A Subtle Novelty: Repetition, transmission and the valorisation of innovation within North Indian Classical Music

Abstract

This paper investigates the interrelation between two aspects of North Indian classical music that at first might appear to occupy opposite poles of creativity and constraint. The first is the soloist’s actual construction of melody itself, and the interpretation of this as improvised. The second is sangat, the imitative instrumental accompaniment afforded such melodies when performed by vocalists. I argue that the conventional description of North Indian music as ‘improvised’ downplays the importance of the re-presentation of fixed materials, thus underemphasising the projection of tradition and transmission. In turn, I suggest that sangat has a homologous relationship to pedagogy, the process of transmitting traditional materials. Both melodic construction and imitative accompaniment derive aspects of their overall form and quality from, and may be understood in reference to, an ideational cluster that attempts to reconcile a socially validated and hierarchically underscored conservatism with an acceptance of individual innovation. Both practices may be seen as performed subjectivities standing at temporal interstices between tradition and contemporaneity, the broadly cultural and the individual.

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