Search Results (10)

This study investigates the vibrational and acoustic properties of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.) and Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia Roxb.), two common musical instrument woods, at moisture contents of 2%, 7%, and 12%. The specimens with dimensions of 400mm (longitudinal) × 25 mm (radial) × 10 mm (tangential) were tested under cantilever beam conditions using non-contact magnetic field excitation to generate sinusoidal and pulse signals. Vibration data were collected via acceleration sensors and FFT analyzers. The test method was based on ASTM D6874-12 standard. Results indicate that increasing moisture content reduces acoustic vibration characteristics, with hardwoods exhibiting higher declines than softwoods. From 2% to 12% moisture content, the first-order sound radiation quality factor of Sitka spruce and Indian rosewood decreased by 15.41% and 15.57%, respectively, while the sound conversion rate declined by 41.91% and 43.21%. Increased moisture content lowers first-order and second-order resonance frequencies, amplitude ratios, dynamic elastic modulus, vibration propagation velocity, acoustic radiation quality factor, and acoustic conversion efficiency, while increasing acoustic impedance and the loss factor. With excitation frequency increases from 100 Hz to 1500 Hz, vibration propagation velocity rises slightly, while the loss factor declines. Full article

Music has played a central role in Indian religious experience for millennia. The origins of Indian music include the recitation of the sacred syllable OM and Sanskrit Mantras in ancient Vedic fire sacrifices. The notion of Sound Absolute, first in the Upanishads as Śabda-Brahman and later as Nāda-Brahman, formed the theological background for music, Sangīta, designed as a vehicle of liberation founded upon the worship of Hindu deities expressed in rāgas, or specific melodic formulas. Nearly all genres of music in India, classical or devotional, share this theoretical and practical understanding, extending to other Indic religions like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. What is less documented is how rāga music has been adopted by non-Indic communities in South Asia: Judaism (Bene Israel), Christianity (Catholic), and Islam (Chishti Sufi). After briefly outlining the relation between religion and the arts, the Indian aesthetics of Rasa, and the basic notions of sacred sound and music in Hinduism, this essay reveals the presence of rāga music, specifically the structure or melodic pattern of the morning rāga known as Bhairava, in compositions praising the divinity of each non-Indic tradition: Adonai, Jesus, and Allah. As similar tone patterns appear in the religious experiences of these communities, they reveal the phenomenon of “shared religious soundscapes” relevant to the comparative study of religion and music, or Musicology of Religion. Full article

Linguistic diversity is present in many audiovisual productions and has given rise to fruitful research on translation of multilingualism and language variation. Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2001) is a prototypical film for translation analysis, since multilingualism is a recurrent feature, as the film dialogue combines English (L1) with Hindi and Punjabi (L3), which creates an effect of code-switching. This article analyses how the multilingualism and the cultural elements present in the source text (ST) have been transferred to the Spanish translated text (TT) La boda del monzón. The results show that in the Spanish dubbed and subtitled versions, few Indian cultural elements are left, and little language variation is preserved. Thus, L3 does not play a central role as it does in the source text. In the translation, only a few loan words from Hindi or Punjabi are kept, mainly from the domains of food and cooking, as well as terms of address and greetings, or words related to the wedding ceremony. The results also show that when L3 is not fully rendered in translation, otherness is still conveyed through image and music, thus (re)creating a different atmosphere for Spanish audiences. Full article

As more young girls write stories online thanks to the increased amount of publishing platforms, their fiction becomes a means to explore if they are offsetting prescribed practices of patriarchy in their gender constructions. Often, young women interrogate gender and recontextualize their experiences by writing fanfictions. In the age of transmedia storytelling, various online fan communities are rich data sources, as transnational female fans prolifically write fiction featuring icons from music and movies belonging to another country. We examined how young Indian girls frame gender roles and power dynamics in their fanfictions of BTS, the South Korean boyband, on Wattpad. To know if conventional gender frames are upheld or challenged in fanfiction stories revolving around non-Indian celebrities, we performed a textual analysis on forty-four BTS fanfictions. We found that in these fanfictions, existing gendered tropes used to depict masculinity and femininity are mostly normalized, with minor alterations reflecting a power imbalance typical in Indian patriarchal households. A subversion of tropes was found in framing men as emotionally expressive, arguably drawing from the soft masculinity projected in the home country of BTS–South Korea. Grounding these findings in self-categorization theory implores us to situate the construction of gendered identities within the socio-cultural conventions of fanfiction writers. Full article

Among the different anthropogenic stimuli humans are exposed to, the psychological and cardiovascular effects of auditory stimuli are less understood. This study aims to explore the possible range of change after a single session of auditory stimulation with three different ‘Modes’ of musical stimuli (MS) on anxiety, biomarkers of stress, and cardiovascular parameters among healthy young individuals. In this randomized control trial, 140 healthy young adults, aged 18–30 years, were randomly assigned to three MS groups (Mode/Raga Miyan ki Todi, Malkauns, and Puriya) and one control group (natural sounds). The outcome measurements of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), salivary cortisol (sCort), blood pressure, and heart rate variability (HRV) were collected at three time points: before (M1), during (M2), and after the intervention (M3). State anxiety was reduced significantly with raga Puriya (p = 0.018), followed by raga Malkauns and raga Miyan Ki Todi. All the groups showed a significant reduction in sAA. Raga Miyan ki Todi and Puriya caused an arousal effect (as evidenced by HRV) during the intervention and significant relaxation after the intervention (both p < 0.005). Raga Malkauns and the control group had a sustained rise in parasympathetic activity over 30 min. Future studies should try to use other modes and features to develop a better scientific foundation for the use of Indian music in medicine. Full article

Contemporary Indian philosophy is a distinct genre of philosophy that draws both on classical Indian philosophical sources and on Western materials, old and new. It is comparative philosophy without borders. In this paper, I attempt to show how contemporary Indian philosophy works through five instances from five of its protagonists: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (his new interpretation of the old rope-snake parable in his essay “Śaṅkara’s Doctrine of Maya”, 1925); Daya Krishna (I focus on the “moral monadism” that the theory of karma in his reading leads to, drawing on his book Discussion and Debate in Indian Philosophy, 2004); Ramchandra Gandhi (his commentary on the concept of Brahmacharya in correspondence with his grandfather, the Mahatma, in his essay “Brahmacharya”, 1981); Mukund Lath (on identity through—not despite—change, with classical Indian music, Rāga music, as his case-study, in his essay “Identity through Necessary Change”, 2003); and Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar (on suffering, in his paper “No Suffering if Human Beings Were Not Sensitive”, 2021). My aim is twofold. First, to introduce five contemporary Indian philosophers; and second, to raise the question of newness and philosophy. Is there anything new in philosophy, or is contemporary philosophy just a footnote—à la Whitehead—to the writings of great thinkers of the past? Is contemporary Indian philosophy, my protagonists included, just a series of footnotes to classical thinkers both in India and Europe? Footnotes to the Upaniṣads, Nāgārjuna, Dharmakīrti and Śaṅkara, as much as (let us not forget colonialism and Macaulay) to Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel? Footnotes can be creative and work almost as a parallel text, interpretive, critical, even subversive. However, my contention is that contemporary Indian philosophy (I leave it to others to plea for contemporary Western philosophy) is not a footnote, it is a text with agency of its own, validity of its own, power of its own. It is wholly and thoroughly a text worth reading. In this paper, I make an attempt to substantiate this claim through the philosophical mosaic I offer, in each instance highlighting both the continuity with classical sources and my protagonists’ courageous transgressions and innovations. Full article

As a subfield in the study of religion and music, the theology of music is generally understood in Western terms. Yet to fully encompass the rich heritage of music in world religions, the theology of music must welcome non-Western traditions. After introducing ancient Greek and Biblical narratives regarding the origins of music, including metaphysical concepts, narratives of music as Divine Gift, musical angels, and the sacred origin of the notes and scales, this article explores music in Hindu religion through the lens of theology. We find that Indian music is also ‘given by the gods’ (i.e., Brahmā, Vishnu, and Śiva), associated with ‘musical angels,’ and originally formed from metaphysical principles (i.e., OM and the concept of Nāda-Brahman). What is demonstrated here, representing a long continuity, is how these same ideas are viable in the performance of Indian classical music today. Citing examples of compositions of Dhrupad and Khayal from the standard repertoire, this article reveals how modern-day classical songs contain references to sacred sound principles and the divine origins of music, both in their lyrics and in the unfoldment of musical notes (Svaras) and melodic patterns (Rāgas). Full article

Kirtan is a musical worship practice from India that involves the congregational performance of sacred chants and mantras in call-and-response format. The style of kirtan performed within Gaudiya Vaishnava Hinduism is an expression of Bhakti Yoga, “the yoga of love and devotion”, and focuses on creating a personal, playful, and emotionally intense connection between the worshipper and their god—specifically, through words and sounds whose vibration is believed to carry the literal presence of Krishna. Kirtan is one of many Indian genres that uses musical techniques to move participants through a progression of spiritual states from meditation to ecstasy. Kirtan-singing has become internationally popular in recent decades, largely thanks to the efforts of the Hare Krishna movement, which has led to extensive hybridization of musical styles and cultural approaches to kirtan adapted to the needs of a diasporic, globalized community of worshippers. This essay explores the practice of kirtan in the United States through interviews, fieldwork, and analysis of recordings made at several Krishna temples and festivals that demonstrate the musical techniques that can be spontaneously deployed in acts of collective worship in order to create intense feelings of deep, focused meditation and uninhibited, expressive bliss. Full article

While music plays a significant role in many of the world’s religions, it is in the Hindu religion that one finds one of the closest bonds between music and religious experience extending for millennia. The recitation of the syllable OM and the chanting of Sanskrit Mantras and hymns from the Vedas formed the core of ancient fire sacrifices. The Upanishads articulated OM as Śabda-Brahman, the Sound-Absolute that became the object of meditation in Yoga. First described by Bharata in the Nātya-Śāstra as a sacred art with reference to Rasa (emotional states), ancient music or Sangīta was a vehicle of liberation (Mokṣa) founded in the worship of deities such as Brahmā, Vishnu, Śiva, and Goddess Sarasvatī. Medieval Tantra and music texts introduced the concept of Nāda-Brahman as the source of sacred music that was understood in terms of Rāgas, melodic formulas, and Tālas, rhythms, forming the basis of Indian music today. Nearly all genres of Indian music, whether the classical Dhrupad and Khayal, or the devotional Bhajan and Kīrtan, share a common theoretical and practical understanding, and are bound together in a mystical spirituality based on the experience of sacred sound. Drawing upon ancient and medieval texts and Bhakti traditions, this article describes how music enables Hindu religious experience in fundamental ways. By citing several examples from the modern Hindustani classical vocal tradition of Khayal, including text and audio/video weblinks, it is revealed how the classical songs contain the wisdom of Hinduism and provide a deeper appreciation of the many musical styles that currently permeate the Hindu and Yoga landscapes of the West. Full article