“To pursue homogeneity is to enter an endless life of purging, secession and self-destructive violence” –Historian Sunil Khilnani

Every dream of homogeneity stares at an infinite regress: there’s always some aspect of identity, some sect, some culture or language, that doesn’t fit it. To pursue homogeneity is to enter an endless life of purging, secession and self-destructive violence. […]

Khilnani’s heroes, such as the emperor Akbar and his great-grandson Dara Shukoh, tend to be those who build bridges between India’s varied communities and religions; his demons are those, such as Jinnah, who believe “that there was one key identity, religion, which could lock in all the others”. This, believes, Khilnani, is profoundly wrong: “Every dream of homogeneity stares at an infinite regress: there’s always some aspect of identity, some sect, some culture or language, that doesn’t fit it. To pursue homogeneity is to enter an endless life of purging, secession and self-destructive violence.”

Yet Khilnani is scrupulously meticulous, accurate and unromantic in his depiction of his characters – and never hesitates to show the flaws of even those he most approves of. For “by insisting that figures from India’s past be preserved in memory as saints”, he writes, “we deny them not just their real natures, but their genuine achievements”. […]

Source: “Incarnations: India in 50 Lives by Sunil Khilnani” reviewed by William Dalrymple
URL: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/14/incarnations-india-in-50-lives-fifty-sunil-khilnani-review-ghandi-nehru
Date Visited: 3 February 2023

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Worldcat lists compiled by Ludwig Pesch

Livre-CD ‘Musique d’Inde du Sud – Petit traité de musique carnatique’

Livre-CD en Français (2001) recommendé par Ludwig Pesch

Cet essai éclaire les traditions millénaires de la musique classique de l’Inde de Sud, transmise le long d’une chaîne orale continue de maître à disciple. L’auteur nous plonge dans les arcanes du raga et des émotions qu’il suscite et développe les clés des concordances symboliques et de l’apprentissage de cette musique carnatique considérée comme une voie spirituelle pour atteindre la libération du moi individuel et son union à l’universel.
Le CD tente de reconstituer les différentes phases d’un concert de musique carnatique avec notamment la voix d’Aruna Sayeeram et le violoniste T.N. Krishnan.
Un extrait du titre n° 6 est disponible à l’écoute.

Les titres du CD
1. Varnam : Om pranava ; Raga : Mayamalavagaula ; tala : adi (Aruna Sayeeram : chant) : 5’36
2. Kriti : Marivere gati ; Raga : Anandabhairavi ; tala : misra chappu (T.N. Krishnan : violon) : 14’15
3. Kriti : Vallabha nayakasya ; Raga : Begada ; tala : rupakam (Dr Semmangudi R. Srinivasa Iyer : chant ; L. Subramaniam : violon) : 8’01
4. Raga : Alapana ; Raga : Kamboji (T.R. Mahalingam : flûte ; L. Subramaniam : violon) : 3’05
5. Kriti : Raga ratna malikace ; Raga : Ritigaula ; tala : rupakam (V. Doreswamy Iyengar : vina) : 15’50
6. Alapana et kriti : Marakata mani ; Raga : Varali ; tala : adi (D.K. Pattammal : chant) : 9’28
7. Padam : Ninnu juchi ; Raga : Punnagavarali ; tala : tisra triputa (Aruna Sayeeram : chant) : 9’28
8. Tillana ; Raga : kapi ; tala : lakshmsam (Trivandrum R.S. Mani : chant) : 2’02

Enseignante de formation, Isabelle Clinquart a vécu pendant dix ans au Kerala, où elle a appris la danse et le chant de théâtre kathakali, ainsi que la musique carnatique. Elle a donné ses premiers concerts en 1997 et s’est produite régulièrement au Kerala tout en poursuivant son apprentissage.

21,00 € disponible
Collection : musiques du monde
179 pages
Illustrations 35 N&B
14 x 18 / Livre-CD broché / 2001 2-7427-3324-8

Source: Librairie en ligne – Cité de la musique
Address : http://www.cite-musique.fr/boutique/article.aspx?a=890
Date Visited: Wed Nov 02 2011

Voici un livre bienvenu pour le lecteur francophone qui ne disposait jusqu’ici d’aucun ouvrage général et synthétique sur la musique classique du sud de l’Inde abordant en sept courts chapitres à la fois son évolution historique, sa théorie esthétique (théorie des rasa), son système musical (théorie des raga et des tala, règles d’improvisation), les modalités de son apprentissage, ses instruments ainsi que la description générale du déroulement d’un concert.

Source: Worldcat.org where you also may find a library copy near you >>

Enriching town and village life alike: Suitable, ecologically responsible venues with local materials and expertise

“To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now … with new methods of production and new patterns of consumption: a lifestyle designed for permanence.” – E.F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, p. 16 (Abacus 1984 ed.)

“If the town life was rich, the village life was equally so. … The villagers were not altogether cut off from the activities of town life. … The monotonous life of the villager was often enlivened by rural amusements of varied character. Every village had a common dancing-hall (kalam). Even the village women took part in these public performances like the tunankai, a kind of dance .” – V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, The Cilappatikaram (Tinnevelly: The South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, 1978), chapter on “Village and Village Life”, pp. 61

More Things I recommend: Worldcat.org >>

Download, read in full screen mode or listen to A Theatre For All: Sittrarangam—the Small Theatre Madras by Ludwig Pesch (open domain) on Archive.org >>

Bibliography >>

Creation, Kabir says again and again, is full of music: it is music – Rabindranath Tagore

Kabir was essentially a poet and musician: rhythm and harmony were to him the garments of beauty and truth. Hence in his lyrics he shows himself to be, like Richard Rolle, above all things a musical mystic. Creation, he says again and again, is full of music: it is music. At the heart of the Universe “white music is blossoming”: love weaves the melody, whilst renunciation beats the time. It can be heard in the home as well as in the heavens; discerned by the ears of common men as well as by the trained senses of the ascetic. Moreover, the body of every man is a lyre on which Brahma, “the source of all music,” plays.

Everywhere Kabir discerns the “Unstruck Music of the Infinite”—that celestial melody which the angel played to St. Francis, that ghostly symphony which filled the soul of Rolle with ecstatic joy.

Songs of Kabir by Rabindranath Tagore, p. 19
https://archive.org/details/songs-of-kabir

Listen to Tagore: Unlocking Cages: Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the Bengali writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore: https://bbc.in/1KVh4Cf >>
The acclaimed BBC 4 podcast series titled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives has also been published in book form (Allen Lane).

“I was moved by how many of these lives pose challenges to the Indian present,” he writes, “and remind us of future possibilities that are in danger of being closed off.”((Sunil Khilnani quoted in a review by William Dalrymple in The Guardian, 14 March 2016))