On 11/24/08, Srini Ramakrishnan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Tania Pérez Bustos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi A friend from Colombia who is coming to the FSFS.in in Trivandrum is > doing research on creative commons and traditional music and would like to be > in touch with people working on issues related to that. Can somebody give me > a hand? > In the grand musical traditions of India there are gazillion - a few well known (actually there are two major groups in this each with their significant following in India - 1) Hindusthani and 2) Karnataka forms of music (music for music's sake, not necessarily as an accompaniment to other performing arts) - both of them could kinda be called the 'classical' (for want of a better term) music streams of India) and other less well known streams, but having their own significant followng nonetheless. I would call the latter, the folksy or poorvika ( or 'paarampariya' - roughly meaning 'traditional' as many tribals would call their music, these days) or 'country' music, many of them having their own grammer, composers and melodies and stuff.
I think, like any other 'traditional' music, none of the creators / composers really bothered about copyrights or royalties or whatever and they were content with merely sneaking in their names or markers or signatures, if you will (at best) into their compositions. I think the desponess with copyright would probably have begun with bourgeoisie onslaughts. Full marx for guessing, I was once under his spell and hope I spelled the b word right. In fact, there have been instances of random guys authoring some excellent creations and then using the markers of the known composers - not probably with a view to benefitting financially, but probably to get them to the audience; may be this happened elsewhere in the world too. I also happen to gnu that there was a PhD dissertation from the university of Madurai (may be 30 years back? am not sure) that dealt with the subject of 'rights assertion' or rather the lack of it, in Indian music systems. Dunno whether I would be able to unearth more information on this - just a remembrance of thigs post, that's all. :-( > http://www.kalakshetra.in/home.html does a lot of research on > traditional music and arts, but they are located in Madras, a 1.5 hour > flight, or over night train journey away from Trivandum. > > Cheeni Since Cheeni has already suggested Kalakshetra (which extensively deals with one of the major streams of music - Karnatic, actually more so with performing or music-accompanied arts such as dance) which is in chennai - let me post about an organization (ford foundation funded one, so should afford to live even now) that I was familiar with (hauting would be better operative word), just a 1.5 decades back or so. Unfortunately, I have forgotten (oh how can i, but when i is thrown in things really become complex) the name of this illustrious organization, but it is very near the Vivekananda college of Mylapore and on one end of Luz church road and behind the Kamadhenu theatre and any self respecting chennaiite (oh not veeramani) should be able to find this out. (samskriti? samskara? paramapara? the brain fuses. am blown) They had/have an incredible and endlessly catalogued and taxonomized collection of music (all open sourced, sinked) with excellent systems for listening to them. The most important thing for Tania's friend would be the (un)fairly knowledgeable folks that inhabit the environs - folks who are soaked in music, its history, its cultural anthropology, the works, the queen. This organization can also be a good starting point. On the folksy front, near Chennai there is this Irula (plains tribals of north Tamilnadu) co-op which is also trying, among others, to preserve their music. http://www.itwwsindia.org/ would give the metadata about this. There is this director of operations of ITWWS - K Krishnan, who would be quite helpful. There are also teachers of (non-tribal) music, from the PoV of non-'classical' streams, in places near Chennai - in Chengalpattu and Kanchipuram. I am somewhat familiar with a few of these, but with enough bribe I could dig out more info. Thank god am a man, and so I have a price. Gosh, hope this post doesn't look like some uncommon lisp or something, what with gazillion brackets... On second thoughts, I would extend a warm welcome to Tania's friend with this bouquet of paranthecated lotus. ((((((((()))))))) - too bored to check whether this will be parsed by my interpreter. This too shall parse. Ramjee, who likes to scheme. buwahahahahaha! (but would rather slink back to creative coma instead) -- http://www.qsl.net/vu2sro/ The lyfe so short, the Craft so long to lerne. -- Geoffrey Chaucer (The Assembly of Fowles)
