Behind the scenes with Darbar’s sound engineer Christoph Bracher With so many moving parts in an artform driven by extempore, spontaneous performance, orchestrating an Indian classical music concert is no small feat....
Musical Musing 3rd Edition Challenges of Returning to the New Normal As we gear up to deliver Darbar Festival 2022 (and are already deep in the planning stage for Darbar Festival 2023),...
The heart of qawwali with one of the most illustrious qawwals alive today “Is this Aysha-ji speaking?” The honeyed voice probes through static on my phone, dripping with a politeness it doesn’t...
Indian classical music is largely a hereditary tradition, generally taught in a pedagogical fashion and handed down from father to son. Since Indian music is rarely written down, watching and listening to...
Unlike many other classical traditions, India’s ancient treatises on classical music have always cited dance as an integral part of music rather than a separate (or merely related) activity. It is said...
The mother of all North Indian drums, the pakhawaj is also known as the mridang, the generic word for any barrel-shaped drum. A two-headed drum descended from the much older South Indian...
Prathap Awad is a distinguished pakhawaj maestro from Maharashtra, deeply rooted in the Nana Panse tradition. He holds an M.A. in Pakhawaj from Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune, and has trained extensively within a...
In a world grappling with the aftermath of a pandemic and mental health crisis, what sounds can help most on our road to recovery? Emerging research has started to support what Indian...
“It’s like the rush of a marsh on a midsummer night with a million crickets, or the howling wind stirring the power lines outside a cabin in backwoods Idaho, or the hushed...