Article

North Indian Classical Music and the Kolkata Experience: Alchemical Schismogenesis and Being-in-the-world in a Musical Way

Matthew Noone

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 2 (2013)

Pages: 22-37 | Published Online: 2013

https://doi.org/10.64208/JMCG4083

Abstract

I have chosen to utilize my own experience as a musician and student of Indian Classical Music in an attempt to transcend the subjective/objective dichotomy and explore what Tim Rice has called, ‘a new ethnomusicological space’ between the poles of emic and etic (2010, p. 117). This is ‘a space neither completely inside nor completely outside, but a space in which, through self-reflection’, I can claim to think about the phenomenon of foreigners playing Indian music in a unique way (ibid, p. 117). By extension, it is relevant to note Rice’s theory that ‘important aspects of musical culture are not expressed in words by natives, but are knowable and can be expressed accurately in words and performed by outsiders who move within native cultural horizons’ (ibid, p. 117). A musician who moves within native cultural horizons, who can know, express accurately in words and perform authentically, is able to mediate between interpretation and an experiential being-in-the-world. By inhabiting this liminal space between emic/etic, foreign musician and native musician, I hope to document how other foreigners moving within the same cultural horizons understand and appropriate North Indian classical music in their own lives and world views.

Keywords: North Indian classical music; self-reflection

Author: Matthew Noone