Power and delight: Vocal training in North Indian classical music.

摘要

In this dissertation, I explore the process of transmission in the classical singing of North India by focusing on three fundamental concepts: the guru (preceptor, teacher), the sishya (disciple), and the talim (training). In the introduction, I review the history of transmission studies in the field of ethnomusicology, and particularly in the area of North Indian classical music. Section one, The Guru, is comprised of biographies of three teachers: the late Krishna Chandra Bandhopadhyay (Keshto Banejee) of Calcutta, Sushil Kumar Mukherjee of Lenox, Massachusetts, and Mohan Singh Khangura of Santiniketan, West Bengal. Section two, The Sishya, begins by introducing key issues and terminology related to vocal training in North India, and then proceeds to explore these issues as they are revealed in conversations with four teachers (Dipali Nag, Sunil Bose, Rajan Misra, and Ritwik Sanyal) and six disciples of Krishna Chandra Bandhopadhyay. Section three, The Talim, consists of a detailed analysis of the pedagogical approaches of the three teachers whose biographies appear in section one.;Issues addressed in this dissertation include: the transition of North Indian classical music from the domain of nineteenth-century court musicians to that of urban, middle-class musicians in the twentieth-century, amateur music-making, gender in music transmission, attitudes regarding music notation and teaching institutions, dialogues between guru and sishya, and the gradual negotiation of the latter's identity. The author's research consisted primarily of interviews and participant-observation, including twenty-three years' study of North Indian classical singing and seven field trips to India. Rhetorically, the dissertation is an explication of texts consisting of interviews, lesson note-books, journals, and recordings and transcriptions of singing lessons.