“The fundamental principle is joy” – Music education pioneer VV Sadagopan

“Children should grow with joy, courage and freedom and a discipline born out of these attributes. The fundamental principle is joy, suggestion must be the method, the emphasis should be on the imaginative and creative experience of music and teaching should follow a “flow-form-flow” spiral. – VV Sadagopan | PDF-Repository >> World Children’s Day (20 September) …

How prehistoric societies were transformed by the sound of music

Amidst lively debates within and beyond India these perspectives on our shared legacy make interesting reading: Vainika Savithri Rajan who believed that Tyagaraja, like other great men, was always meditating, but his medium of expression was nādam, “sound”. In the introduction to his unfinished yet voluminous magnum opus Karunamirtha Sagaram, titled “The Dignity and Origin …

Bhava enables the transmission of experience of thoughts and emotions – Narayana Vishwanath

CHENNAI: We are aware that the ultimate aim of every composer and musician is to achieve the coalescence, the essential factors of classical music namely bhava, raga and tala. We know bhava literally means, expression, the expression of existence. In a composition, bhava encompasses the aspects rasa, raga ((The most concise definition of a raga …

Subbulakshmi and contemporary feminism: Sunil Khilnani on BBC Radio 4 Incarnations: India in 50 Lives

Listen to this programme on BBC Radio 4 (15 minutes) >>Find song lyrics, translations and more (type “M.S. Subbulakshmi”) >> M.S. SubbulakshmiBorn 16 September 1916. Died 11 December 2004Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi (Tamil: மதுரை சண்முகவடிவு சுப்புலட்சுமி, Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi ? 16 September 1916 – 11 December 2004), also known as M.S., was a Carnatic vocalist. She was the first musician ever …

Mahatma Gandhi on “music of mind, of the senses and of the heart”

Very few people know that Gandhi was extremely fond of Music and arts. Most of us have been all along under the impression that he was against all arts such as music. In fact, he was a great lover of music, though his philosophy of music was different. In his own words ‘Music does not …