Table Of ContentAlaghband‐Zadeh, Chloë (2013) Analysing ţhumrī. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London
http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/16624
Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other
copyright owners.
A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior
permission or charge.
This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining
permission in writing from the copyright holder/s.
The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or
medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.
When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding
institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full
thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination.
Analysing ṭhumrī
Chloë Alaghband-Zadeh
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2013
Department of Music,
SOAS, University of London
2
DECLARATION
I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of
Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented
for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any
other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or
unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present
for examination.
Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________
3
ABSTRACT
This thesis is a music-analytical study of the North Indian semi-classical vocal genre ṭhumrī. I
am interested in the musical style of ṭhumrī, in its social environment and in how the two are
related. In order to address this relationship, I advocate a multifaceted, interdisciplinary
approach to music analysis, incorporating theoretical concepts from linguistics, semiotics and
gender studies. Early in the thesis, I analyse the structural building blocks of ṭhumrī, drawing
attention to parallels with language and other musical traditions. I then apply theories of
semiotics to ṭhumrī in order to tackle age-old questions about how and why music comes to be
meaningful for the people who perform and listen to it. This lays the foundations for the
remaining chapters of my thesis, in which I look at how ṭhumrī participates in broader social
processes. I argue that singers’ musical decisions form part of social strategies, through which
singers attempt to improve their own status and negotiate a better position for ṭhumrī within
North Indian classical music. Finally I consider ṭhumrī’s gendered associations and the role
musical performance plays in the social construction of gender. Overall this study is an exercise
in doing analysis “in context”: I suggest that the musical style of ṭhumrī best makes sense when
considered in relation to issues of transmission, prestige, respectability, connoisseurship,
spirituality and gender. Ultimately I argue that the musical features of ṭhumrī are not merely
abstract phenomena, but are thoroughly embedded in particular historical, social and cultural
circumstances.
4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract 3
Acknowledgements 5
Chapter One: Introduction 8
Chapter Two: Formulas and the analysis of ṭhumrī style 33
Chapter Three: A semiotic approach to ṭhumrī style 68
Chapter Four: Social strategies and the common wisdom about ṭhumrī 109
Chapter Five: Ṭhumrī and the musical mediation of gender 175
Chapter Six: Conclusion 237
Appendix I: Note on Transcription 262
Appendix II: Complete List of Figures 263
Bibliography 268
Discography 283
List of Formal Interviews with Musicians 285
Contents of Example CDs 286
Example CDs
5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this thesis has been enabled by the generous help and encouragement of many people,
some of whom I would like to thank here.
I first fell in love with North Indian classical music when I attended Sunanda Sharma’s ṭhumrī
course, organised by the Asian Music Circuit in London in summer 2004. The beauty of her
singing was enough to convince me to abandon my ambitions to study Western classical music
and focus instead on this entirely different classical tradition. It has been a great privilege to be
able to take lessons with Sharma over the years that followed: her warmth, patience and
generosity towards those of us lucky enough to be her pupils are attributes of a truly great
teacher and her singing has always been an inspiration to me. I am particularly grateful for the
time she devoted to me while I lived in Delhi: for a relative beginner, it was a great honour to
study with such an accomplished musician.
I am also hugely grateful to my academic guru-jī, my supervisor Richard Widdess. His work
has always been the single biggest influence on my academic development and his rigorous,
elegantly worded and highly original research on North Indian classical music (and its analysis)
sets a wonderful standard for scholars in the field to aspire to. He has gone far beyond what
could reasonably be expected of any supervisor in assisting me with all aspects of my doctoral
research and writing, as well as with all of the other activities associated with being a post-
graduate student. I could not have written this thesis without his support and guidance, without
his perceptive and helpful comments about my work and without the long conversations I had
with him in supervisions that lasted far longer than they should have done, while I waffled about
my research and Richard helped me to put my ideas in order.
I would not have even attempted a PhD in Ethnomusicology had I not encountered Katherine
Schofield when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Katherine introduced me to the academic
study of North Indian classical music and inspired me to pursue it further. She was also the first
person to try to teach me how to write. I remain enormously grateful for the times she sat me
down on the banks of the Cam or in Caffe Nero and taught me what an original academic
argument looks like, and also for the numerous dissertation drafts she sent back to me, covered
from start to finish in red ink, highlighting the many instances in which my sentences were
inelegant, or my structure unclear, or, worst of all, in which I had phrased my arguments in the
passive voice. Over the subsequent years I have valued the opportunities I have had to continue
to discuss my research with her and I continue to learn a great deal from her insightful
comments on my ideas.
6
In India, a number of musicians were extraordinarily generous with their time in agreeing to talk
with me about ṭhumrī. Amongst others, I am grateful to Rajshekhar Mansur, Ritesh Mishra,
Sarathi Chatterjee, Rekha Surya, Rashmi Agarwal, Ulhas Kashalkar, Tulika Ghosh, K. Upendra
Bhat, Moumita Mitra, Shubhra Guha and Ashwini Bhide Deshpande for welcoming me into
their lives and sharing their thoughts with me. I am grateful to the musician and scholar Vidya
Rao for a fascinating and provocative conversation over lunch in Delhi as I was starting out my
research. The scholar and music-lover Deepak Raja was generous with both his time and his
ideas in a stimulating discussion about ṭhumrī. The music connoisseur James Stevenson has also
shared his thoughts and his vast knowledge of North Indian classical music with me, as well as
enabling me to access a number of recordings of and texts on ṭhumrī which I otherwise would
not have been able to find. Kishore Merchant kindly played me a number of recordings from his
own collection and helped me to access other rare ṭhumrī recordings which have been
invaluable in this research project.
My sincere thanks are also due to the many people at sound archives and libraries in India who
assisted my work and allowed me access to their collections. Spending time at the ARCE in
Gurgaon has always been a highlight of my trips to India. The friendly and hugely
knowledgeable staff, as well as the peaceful working environment there, makes studying in the
ARCE a delight. The collection, too, of both written texts and sound recordings, is impressive;
the material I studied there has been enormously helpful for my doctoral work. My thanks are
due to Shubha Chaudhuri, who has created this great asset for scholars of Indian music, and all
who work there, for their assistance while I was there. I am also fortunate to have been allowed
to access the written and recorded material at the Sangeet Natak Akademi in Delhi. My thanks
to all those who generously helped me there and made time for me to be able to sit and listen to
recordings of fascinating lecture demonstrations by great ṭhumrī singers of the twentieth
century. In Mumbai I found a number of useful texts in the library at the NCPA. Sreyashi Mitra,
Ratnaboli Bose, Ranjan Sengupta and Aslam Ansari generously welcomed me when I visited
the archive of the ITC-Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata and I am grateful that they
allowed me to listen to some of the wonderful recordings housed there.
Throughout my doctoral research, my friend and sometime fellow PhD-student Irfan Zuberi has
been a wonderful conversant about North Indian classical music. His knowledge of music and
musicians is impressive and I am grateful for him for letting me try out my ideas on him and
sharing his own thoughts and ideas, whether in the coffee shops of Delhi or over gmail chat. In
Delhi, I am also grateful to Arun Chandoke and Sheetal Thakur for looking after me and for
making sure that my time there was fun as well as productive.
In London, my postgraduate life has been enriched enormously by attending a number of
reading and discussion groups. The conversations I have had there have taken my work in ever
7
new directions and they have given me a taste of what academia can be like at its very best,
when people come together for the open, friendly discussion of difficult ideas. Anahid
Kassabian’s reading group at the Institute of Musical Research in London has introduced me to
texts which I would otherwise have avoided in fear. These texts and the discussions we had
about them proved invaluable to my doctoral research: in almost every case, they ended up
substantially influencing the direction of this thesis. The London-based Ethnomusicology
Discussion Group has been something wonderful to look forward to every month: thank you in
particular to the regulars, Emma Brinkhurst, Joe Browning, Jenny McCallum, Ruard Absaroka,
Marie Saunders, Stephe Vos, James Butterworth, Jonathan Gross, Sophie Grimmer, Laryssa
Whittaker, Anna Bull et al, for sharing your fascinating thoughts on music and for helping to
create a sense of community for ethnomusicology students in London. Reading groups with
Aleksi Koponen introduced me to continental philosophy. I have also valued the conversations I
have had with scholars of South Asian music, including Nicholas Magriel, Anna Morcom and
Richard Williams.
The Indian Musicological Society kindly allowed me to present my work to an audience of
scholars, musicians and music-lovers as part of their annual conference in 2011. They also
generously provided accommodation for their student speakers. This was an enormously
valuable experience and it was a great pleasure to be able to discuss Indian classical music with
both musicians and scholars at such a conference.
I am grateful to the AHRC for generously funding both this research and my MMus at SOAS
and also for awarding me additional grants for fieldwork in India and to attend a conference in
Mumbai in January 2011. The Music Department at SOAS has been the perfect place in which
to do this work and I am grateful to everyone there for their support over the last four years.
My family has supported me in many ways throughout this endeavour. Their belief in me (and
in my work) and their constant encouragement have kept me going through the long process of
doctoral research and writing. My beautiful wife Zan has seen me through the thesis from start
to finish with unfailing love and support and endless cups of tea and coffee. She has put up with
being my sounding board and all of the ups and downs that accompany a long-term research
project – not to mention the over-friendly monkeys and middle-of-the-night train journeys in
India.
8
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Ṭhumrī in the twentieth century
What is ṭhumrī?
Ṭhumrī is one of the principal genres of North Indian classical vocal music, alongside khyāl and
dhrupad. It can be heard at performances in concerts and festivals in India and internationally
and is widely available on CD and for download from the internet. Ṭhumrī’s lyrics are often
romantic in nature; for many the genre carries associations with love and lovers parted. These
lyrics are spoken by a first-person, female protagonist. Sometimes, musicians tell audiences that
this protagonist is Radha or one of the gopīs (milkmaids and lovers of Krishna in Hindu
mythology), singing of love and longing for the absent Krishna.
Within the hierarchy of North Indian classical music, ṭhumrī is classified as “semi-classical” or
“light classical”. It shares this label with several related genres, including dādrā, caitī and
ṭappā. Only the genres khyāl and dhrupad are called simply “classical”. These different
designations do not imply a difference in performance context in the same way that the labels
“classical music” and “popular music” do in the UK. On the contrary, ṭhumrī is usually
performed alongside khyāl, at concerts billed as “classical” and given by classically-trained
musicians. Rather, the difference between classical and semi-classical genres lies in their
musical characteristics, in the theoretical distinctions that underpin those characteristics and in
their relative prestige and respectability.
Musicians often state that the primary difference between classical and semi-classical genres
concerns their treatment of rāg. Rāg is a central determinant of classicality in North Indian
music: much space in musicological studies both ancient and modern is devoted to the
theoretical discussion of rāg and strict adherence to the rules of rāg confers an air of classical
seriousness to a performance. In khyāl and dhrupad, musicians and audiences consider the
correct rendition of the rāg of the performance to be of the utmost importance; any departure
from the notes and phrases which belong to the rāg would be a serious error. In semi-classical
genres, however, more flexibility is permitted; musicians may temporarily depart from the rāg
of the composition without attracting criticism. In addition, semi-classical genres are usually
performed in different rāgs from those used in classical genres.
A number of other musical features mark out semi-classical genres in performance. Semi-
classical performances are usually shorter than classical ones, contributing to the impression
9
that they are less weighty and demanding. They are characterised by distinctive melodic
ornamentation. They also involve particular musical devices which musicians use in order to
convey the meanings and emotional connotations of the lyrics. This contrasts with the approach
taken in classical genres, in which the words of the lyrics often serve merely as a vehicle for
melodic or rhythmic play, their meaning rendered largely insignificant.
Ṭhumrī’s semi-classical status is not merely a matter of abstract, musical distinctions between
different genres; it is also a remnant of the genre’s troubled history within North Indian classical
music. When North Indian classical music emerged in the public sphere, ṭhumrī’s position
within the canon of classical genres was initially the subject of some debate. For social reasons
(discussed in the next section), many felt that ṭhumrī was not an appropriate companion for
khyāl and dhrupad in a prestigious musical tradition. The classification “semi-classical” reflects
ṭhumrī’s ambiguous status, never universally accepted into the classical tradition.
Ṭhumrī before 1960
North Indian classical music, in its present incarnation, emerged in the public sphere in the early
decades of the twentieth century. Before that, what came to be known as North Indian classical
music had consisted of a number of courtly musical genres, which were performed to
aristocratic patrons in intimate musical gatherings. Ṭhumrī used to be performed by courtesans.
They would both sing and dance ṭhumrī to male patrons, with whom they sometimes also had
sexual relations.
Under British colonial rule the feudal aristocracy fell into decline, taking with it the primary
source of patronage for classical musicians; this threatened musicians’ continued ability to earn
a livelihood. Meanwhile new performance contexts were emerging. One particular set of
opportunities for musicians arose as the result of the efforts of a number of self-proclaimed
music reformers, including, most famously, Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande. These reformers
believed that Indian classical music required saving and set about disseminating it more widely.
They promoted the formerly elite Indian classical music to the general public as a national, often
specifically Hindu, heritage and as a classical tradition, sometimes comparing it with Western
classical music. They organised conferences and public concerts, set up educational institutions,
wrote music treatises and textbooks, collected and notated compositions and argued for renewed
attention to ancient Sanskrit treatises on music. As a result of their efforts, North Indian
classical music became popular with middle-class (rather than aristocratic) audiences.
Eventually found in the public concert hall, on gramophone records and on the radio, it came to
be thought of as a national tradition.
A number of scholars have written in depth about this transitional period in North Indian
classical music. Janaki Bakhle has detailed the reforms in North Indian classical music in her
Description:Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2013 . Sarathi Chatterjee, Rekha Surya, Rashmi Agarwal, Ulhas Kashalkar, Tulika Ghosh,
