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Can an Integration of Different Music Cultures be Useful for Music Therapy? A Little Story about Indian Ragas

"The system of Raga is (an) a unique contribution to the world music" (T.V. Sairam).

Abstract

In this writing I describe my summer encounter with Indian classical music; I try to discover the "miracle" of Ragas and to find out whether integrating different musical cultures can be useful for music therapy.

Introduction

This little story about Indian Ragas began in the first summer month here in Norway when I was dreaming about going home and about a welcome change from almost non-stop rain here, to the bright sunny weather in the Ukraine. I received message that I was going to get some examples of Indian music.

After a long trip I arrived home. It was so nice to be there again! The blue sky and shining sun were filling my room, my little world with books, pictures and memories. I looked at the old piano, and the guitar, and a self made rain maker, when a recollection about our dog came to me. She used to lie close to the piano, with her head turned to the body of the black instrument and listened to sounds of music when she liked what I was playing.

My mother and little brother embraced me smiling mysteriously. "Do you know what?" they asked. After a while I saw a little package with a lot of colorful stamps on it lying on my table. It came from India! I opened it and discovered two CDs and a booklet with an autograph by T.V. Sairam, a researcher on music from India. I felt that before studying it I needed a break, needed to feel like being home, seeing dear faces and listening to the known sounds of a city populated by one million in the Eastern part of Ukraine with steppes.

I went along the streets enjoying changes I noticed after a year of absence, a year spent in a small picturesque place surrounded by mountains with waterfalls and woods. This year I studied a new language with twenty three other students from fifteen different countries around the world. This year we had to learn about a new culture, to learn or to improve our language skills, and at the same time we had to find a way to communicate with each other. It was incredibly fascinating, but I still was missing my own culture.

Coming back I listened to the familiar music which flew from open windows. I heard my own language from every corner and greeted people on the streets, people which I've known for ages. Some weeks passed and I looked at the packing again. I examined its colors, read the titles, the autograph one more time and felt that I was ready for a meeting with new music.

Listening to Ragas

I listened to "Aesthetic Ideas in Music" from the "Talk- n- Tune" by T.V. Sairam, changed the CD for "Feelings in Music" and wrote down the words of the author: "It is difficult to say what raga effect what emotion". Then the first music example from this CD came. It was a morning raga composed in raga Bilahari. As T.V. Sairam commented it, all the notes here were friendly to each other. He meant that it had to depict certain contentment and joy.

While I was listening to this piece of music my brother, twelve years of age, came into the room dancing and pantomiming. He made different movements using both his body and mime following the changes of the music. It looked so funny that I began to laugh. He said: "Ask everybody what music it is, and they will answer that this is music from China, it is absolutely not like Indian music".

When the second piece sounded, created in raga Kaanada (violin) which according to T.V. Sairam had to depict compassion to fellow-beings, the boy first continued to dance, but he kept doing it just for a moment and stopped. He was, as I assumed, disappointed. I asked him whether he liked the first piece better than the second one and got a positive response. He said:" Yes" and went back to his room.

My brother appeared again when he heard sounds of the last piece, which was composed in raga Saamaa. Violin and mridangam the Indian drum which is played with both left and right hand fingers, while squatting on the floor, were instruments used here. The boy took a seat in the chair opposite me. He began to dance on this chair first holding his eyes open. Then he stood up from the chair and continued to dance (standing) with closed eyes. After a while he took a seat again, opened his eyes and began to make movements to the music with his eyes. I felt that he would like to share his music experiences with me. At the same time I realized that he also could help me. When the music was over I pressed the pause button.

[Me] Would you help me please? I would like to write about this music. Would you describe what images came into your mind while listening and dancing to this music? Let's start with the last piece.

[My brother] You cannot describe it here with words. You just have to see it." [Saying this he showed again the movements and produced sounds using both his voice and the whole body.] A bit later he said: "Imagine, you see a big lady from Africa dancing with closed eyes and open mouth. She dances so that her black curls and the whole body begin to move to the music. The lady stamps with her foot to these cool sounds. Then she starts to shake the head from one side to another, crying of pleasure and fun.

The boy continued singing and imitating with his voice the melody of the last piece of music. He showed again and again the movements he made while dancing to the last piece. He said: "But I still liked the first piece of music more than the second ."

He told me that while listening to the piece of raga Bilahari, he imagined a very thin Chinese man, who had no hair on his head and was dressed in a Buddha raiment. This man danced a Chinese dance. The music was over and the boy fell on the carpet. He did it with the last note of music. It was like putting a full stop in a sentence, like completing his improvisation. After a while he said that he was thinking over whether it would look better when a Chinese man would have an ear-ring, but after a while he decided that his man looked better without. He described his images with full sentences without making long pauses between them. He used his whole body and mime to be express what he meant.

I tired to write down every word he said, he noticed that my sheet of paper was full of notes and asked: "Shall I give you one more sheet of paper?"

Next moment he continued: "The first one was cool, incredibly cool. The last one was also Ok. With other words it was music with a greeting. Hello, people! Auf Wiedersehen[1] , children! Пока[2]!"

When I finished writing I thanked my brother. He said: "I had such fun and you also thank me [I could see on his face that he was surprised.] When it would be at school I must have got the worse grade for it". After saying this he went to his room. On the way there he turned, looked at me again and asked: "Should we also ask Eugeniy?" [He was expecting his friend to come this day]. I saw small bright lights springing and shining in his eyes: "Maybe you need any more help? Not yet? Ok, bye!"

Discovering the "miracle"

Observing my brother while dancing to pieces composed in raga Bilahari and Saamaa, and listening while he spoke about his impressions, I felt an increased interest for Indian music culture. I started to read the papers from Voices devoted to it and went through the little booklet I had received with Cds with a new focus: I tried to find a definition for "ragas". So I stopped on the following:

"Raga is a pivot on which the Indian music resolves. It is an Indian music scale which utilizes varying... certain notes on the way up and certain others on the way down, but always in the set consequence" (T.V. Sairam, interview 2005 ).

I looked up in an English Russian dictionary. In the explanation of the word "scale" I noticed the combination "whole-tone-scale". My next association was connected with "half steps and whole steps". I began to wonder what could be a different between for example Western music and Indian music. After a while I found the following passage:

"Raga, often referred to as the "miracle of microtones" uses quarter tones... that make the raga system unique in the world of music" (Sairam, 2004:5).

I could not understand how it could be possible to produce quarter tones. For my understanding it was a real miracle! I continued searching and discovered some papers written by Catrine Schmidt-Jones and Surajit Bose. The authors seemed to ask themselves the same questions as I:

"What exactly is a raga? While the answer is fundamental to Indian music, it's difficult to answer with precision. Raga is sometimes called a "scale" or a "mode." But scale and mode both come redolent with associations from Western music that are more a hindrance than a help in understanding the concept of "raga". A phrase that makes better sense than scale or mode is "melodic framework." (Surajit Bose).

While Surajit Bose suggests understanding raga as "melodic framework" Catrine Schmidt-Jones decides to explain ragas more as modes than as scales (Schmidt-Jones, 2004b). She also notes that most Indian classical music is improvisational and that an Indian improvisation is based on raga as melody and tala as rhythm. Musicians have to choose a raga and a tala. I suppose that it is not an easy task first of for the following reasons:

1. ...there are many more ragas than there are scales - hundreds - and the various ragas are much more different from each other than the various scales are. The number of notes used, the intervals between the notes, and even the tuning, can be different from one raga to the next. Because of these differences, the rules for constructing melodies are also different in different ragas, and so the melodies found in various ragas will not be the same; a melody cannot be transposed from one raga to another, because they are simply too different (Schmidt-Jones, 2004a)

2. Western music tends to use only a few popular meters for almost all of its music, and these meters are usually felt as repetitions of two, three, or four beats. The rhythms of Indian music, rather than being organized into short measures, are organized in long rhythmic cycles called talas...There are more than 100 different talas (Schmidt-Jones, 2004a).

The information I found was really unique. I have never thought that it can be as mysterious! I even forgot to think about microtones... My next wondering was connected with some comments to music which I had got from T.V Sairam. So, for example, the researcher on music called the first piece "Morning raga", and meant that it had to depict certain contentment and joy. From him I also learned that the second one had to depict compassion to fellow-beings. I was wondering whether it was the original meaning of T.V.Sairam or not. In the article by Catrine Schmidt-Jones I found out that Ragas are associated with different moods and that it is a general association existing in the Indian music culture. I read further that some of ragas also are associated with "a specific time of day (early evening, for example) or year (the monsoon season, for example) and that an Indian musician has a task to create a proper mood" (Schmidt-Jones, 2004a). At this point I realized that the words of T.V.Sairam "It is difficult to say what raga effect what emotion" can eventually or probably be pioneering for Indian music culture? It was one more discovery for me.

Coming back to the Ragas

The word discovery became to one of very significant in this summer encounter with Indian classical music. So I noticed that two pieces in different ragas gave an excellent possibility for verbalization. It was like a talk about "sound experience" (Sairam) with a lot of openness and gladness. How could this "miracle" work? I think that it was not only music. There were some more things which made the beauty of the music even brighter:

1. a possibility to make a choice yourself;
2. space for self expression;
3. a feeling to be accepted as you are, without comments about right or wrong;
4. a space for positive experiences.

All this made the boy feel comfortable in the situation. And this was the most important for me. He used three different languages [English, German and Russian] to say "Good Bye" [I did not translate these words, it was exactly what he said: "Hello, people! Auf Wiedersehen, children! Пока"]. And when he was speaking Russian he used both standard literary Russian and youth Russian with words like "cool" [I am just afraid that I could not show this difference translating his words from Russian into English].

At that moment I thought neither about analyzing images or movements, nor about the reasons why my brother chose these two melodies and not other ones. I tried to listen to him, to what he was saying, I wanted to understand his words. When he talked about school I remembered him a year ago: he did not feel comfortable there because of the evaluation and grading. I realized that it was still a reality for him. At the same time I felt that I should not ask about it further, I didn't want to drive away any warm feelings he got while listening and dancing to the music, while sharing his impressions. I felt that I would like him to remember this feeling, the feeling he got expressing his creativity freely without any fear of being evaluated.

I enjoyed listening to my brother; I enjoyed his openness and brightness. It was amazing to see one more time that he could feel happy in simple ways, that growing up he has gathered new music experiences and that music has become part of his own world.

Conclusion

When I wrote about globalization Wcontribution "Globalization of Music Therapy" I meant to illustrate a globalization of common humanistic principles of music therapy and an international exchange of ideas, not the globalization of one specific research. I am afraid that globalization of one specific research of Music Therapy around the world would run against cultural specifics. I personally can not think of full dedication to Nada Yoga, but I can, in certain cases, think to try to integrate in my work some of pieces of Indian music one day. I suppose that it could be used in sessions with children when the contact between them and the therapist has become more or less trustful.

Indian music has a lot of modus and is unusual both for Russian and Ukrainian music culture; that is right! Maybe that is why it can happen that this unusually can eventually wake images, create a situation for verbalization and give a space for self expression?

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank to T.V. Sairam for sharing his knowledge about Indian music culture; I appreciate the amazing help of my dear little brother in preparing his contribution. I enjoy the support in English I get from Mia Marie Wraight and thank everybody for being open and taking part in my small discoveries!

Notes

[1] See you (germ).

[2] Bye (rus).

References

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Ivannikova, Mariya (2005). Globalisation of Music Therapy. [Contribution to Moderated Discussions] Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, from http://www.voices.no/discussions/discm39_01.html

Ruud, Even (1998). Music Therapy: Improvisation, Communication and Culture. Gilsum, NH: Barcenona Publishers.

Sairam, T.V.(2004). What is music? (p. 24p).Chennai: Nada Centre for Music Therapy.

Sairam, T.V. (2005a). Feelings in Music. The "Talk- n- Tune" Series, N1. Chennai: Nada Centre for Music Therapy.

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