[INDOLOGY] Shloka Singing Styles / Tunes

[Valerie Roebuck]

Dear Mārcis

I can see the slides in Dropbox but can’t find a way to play the music examples.

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester UK

> On 13 Apr 2020, at 07:25, Mārcis Gasūns via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> 
> Reposting a post from उषाराणी सङ्का
>  
> Hariom. 
> नमस्ते to all the parishad scholars.
> Happy to write after long time regarding some interesting work. 
> I would like to share an experience and seek help.
> I was teaching some students some shlokas and one of them suddenly asked - "How many shloka singing styles are there?" 
> I thought for a little while, and said- Many! Some belong to North India, some South, some to Maharashtra, some traditional, some created by films and singers. Then the organizer of those lesson-sessions requested me to prepare something in detail to share with the students. 
> Then with the help of youtube, and other sources, I prepared this PPT (
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/mbi5a4qluidn7kw/ShlokaSingingStyles.pptx?dl=0). Right now just for Shloka meter- that is popular Anushtup, not any other vrtta.. (I tried to take only one shloka and sing, but it was difficult; hence samples are a little varying.) And one more limitation is that I belong to South India, so lot of North is missed! And just now it struck- are there any NRI tunes/videshi tunes?
>  
> Thanks to the questioner! His question opened doors into new area of thinking for me. I realized while working on this, that I am totally unaware of tunes which are Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Himachal Pradesh etc. and many more sources might be there. I also wrote a small write-up with my limited knowledge- which I just copy pasted below. Much can be added to make it complete. Eg. how to people get to some tune? How do they originate? Actually get propagated? 
> One thing I wanted to keep away for classical music.. exclude the Ragas. I just wanted tunes that mark something, and flew into the people at large.. not like someone sang somewhere and it remained there.
>  
> Now the help that I seek from this learned parishad is- please provide me audio samples from missing places. (I mean that not included in the audios in the PPT.) Let me have any more information upon this subject, and please let me know if such an endeavour has been made before by anyone- please provide the links and names and if possible, the work also. Further light on classification could also help. Any aspect of this area would be helpful in increasing my knowledge. 
>  
> This is purely out of interest.. nothing academic. :)
>  
> Tunes are sometimes generated by some popular film makers and they get to the people so much that we start to believe that this must be traditional tune. Some musicians also introduce some good tunes for shlokas.
>             Tunes can be divided into – 1. Traditional tunes 2. Tunes developed by individuals. Then one more classification is like- 1. For recitation 2. For chanting. Most of the times the classical music element involved in shlokas, long drawn musical notes,  is only for beautification and mostly avoided by general people.
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