by the harmonium and some percussion. It was ecstatic throughout and sent the audience, especially the compatriots, clapping and dancing. On top of this Prom being educational, it was also remarkably touching in a way. It is corny, and perhaps rather surreal, but when you see hundreds of people of different skin colour, religious beliefs, language and age group dancing and clapping in respect and appreciation to each other's culture at 1 am under the same roof of RAH, you kind of wonder why the world at large can't be more like that? Then I walked out feeling like an ignorant and irrelevant idiot, and wanting to see if Messiaen's "Cantéyodjayâ" make any more sense now.