As a follow up to some comments on the thread on Afghan musicians, I am sharing this brief history of Hindustani music.
Hindustani (North Indian) Classical Music is one of the most beautiful products of the Indo-Islamic culture of North India (including today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh). It would not exist in its current form without the Muslim influence, having evolved in the Mughal courts after it left the precincts of the temples, which is where Hindu music was originally based. I do not know much about Carnatic Music or South India in general so I will restrict my observations to the North Indian system only.
It is my aim in this post to briefly outline the history of Hindustani music. If there is interest, I can then go back and fill in the details as and when I get time.
Like all Indian Music, Hindustani Classical originated during the Vedic period. It was at this time that the distinction between “Gandharva” (ritual music) and “gana” (incidental music) became clear. One of the most ancient treatises on the performing arts in India is the “Natya Shastra”, attributed to the sage Bharata Muni and dated to between 200 BCE and 200 CE. The text consists of 36 chapters with a cumulative total of 6000 poetic verses describing performance arts. The subjects covered by the treatise include dramatic composition, structure of a play, and the construction of a stage to host it, genres of acting, body movements, make up and costumes, role and goals of an art director, the musical scales, musical instruments and the integration of music with art performance. The treatise is also notable for its aesthetic “Rasa” theory. It is in this text that the seven basic notes (the saptak) are named: Sadja (Sa), Rsabha (Re), Gandhara (Ga), Madhyama (Ma), Panchama (Pa), Dhaivata (Dha), and Nishad (Ni). These note names are still used today, equivalent to the Western Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti.
With the arrival of the Muslim rulers of North India, music emerged from the temples and became part of the entertainment of the royal courts. While for Hindus, music was preeminently religious in subject matter and spirit, for the Muslims it was a purely secular art. Hazrat Amir Khusrow (1253-1325) was a Sufi musician, poet and scholar. He was a mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi (1238-1325). Born near Etah in modern day Uttar Pradesh, he was the son of Amir Saif ud Din Mahmud, a man of Turkic extraction and his Indian Rajput wife, Bibi Daulatnaz. Khusrow grew up in the house of his maternal grandfather, Rawat Arz (known by his title as Imad-ul-Mulk). He grew up very close to the traditions and culture of Indian society and was not alienated from it in the way that the ruling Turkic classes may have been. Continue reading A Brief History of Hindustani Music