Cool Stuff: Arabic and Indian

 Hello all! For today's blog we are going to start in the Arabic world!

This past week in class, I found myself really interested in Arabic music and I thought it as especially cool (in all of the cultures we have studied so far) when these traditional styles or ideas get fused together with contemporary music- so I decided to look for other artists that were similar to Mona Haydar. While looking I came across a "Hip-hop Crew" that is actually from Palestine. Their name is "DAM" and they have been creating music since the early 90's, one of the first to rap in Arabic. Their music is tends to be grouped in with protest music, with lyrics talking about women's rights, poverty, political conflicts with Israel, and racism. They also make use of Arabic rhythms in melodies in their music as well! See here  to read more about them!

Here is one of their songs, "Who You R." 

Moving along to India, we have Odissi. Odissi is one of the 8 styles of Indian classical dance. It originates from Eastern India and it is one of India's earliest dance forms, typically performed by women in offering for Lord Jagganath, a form of Vishnu. It wasn't until the 1950's that it became widely known throughout India and the world, however. As this style is so old, there is quite a bit of history to it as time passed. One part this rich history is how women who dance Odissi, would have to claim devotion to Jagganath, often through a ritual (these people are called maharis, or devadasi). Much like if you were to become a monk or nun in devotion to the church, these women would then live in the temple as they were seen as "married to Jagganath." To read more about the dance style, see this link!

And here is an example of this dance! 

Lastly, we have the nagaswaram (sometimes spelled as nadaswaram) from southern India. This instrument is a "conical double reed aerophone," that is often used in the southern "carnatic" traditional style. This instrument is typically used to keep a continuous melody going, whether that included the player using "circular breathing" or have several players at once alternating on a melody line. This, to me, is kind of similar to how in a western classical string section, in order to have a sustained sound on a note that is several measures long, each player will softly change bow directions at different time so it sounds uninterrupted. To read more about this instrument, see here. In the video below, it is a little hard to hear, but the "notes" are still akin to that of swaras.

And here is a little bit of a better picture of the instrument! In it, you can see that any extra reeds are actually tied onto the instrument.