Page 219 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

194 Bel et al.

The Tonal Structure

Even though Janire Shahu’s performance would sound ‘out of
tune’ to Western or classical Indian musical ears, a scale structure
is recognizable and the tune may be reinterpreted on a melodic
instrument such as the sarangi. A melodic transcription of the last
verse is shown in Figure 6.6. The equal-tempered scale structure is
marked with horizontal lines.

Figure 6.6
Melodic Transcription of the Bottom Line in Figure 6.5

Source: Developed by the authors.
It is interesting to visually compare this transcription with that of
raga Āśa in classical music (Figure 6.1) as both are approximately
identical in duration. In classical music we used to determine the scale
via a selective histogram of tonal positions over the entire performance
(a tonagram, see Arnold and Bel 1983). However, doing the same with
grindmill songs would not produce significant results for two reasons:
(a) performers are not tied to a precise tonal reference, unlike the
-
- -
ones who sing with a drone (tanpura) or fixed-pitch instruments; and
(b) there are very few sustained notes in grindmill songs, arguably
because of prosodic features superimposed to the conventional
musical structure.
-
The word phirunı is repeated twice in this bottom line (see
Figure 6.5). As shown Figure 6.6, the second occurrence is almost
flat—a ‘conclusive’ tone. In contrast, the first occurrence is melodically
ornamented because of its median position in this part of the tune.