Pt. Dinkar Kaikini, R.I.P.
I just learned that Kaikini died earlier this week in Mumbai. I have always been extremely fond of his singing. Here are two clips for your enjoyment. First, a wretchedly bad video with a sublime rendition of Todi:
and second, this beautiful Kabir bhajan:
Many years ago, when I was in Pune under Bhimsenji’s auspices, Pt. Kaikini was visiting the Joshi residence. I was practicing in an adjacent room. After he left, Bhimsen’s wife Vatsala came into the room where I was singing. She said, “Pandit Dinkar Kaikini heard you singing, and he said ‘This one will be a singer.’ ”
In those days I didn’t get a lot of encouragement, so those words fell very sweetly on my ears. I’d loved Kaikiniji’s singing already, but his kindness in making that comment was really the icing on the cake.
Many of his commercial cassettes are excellent. While his voice is not for everyone, I love it.
Goodbye, “Dinarang.” Rest in Peace.
Education Indian music music: paltas patterns permutations practice Raga riyaaz
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Thinking About Palta Exercises
More of the material from my long-ago interview with my student Brian O’Neill. Here, I discuss the permutational practice routines known as Palta Exercises.
Hindustani musicians already know what I’m talking about. Western musicians will describe them as short phrases transposed up and down a scale: 123, 234, 345, 456, etc.
Paltas can be practiced within ragas, of course, but they are also useful for practicing ear-training and pattern manipulation inside scales.
To clarify the distinction: a palta in Raga Bhimpalasi would accommodate the omission of the second and sixth degrees in ascent, and the inclusion of these notes on the way down. Violating the raga’s rules of motion is off the table. On the other hand, a palta in Kafi Thaat (the Dorian mode, if you will) would not have any such restrictions.
Here’s a useful way to do paltas:
Pick a scale — any scale, preferably one that has 7 notes. Take a single short pattern (let’s call it a “cell”), and transpose it up and down in the scale.
For example:
S N S / R S R / G R G / M G M / P M P / D P D / N D N / S N S
N D N / D P D / P M P / M G M / G R G / R S R / S N SAnd once you’ve memorized it, then do another pattern.
S N D / R S N / G R S / M G R / P M G / D P M / N D P / S N D
S R G / N S R / D N S / P D N / M P D / G M P / R G M / S R G…Again, do that for 10 minutes.
And then alternate the two patterns, one after the other. Do it all from memory.
Then combine the two patterns:
S N S / S N D
R S R / R S N
G R G / G R S
M G M /M G R
P M P / P M G
etc., over as much of a range as you feel comfortable singing or playing.Then try combining the two in the other order:
S N D / S N S
R S N / R S R
G R S / G R G
M G R / M G M
P M G / P M P
etc.Try doing two iterations of the first “cell” and one of the second:
S N S / S N S / S N D
R S R / R S R / R S N
G R G / G R G / G R S
etc.Begin making up your own combinations of cell sequences, always using your memory to keep the material fresh in your mind’s ear.
Try, instead of alternating cells, alternating successive notes of the two different cells. S N S / S N D thus becomes S S N N S D; S N D / S N S becomes S S N N D S.
Instrumentalists should be singing these patterns as well as playing them. It is also a very good exercise to sing while fingering them on your instrument (without activating it in any other way). This builds a powerful cognitive link between instrument and voice that pays off in future fluency and expressiveness.
environment Politics: Barack Obama Ben Bernanke climaticide economics Lawrence Summers Timothy Geithner
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Day 23: To the White House
It seems that watching my daughter swimming is conducive to epistolary composition. As she splashed happily, this emerged from my pen. I’d brought lined paper today, and that seemed to shrink my penmanship, resulting in a longer piece.
For a long time, I was reluctant to address economic issues in my letters, emails and blog posts. I felt that I had inadequate background to be able to speak with any authority. However, recent events have demonstrated that the people who are speaking with authority either don’t have a fucking clue or are eager participants in the undeclared class war against the economically disenfranchised.
So I figured, “why the hell not?” and wrote a screed addressing climate change in economic terms.
Dear President Obama,
It is increasingly apparent that the people you appointed as economic advisors are not operating in good faith. Messrs Geithner, Summers and Bernanke are obviously working against the best interests of both the American people and their American president. Mr. Summers’ near-complete denialism on the economic necessity of addressing global climate change in a substantial and meaningful way is just one example of this — an example which highlights the potential for an apocalyptic confluence of economic and environmental crises in the not too distant future.
The economic impact of climate change will be felt most severely by the world’s poor. By the time the wealthiest among the planet’s population are severely affected, it will be too late for any attempts at remediation or mitigation. “Disaster capitalism” can only succeed if there is a human population left to rob!
By aligning themselves with the big banks and the multi-national corporations, Geithner, Summers and Bernanke have lent their support to an undeclared class war: the wealthy against the rest of us. Uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism is the engine driving runaway climate change — a slow-motion catastrophe whose ultimate impact will be the annihilation of whole populations. Corporate climaticide’s impact on the world’s poor is the smallpox-infested blanket writ large — a toxic gift from the oligarchy to the everyone else. This gift will have your signature on it (along with all the rest of the world’s apologists for government of, by and for the supremely wealthy) unless you take the necessary steps — steps which will also help America’s middle-class and poor recover their economic footing. Fire Geithner and Summers. Withdraw Bernanke’s nomination. It may not be enough, but it’ll be a good start.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate personhood immortal psychopaths letters SCOTUS
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Day 22: To The Boston Phoenix
I was thinking about time-cycles and the tragic inability of contemporary culture to imagine scales of time significantly larger than our own, and the full dimensions of the SCOTUS ruling became apparent.
Shit.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in “Citizens United” makes it increasingly likely that the few remaining vestiges of independent thought in our Legislative branch will come under corporate control. Nowhere in our public policy will this have more devastating impact than in the area of climate change. Why? Because corporations are legally required to focus on maximizing short-term profit (quarters and years), and legislators’ attention spans work out at two and six years respectively, due to the nature of electoral cycles — while the slow catastrophe of planetary climaticide will unfold over the sweep of the coming century or so. No wonder it is always “not the right time” to address the climate crisis! It can never be the right time when a three-decade lag between climate action and climate effect is five times longer than the elected term of a U.S. Senator, fifteen times longer than that of a U.S. Representative, and a hundred and twenty times longer than the quarterly attention span of our New Corporate Overlords.
Warren Senders