ISTANBUL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

M.A. THESIS

JUNE 2018

THE SINGING BODY: THE EMBODIMENT PROCESSES IN THE TRANSMISSION OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE – A CASE STUDY OF

PROF. DR. V. BALAJI

Aslı BÜYÜKKÖKSAL

Dr. Erol Üçer Center for Advanced Studies in Music

Music Program

Dr. Erol Üçer Center for Advanced Studies in Music

Music Program

JUNE 2018

ISTANBUL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

THE SINGING BODY: THE EMBODIMENT PROCESSES IN THE TRANSMISSION OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE – A CASE STUDY OF

PROF. DR. V. BALAJI

M.A. THESIS

Aslı BÜYÜKKÖKSAL (409131111)

Thesis Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. E. Şirin ÖZGÜN TANIR Thesis Co-Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Robert F. REIGLE

Dr. Erol Üçer Müzik İleri Araştırmalar Merkezi

Müzik Yüksek Lisans Programı

HAZİRAN 2018

İSTANBUL TEKNİK ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ

TINLAYAN BEDEN: MÜZİK BİLGİSİNİN AKTARIMINDA BEDENSELLEŞME SÜREÇLERİ – PROF. DR. V. BALAJI ÜZERİNE VAKA

İNCELEMESİ

YÜKSEK LİSANS TEZİ

Aslı BÜYÜKKÖKSAL (409131111)

Tez Danışmanı: Doç. Dr. E. Şirin ÖZGÜN TANIR Eş Danışman: Doç. Dr. Robert F. REIGLE

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Thesis Advisor : Assoc. Prof. E. Şirin Özgün .............................. İstanbul Technical University

Thesis Co-Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Robert Reigle .............................. İstanbul Technical University

Jury Members : Assoc. Prof. Jerfi Aji ............................. İstanbul Technical University

Asst. Prof. U. Ulaş Özdemir .............................. İstanbul University

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Belma Kurtişoğlu .............................. İstanbul Technical University

Aslı Büyükköksal, a M.A. student of ITU Graduate School of.Arts and Social

Sciences, student ID 409131111, successfully defended the thesis entitled “THE

SINGING BODY: THE EMBODIMENT PROCESSES IN MUSICAL

TRANSMISSION OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE – A CASE STUDY OF PROF.

DR. V. BALAJI”, which she prepared after fulfilling the requirements specified in

the associated legislations, before the jury whose signatures are below.

Date of Submission : 4 May 2018 Date of Defense : 7 June 2018

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FOREWORD

My gratitude goes to all who helped me during the course of preparation, conducting, and writing phases of this thesis by their active contribution, material and psychological help, and/or just by their supportive presence. First of all, without my guru, Prof. Dr. V. Balaji, this work would not be possible. His mastery in music and teaching gave me endless inspiration in music and his generosity, understanding, and offerings made this work to come alive. I thank to mataji, Dr. V. Balaji’s wife, Shanti Balaji, for having my husband and me in the intimacy of their house and taking care of us sincerely. I owe special thanks to their daughter Bhairavi Balaji, who kindly read my thesis and suggested the necessary corrections in a very short time. I present my best wishes for all the family of Prof. Dr. V. Balaji. I would like to give a special thanks to my husband Ertuğrul Küçükbayraktar, for being the strong supporter under hardest conditions both in India and in Turkey, enduring the changes and intensity in our shared daily life, and acting out with love. Throughout our journey in India, so many knowledgeable, wise and nice people helped us to find our way. I must say that I’m impressed by the open-heartedness of the people we encountered. Dear Sheetal Sanghvi, Drupad and Neeraj Mistry, Derya Albayrak, Roy Novick, Syed Salman Chisty, Aparajita Tomer and her husband, Akshay Chadha and Güldeste Mamaç opened our way. I thank to Sukhdev Prasad Mishra who introduced the style of Indian violin to me and treated us with dearest hospitality. I owe a special thanks to Shubha Chaudhuri who was generously spending time with me discussing my thesis, trying to connect me to key people. Additionally, the warm-hearted crew in AIIS Archives and Research Center in Gurugram, Haryana did their best to provide me the material for my thesis. My advisor, Şirin Özgün Tanır, guided me through the intricate paths of social science research with her keen understanding, clear suggestions, and calm presence. I’m happy that I had the chance to work with her. My co-advisor Robert Reigle supported me all through my graduate years and has always been kind, generous, and encouraging regardless of the conditions. I especially thank him for asking me repeatedly the important question of what is my genuine interest in research. I owe special thanks to the jury members Belma Kurtişoğlu, Ulaş Özdemir, and Jerfi Aji for showing their sincere interests in my research and giving valuable suggestions to make it complete.

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Özlem Gürkan, being the most positive and smiling librarian on earth, helped me all through my graduate years, too. Robert O. Beahrs shared kindly his knowledge about the embodiment literature and about the research process with me. I thank all of the interviewees, namely, Perrine Vincent, Gabriele Politi, Arnaud Bourdonnay, and Mari-Line Aubry, for giving their valuable time. Especially, Perrine Vincent inspired me about the focus on embodiment in my thesis. I would like to thank the scholars in the SEM list for sharing generously their knowledge, including Martin Clayton, Byron Dueck, Richard K. Wolf, Matthew Rahaim, Tomie Hahn, Bruno Deschênes, Caroline Bithell, Rolf Groesbeck, Bernd Brabec de Mori, Jerome Camal, Colin P. McGuire, Melanie Pinkert, Davindar Singh, CedarBough T. Saeji, Lisa Gold, Kim Carter Munoz, Sydney Hutchinson, Esther Kurtz, Justin Scarimbolo, Lois Ann M. Anderson and Grace Toland. Aslı Bala Aşkan and Merve Aykaç Sönmez were present in the key moments when I felt desperate and kindly helped me out in technical and intangible issues. My dear friends in the department inspired me to continue with my studies. Oğul Köker has been a big help about my jury members and many other details. My dear soul sisters, Seda Seyrek, Yarden Cohen, Ezgi İçöz, Zainab Lax, Hande Başaran, Melike Doğan, Alaleh Sayedahmadi, and Burcu Kındır generously gave me strength, logistic and psychological support to finalize this project. Sine Boran Art and Olcayto Art helped me out when I was caught in a “writer’s block”. I owe special thanks to Sinan Erdemsel, a master in playing and teaching of Turkish maqam music, who supported me throughout my music life. In addition, Prof. Dr. Sibel Kalaycıoğlu from METU and Sinan Erdemsel had given their references so that I was able to be in the music program. Finally, I would like to express my everlasting gratitude to my parents, Gülden and Nejat Büyükköksal. With their beautiful presence, they have been giving me the support, opportunity and love to be who I am ever since we have been together.

May 2018 Aslı BÜYÜKKÖKSAL Musician

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................... ix

LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................. xi LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................. xiii SUMMARY .............................................................................................................. xv

ÖZET....................................................................................................................... xvii 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1

1.1 Purpose of the Thesis ......................................................................................... 1

1.2 Motivation .......................................................................................................... 3

1.3 Methodology ...................................................................................................... 4

1.3.1 Doing ethnography as a disciple ................................................................. 4

1.3.2 The autoethnographical approach ............................................................... 6

1.3.3 Interviews .................................................................................................... 7

1.4 Literature Review ............................................................................................... 9

1.4.1 Embodiment .............................................................................................. 10

1.4.2 Spiritual/religious setting .......................................................................... 21

1.5 Overview .......................................................................................................... 23

2. THE GURU-SHISHYA RELATIONSHIP ....................................................... 25

2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 25

2.2 The ‘Lesson’ ..................................................................................................... 26

2.2.1 The setting ................................................................................................. 26

2.2.2 First part .................................................................................................... 29

2.2.3 Second part................................................................................................33

3. TEACHING METHODOLOGY ........................................................................ 35

3.1 The Technical Transmission ............................................................................ 36

3.1.1 Technical exercises ................................................................................... 36

3.1.2 Linking the exercises to the performance-related material ....................... 36

3.1.3 ‘First the movement!’ ................................................................................ 37

3.1.4 Rote repetition ........................................................................................... 39

3.1.5 ‘You can’t change the teacher!’ ................................................................ 40

3.1.6 The language ............................................................................................. 43

3.1.7 Notation/textbook ...................................................................................... 47

3.2 Immersion In Music ......................................................................................... 49

3.2.1 Cyclicity .................................................................................................... 51

3.2.2 ‘Take your violin in hand, don’t stop, work!’ ........................................... 53

3.2.3 Focus on music .......................................................................................... 55

3.2.4 Riaz ........................................................................................................... 58

3.2.5 The drone .................................................................................................. 61

4. PEDAGOGY......................................................................................................... 65

4.1 ‘You Know Friends Kick Each Other. It’s Like a Friendship.’ ....................... 66

4.2 ‘Try, Do the Mistake!’ ..................................................................................... 67

4.3 Attentiveness .................................................................................................... 68

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5. THE SPIRITUALITY – THE SPIRITUAL/RELIGIOUS SETTING ............ 71

5.1 Dr. Balaji’s Teaching in Relation to Hinduism and Sufism ............................. 72

5.2 An Autoethnographical Approach .................................................................... 80

6. THE ENGAGEMENT - SOCIO-CULTURAL SETTING .............................. 91

6.1 Dedication and Submission .............................................................................. 91

6.2 The Transmission of Ethics .............................................................................. 96

7. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................... 99

7.1 A Brief Summary……………………………………………………………..99 7.2 Preservation, Memorialization, and Mediation ……………………………..102 7.3 The Consent Process and Dialogic Editing………………………………….105 7.4 The Research Question and Answers..............................................................107 7.5 Recommendations For Future Research.........................................................109

REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 111

APPENDICES ........................................................................................................ 115

APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY …………………………………..……………….116 APPENDIX B: PHOTOGRAPHS…………...………………………………….119 APPENDIX C: CURRICULUM VITAE OF DR. BALAJI…...…………...…...123 APPENDIX D: BIO DATA OF V. K. VENKATARAMANUJAM……………127 APPENDIX E: CONTENT OF THE CDS……..……………………………….128

CURRICULUM VITAE ........................................................................................ 129

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Map of South Asia……………………………………………………..26 Figure 2.2: Map of North India.................................................................................27 Figure 2.3: Dr. Balaji, playing the Rajam Bela…………………………………….32 Figure 3.1: An example page from the notebook of Dr. Balaji.................................48 Figure 3.2: The first page of Dr. Balaji’s textbook....................................................48 Figure 3.3: The music room in Dr. Balaji’s house.....................................................58 Figure 3.4: The tanpura machine...............................................................................62 Figure 5.1: The picture of Dr. V. K. Venkataramanujam..........................................76 Figure 5.2: The picture of N. Rajam..........................................................................76 Figure 5.3: The blessing and gifts by Dr. V. Balaji...................................................90 Figure 6.1: The picture of a plate, presented to Dr. Balaji........................................94 Figure B.1: The Saraswati statue.............................................................................119 Figure B.2: Dr. V. Balaji in his room in BHU.........................................................119 Figure B.3: Three generations playing together......................................................119 Figure B.4: Dr. V. Balaji’s daughter; Bhairavi Balaji.............................................120 Figure B.5: Dr. V. K. Venkataramanujam playing with Dr. V. Balaji....................120 Figure B.6: Dr. V. K. Venkataramanujam together with Ravi Shankar..................120 Figure B.7: Dr. V. Balaji with some of his family members...................................121 Figure B.8: Dr. V. Balaji playing with his son; B. Anantha Raman........................121 Figure B.9: The award of “Doyen of the Music World”.........................................121 Figure B.10: Picture of a statue of Lord Balaji.......................................................122 Figure B.11: The statue of Lord Shiva....................................................................122 Figure B.12: A painting of Lord Hanuman..............................................................122 Figure C.1: Rajam Bela...........................................................................................125 Figure C.2: Malviya Bela........................................................................................125 Figure C.3: Bala Bela..............................................................................................126 Figure C.4: Triveni Bela..........................................................................................126

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Transcription of the first exercise..............................................................30 Table 2.2 Transcription of the second exercise..........................................................31 Table 2.3 Transcription of the exercise in raga Bhairavi...........................................33

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THE SINGING BODY: THE EMBODIMENT PROCESSES IN THE TRANSMISSION OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE – A CASE STUDY OF

PROF. DR. V. BALAJI

SUMMARY

This thesis explores the embodiment processes I have experienced during my

study period of violin with Dr. V. Balaji, in Varanasi, India. I investigate the

mechanisms, ideas, and belief systems through which the embodiment of musical

ideas occurred in my experience. I investigate the issue through examining his

teaching methodology, pedagogical approach, the spiritual/religious setting in

Dr. V. Balaji’s space, and the mutual engagement by both the teacher and the

student. It is designed as a case study about one of the reputable violin players

and teachers, Prof. Dr. V. Balaji, living in Varanasi and teaching as a professor

of violin in Banaras Hindu University. As a player having legacy in both styles

of Indian classical music; namely North and South Indian—Hindustani and

Carnatic—music, and as a teacher standing in both systems of university and

guru-shishya parampara (master-disciple tradition), he occupies an interesting

intersection point representing the up-to-date aspects of transmission of musical

knowledge. I focus on the phenomenon by taking my personal experience as the

starting point, looking closely at the mechanisms and processes at work in the

transmission of musical knowledge by Dr. V. Balaji, and presenting it in relation

to the larger Indian context, in dialogue with the literature about the concept of

embodiment and the researches about the spiritual/religious aspects of music in

India. In the scope of the thesis, I define embodiment as ‘being in the space of

Dr. V. Balaji’, in relation to the spiritual/religious setting and the sociocultural

context, the bodily changes I experienced that took place mostly "without being

an object of conscious pedagogical attention" (Weidman, 2012, p. 219), and the

methodological and pedagogical approach of Dr. Balaji in this sense. I look at the

processes, which brought my experience further than having a mere technical

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learning period to the profound changes in my body and mind. My scope as a

case study necessitates the use of self-reflexivity and auto-ethnography.

Reviewing the valuable works about Asian music and embodiment until now,

with this research, I hope to fill the gap of an elaborate up-to-date study focusing

on the transmission of musical knowledge as a case study with an embodiment

approach.

xvii

TINLAYAN BEDEN: MÜZİK BİLGİSİNİN AKTARIMINDA BEDENSELLEŞME SÜREÇLERİ – PROF. DR. V. BALAJI ÜZERİNE VAKA

İNCELEMESİ

ÖZET

Bu tezin amacı, Hindistan’ın Varanasi şehrinde Prof. Dr. V. Balaji’yle geçirdiğim keman üzerine öğrenimi esas alarak, müzik aktarımında bedenselleşme süreçlerini incelemektir. Hint Klasik Müziği öğretimi, üniversitelerin kurumsal yapısının son yüzyılda etkisini arttırmış olmasına rağmen esas ve geleneksel olarak hocanın evinde gerçekleşir. Yüzyıllardan beri geçerli olan bu sisteme Hindu geleneğinde guru-şişya,

Müslüman geleneğinde üstad-şakir sistemi denmektedir. Sözel aktarım özellikleri açısından Türkiye coğrafyasında özellikle Cumhuriyet öncesi dönemde hakim olan, şimdi kaybolmaya yüz tutmuş usta-çırak sistemiyle benzerlikler göstermektedir. Bu

sistem, Hint Klasik Müziği’ni icra eden ve aktaranların modern dünyanın koşulları altında geliştirdikleri adaptasyon ve hayatta kalma stratejileriyle bugüne kadar gelmiştir; üniversite ve çeşitli müzik okullarının yanında geçerliliğini korumaktadır.

Prof. Dr. V. Balaji hem bu geleneğin guru sıfatıyla taşıyıcısı hem de Banaras Hindu

Üniversitesi’nde keman profesörü olarak iki akımın kesiştiği bir noktada ilginç bir rol oynamaktadır. Kendisi V. K. V. Parampara geleneğinden gelmekte, hem üniversitede ders vermekte hem de şişya tabir edilen ‘çırak’larını (öğrencilerini) evinde verdiği derslerle yetiştirmektedir.

Guru-şişya sistemindeki müzikal bilginin aktarım süreçlerine baktığımızda sözel aktarım geleneğinin özellikleri yanında bedenselleşme süreçlerinin önemli bir rol oynadığını görmekteyiz. Öğretim teknikleri, pedagojik özellikler, ruhani / dini arka

plan ve sosyo-kültürel özelliklerin birleşimiyle bedenselleşme süreçleri, müzikal

ifadenin aktarımında önemli bir rol oynamaktadır. Bedenselleşme çeşitli yollarla gerçekleşmektedir.

İlk olarak, öğretim tekniklerinde içkin olan, teknik etütler ve kompozisyon dahil tüm müzikal materyalin notaya bağlı kalınmadan aktarılmasındaki kulaktan tekrar ve taklit tekniği bedenselleşmenin gerçekleşmesinde önemli bir etkendir. Geleneksel müziklerin sözel aktarımında dünyada yaygın olan bu teknik, Hint müziğinde doğaçlamanın da bu yolla öğretilmesi nedeniyle bedenselleşme süreçlerine önemli bir alan açmaktadır. Tekniğin öğretiminde öne çıkan diğer bir özellik, Klasik Batı

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Müziği’nin tersine özellikle sol elin hareket serbestliğine öncelik vermesidir. Hint müziği tavrında süslemeler, müziğin melodik yapısında belirleyici bir özelliğe sahiptir. Hint müziği keman öğrenimi ve çalımında klavye üzerinde standart yerleri olan pozisyonlar belirtilmemektedir. Süslemeler, kaydırma ve notayı titretme üzerine yoğunlaştığı için sol elin hareketinin akıcı olması büyük önem taşımaktadır. Hatta bunu sağlamak için müzisyenler parmaklarına çeşitli yağlar sürmektedir. Bu hareketin ustadan çırağa aktarımında bizzat ustanın bedensel hareketlerini içselleştirme süreçleri etkindir.

İkinci olarak, müziğin içine girme olarak nitelendirebileceğimiz bir süreç, öğretim tekniğinin yapı taşlarından biridir. Klasik Hint Müziği’nde zamanın dairesel algılanması, dersler sırasında sözel olmayan bir ortamda aktarımın kesintisizliği ve

sürekliliği, ustanın da hayat tarzıyla vurguladığı, hayatın merkezine müziğin alınması, devamlı dem sesi veren ve yüksek titreşimli, doğuşkanlar açısından zengin tanpura enstrümanının kullanımı, ve riaz olarak adlandırılan etüt pratiğinin talepkâr

bir süreç olması bedenselleşme sürecini ortaya çıkartan etkenlerdendir.

Üçüncü olarak Klasik Hint Müziği’ndeki pedagojik özellikler bedenselleşmenin önünü açmaktadır. Ustanın daimi olarak öğrenciyi sınırlarını zorlamaya teşvik etmesi, beraber geçirilen uzun saatlerde dikkatinin öğrenci üzerinde olması, ve öğrenciyle otoriter bir figür olarak ilişki kurması bunlardan üçüdür.

Dördüncü olarak, ruhani / dini arka plan bedenselleşme süreçlerine alan açmaktadır. Ruhani / dini öğeler Klasik Hint müziğinin vurgulanan önemli bir özelliğidir. M.Ö. 1100’e dayanan felsefi altyapısıyla Klasik Hint müziği, icracıyı ilahi gücün dünyevi olanla iletişiminde bir aracı olarak görmektedir. Bu özellik, Hindu ve Müslüman müzisyenlerde ortaktır. Müzisyenin benliğinin ön plana çıkarılmasından ziyade gurunun temsil ettiği geleneğin nesiller üzerinden aktarımı söz konusudur. Bu noktada müzikal bilginin aktarımında bedenselleşme süreçleri birincil önem kazanmaktadır.

Son olarak, usta ile yüz yüze geçirilen uzun saatler sırasında müzikal ifadenin öğrenimi, ustanın bedeninin duruşu, hareketleri, ve duygusunun ilk başlarda bilinçli, daha gelişmiş öğrenim seviyelerinde bilinç tarafından analiz edilmeden taklidi, ya da edinilmesi yoluyla meydana gelmektedir. Önemli bir etken, Hint Klasik Müziği öğreniminde önemli yapıtaşlarından biri olan, ustayla kurulan neredeyse ailesel ilişkidir. Bir usta öğrenciyi çırağı olarak kabul ederse, kendisini onun babası/annesi

olarak ilan etmektedir. Bu ustanın öğrencinin hayatında ne kadar önemli bir yerde olduğunun göstergelerinden biridir. Çırak / öğrenci ustayla sadece ders saatlerini değil, gündelik ve/veya ruhani hayatın pek çok alanını da paylaşmaktadır. Tüm

varoluşunun müzikal olduğu kabul gören ustayla geçirilen zamanda aktarımın devam

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ettiği düşünülmektedir. Usta, öğrencisini sadece müzikal olarak değil, ahlak, özellikle de bir sanatçının sahip olması gereken ahlak açısından da eğitmektedir.

Müzikal bilginin aktarımında bedensel süreçler yukarda saydığım bu etkenlerle

meydana gelmektedir. Bu tez, bedenselleşme süreçlerinin derinlemesine bir incelemesini kendi öğrenim sürecimden yola çıkarak, Prof. Dr. V. Balaji üzerine bir

vaka incelemesi çerçevesinde müziğin ruhani / dini arka planı üzerine araştırmalar, Klasik Hint Müziği ve bedenselleşme teorilerinden oluşan bir iskelete oturtarak

yapmaktadır.

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1

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Purpose of the Thesis

With a good master, one’s overall musical sensitivity deepens, which becomes applicable to

any music style. With guruji1 [master], the emotionally intense situation I experience and the

high musical energy I am exposed to result in that I gradually become able to understand the

music from deep inside of myself; nearly a visceral feeling. This intense exposure and the

unique situation that the master practices (does riaz) with the student are first time

experiences for me. Guruji’s states while singing, teaching us rhythm, and playing the violin

remain with me long after the lessons, even entering my dreams occasionally. (Field diary, 23

December 2017, Varanasi)

One of the things I try to do is to see myself as an extension of the master. To be able to

imitate him hundred percent, I try to empty my mind, feel like a blank page, and be

transparent. If I accomplish to do this, these moments I observe an intense skill and

understanding transfer from the master to my whole body, through my fingers, posture, and

arms especially. (Field diary, 27 December 2017, Varanasi)

This thesis explores the embodiment processes I have experienced during my study

period of violin with Dr. V. Balaji. I investigate the mechanisms, ideas, and belief

systems through which the embodiment of musical ideas occurred in my experience.

I explore this issue through examining his teaching methodology, pedagogical

approach, the spiritual/religious setting in Dr. V. Balaji’s space, and the mutual

engagement of both the teacher and the student in the learning process. It is designed

as a case study about one of the reputable violin players and teachers, Prof. Dr. V.

Balaji, living in Varanasi and teaching as a violin professor in Banaras Hindu

University. As a player having legacy in both styles of Indian classical music;

namely North and South Indian music, and as a teacher standing in both systems of

university and guru-shishya parampara (master-disciple tradition), he occupies an

interesting intersection point demonstrating up-to-date aspects of transmission of

musical knowledge (for detailed information about Dr. V. Balaji’s achievements, see

1 The first time common Indian terms appear they will be italicized. Either they will be defined in the

text, or they can be looked up in the glossary (Appendix A: Glossary). Thereafter, they will appear without italics.

2

Appendix C). I focus on the phenomenon of embodiment by taking my personal

experience as the starting point, looking closely at the mechanisms and processes at

work in the transmission of musical knowledge by V. Balaji, and presenting it in

relation to the larger Indian context, in dialogue with the literature about the concept

of embodiment and the spiritual/religious aspects of music in India.

In the scope of the thesis, I define embodiment as ‘the coming into existence of

musical ideas in the student’s body through the mechanisms at work in the

transmission of musical knowledge’. I explore the bodily changes I experienced that

took place mostly "without being an object of conscious pedagogical attention"

(Weidman, 2012, p. 219) in relation to the spiritual/religious setting and the

sociocultural context. Furthermore, I analyze the methodological and pedagogical

approach of Dr. Balaji in this sense. Throughout the thesis, I look at the processes,

which brought my experience further than having a mere technical learning period to

the profound changes in my “body-mind” (Rahaim, 2012). The musical ideas consist

of the technical exercises, the rendition of ragas, the rhythmical understanding in

Indian music, and the vocal and instrumental rendering of compositions and

improvisations. I argue that the transmission of these musical ideas from Dr. Balaji to

me occurred mainly through my ‘being in the space of Dr. V. Balaji’, referring to

Csordas’ (1993) concept of defining embodiment as “being-in-the-world” from a

phenomenological point of view.

Reviewing the valuable works about Asian music and embodiment until now, with

my research I hope to fill the gap of an elaborate up-to-date study focusing on the

transmission of musical knowledge as a case study with an embodiment approach.

The questions that triggered my research process are: How did the embodiment

happen? Which techniques and pedagogical tools my guru used to accomplish the

musical and socio-cultural states I experienced? What was the contribution of my

background and work in that? How was my connection with the guru established?

What were the factors that prepared the space for embodiment? Which processes

were at work to accomplish this change in the state of my body-mind? I will look at

these questions in the light of the theoretical background provided by the literature

about embodiment, Indian classical music and pedagogy, the spiritual/religious

elements in Indian philosophy and musicology, my fieldwork conducted during our

3

study period with Dr. V. Balaji, and the interviews I made with his former foreign

students/disciples.

My research question is:

What are the aspects of embodiment in the transmission process of musical

knowledge by Prof. Dr. V. Balaji?

The sub-questions are:

How are the relations of the teaching methodology, the pedagogical tools, the

spiritual/religious, and the socio-cultural settings to the embodiment process?

1.2 Motivation

My motivation to conduct this research project is related to my wish to learn Indian

music in its own sociocultural context. Not having attended a formal music school, I

learned to play the violin in varying settings, both in Western and traditional music

contexts. To summarize, I started as a student of a western classical teacher and as a

performer in a western classical orchestra, moved to learning various folk musics;

such as, Balkan and Klezmer by ear without a formal instructor, then moved to

maqam music in Turkey, which can be described as a mix of both, namely, a strong

reinforcement of oral transmission techniques accompanied by various instructors. In

maqam music education in Turkey, the authority of the conservatory has long

replaced the deep-rooted tradition of master-disciple but this tradition is frequently

mentioned, idealized and referred to as the core technique to learn maqam music and

described in a highly romanticized way. Apart from my long time interest in Indian

music, I was attracted to master-disciple relationship in particular. As my quest for

an alternative methodology and pedagogy of teaching and learning continued, I

started to gain more knowledge about the guru-shishya—or ustad-shagird in the

Muslim context—relationship in Indian context which resulted in a journey to India,

with the motivation to experience it first-hand to be able to explore its qualities. My

study period with Dr. V. Balaji in India revealed the inherent embodiment processes

in the teaching of Indian classical music and was emphasized by one of his former

students, Perrine Vincent, in the interviews with her over Skype, Internet. Finally, the

embodiment processes in transmission of musical knowledge as a case study of Dr.

V. Balaji formed the focus in this thesis.

4

1.3 Methodology

This research is based on the fieldwork conducted in Varanasi, India throughout my

study period with Dr. V. Balaji and the interviews I have made with four of his

former foreign students via Internet. This period encompasses not only the durations

of our lessons but the whole time we spent together; namely, our long conversations

about music and life, having meals together with his wife and his disciples, listening

to music, watching the videos or the film Apap Masala (2002) by Gilles Apap in

which Dr. V. Balaji appears as one of the featured musicians, visiting the Banaras

Hindu university where he teaches, and spending time in his workshop where he

builds his self-designed violins, and even playing one time an iPad game together.

The definition of field research by Goffman (1989) corresponds to my focus on

embodiment:

Subjecting yourself, your own body and your own personality, and your own social situation,

to the set of contingencies that play upon a set of individuals, so that you can physically and

ecologically penetrate their circle of response to their social situation, or their work situation,

or the ethnic situation. (1989, as cited in Emerson et al., 1995)

The methods I used in the fieldwork are the participant-observation, the audio and

video recordings of our lessons, and the interviews I have made with Dr. V. Balaji.

Writing the thesis, I made extensive use of the fieldnotes and a diary I kept during

the one-and-a-half-month period, which helped me to build an autoethnographical

approach in the course of writing.

In addition, I have made the journey to India together with my husband Ertuğrul, him

being a musician as well, so that we both became students of Dr. V. Balaji and he

was included in fieldwork setting. That is also the reason why I use we and I

alternately in the coming chapters.

1.3.1 Doing ethnography as a disciple

My study period with Dr. Balaji can still be defined in guru-shishya system, which

roughly translates as master-disciple system to English, although we could stay only

short time in Varanasi and there were also distinct characteristics than the traditional

bond present in our relationship. Different than a fieldwork setting, where the

researcher has to define her identity and/or role in a new environment, my identity

was clear from the first day on, as I e-mailed Dr. Balaji before, explaining him that in

5

order to realize my research project, I wished to take violin lessons from him. Dr.

Balaji accepted Ertuğrul and me as his students provided a fixed tuition. In the

traditional sense, discipleship carries the meaning of a life-long bond and the disciple

is dependent on the master not only musically but financially as well, which is a very

rare situation now in contemporary India. Still, our relationship revealed the other

features of guru-shishya institution that it demanded the devotion, dedication, and

discipline from both parties. Qureshi (2009) talks about her experience of learning

sarangi with Ustad Sabri Khan as “discipular ethnography”, saying “the discipular

way of learning a music culture marks ethnomusicology as an inclusive cross-

cultural practice because it counterposes the student's submission to scholar's

entitlement to know” (Qureshi, 2009, p. 168). I had a parallel experience of trying to

incorporate these two stances in my fieldwork. Dr. Balaji was a verbal person, he

liked to converse, tell stories, and make explanations about the theory of music.

Though when we were actually playing, the nonverbality was dominant and my

questions were out of the role of the shishya, who should traditionally submit to the

process and follow the guru. My scholarly questions acted like interruptions in the

transmission as well. Gradually, I tried to find a balance and reserved my questions

when he himself opened up the verbal space.

Weidman (2012) suggest the concept of “ethnographic apprenticeship” instead of

participant observation, where the “nonverbal channels” are at work and not

necessarily the verbal explanations of an informant, saying “Apprentices learn by

imitation or “body-modeling”: watching, and oftentimes feeling, how their master’s

body engages in the task at hand” (Weidman, 2012, p. 217). She argues the emphasis

on sight in participant observation technique falls short of understanding the

apprenticeship process in its all aspects. She points out that her argument is not only

about physicality and quotes Bryant (2005), saying: “Apprenticeship, although it

may work through the gradual acquisition of unarticulated bodily-sensorial

knowledge, is a deliberate process of self-making that entails becoming a person

embedded in a hierarchy of values” (2005, as cited in Weidman, 2012, p. 217). Her

suggestion of ethnographic apprenticeship corresponds to my state in the fieldwork

where also the other senses were at work apart from sight and a bodily attention was

required along with the visual and cognitive ones. In addition, there were both

explicit and implicit conveying of socio-cultural meanings and ethical concerns

6

through the explanations and presence of the guru, placed in an omnipresent

spiritual/religious setting, which was an actor itself in the embodiment processes.

1.3.2 The autoethnographical approach

As my research topic is about the profound changes in the states of my body-mind

and the underlying processes, which caused the embodiment of musical ideas, I

utilized autoethnographical writing in interpretation of the fieldnotes and in making

sense of the processes in our relationship with Dr. V. Balaji. The phenomenological

nature of the research necessitated the use of self-reflexivity and autoethnography, so

that they became useful tools in order to make meaningful interpretations of my

experience during and after the fieldwork.

My fieldnotes already contained self-reflexive passages where I investigated my

learning process, the effective methods that I discovered during the course of practice

and the lessons, which were also implied by Dr. Balaji, and the impressions of our

meetings. In addition, I kept a diary, where I felt free to write about the living

conditions in Varanasi, the impressions of the life on the street, and the stages of my

evolving relationship with the guru. According to Cooley (1997), “By creating a

reflexive image of ourselves as ethnographers and the nature of our “being-in-the-

world”, we believe we stand to achieve better intercultural understanding as we begin

to recognize our shadows among those we strive to understand” (Cooley, 1997, p. 4).

Kisliuk (1997) states in a parallel fashion that the shift of emphasis on experience

brought the ethnomusicologists to a “reflexive, nonobjectivist scholarship” (Kisliuk,

1997, p. 23) Furthermore, she states:

In any role or profession, in order to act upon the world we need to continually re-express our

identities; we get to know other people by making ourselves known to them, and through

them to know ourselves again, in a continuous cycle. (Kisliuk, 1997, p. 27)

Cooley (1997) argues that the reflexivity changes “two related aspects of our

ethnomusicological heritage” (Cooley, 1997, p. 16) and quotes Clifford (1986b):

“First, it works to redress colonial ethnography, that positions the ethnographer

outside the culture in an Archimedian [Archimedean] vantage point … Second,

reflexive ethnography rejects the science paradigm that conceives of human culture

as objectively observable” (1986b, as cited in Cooley, 1997, p. 16-17).

7

Ellis et al. state, citing Ellis (2004) and Holman Jones (2005): “Autoethnography is

an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze

(graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience

(ethno)” (as cited in Ellis et al., 2011, p. 273]. The self-reflexive writing method

during the fieldwork helped me to realize the milestones in my learning period, the

changes I observed in my playing the violin and myself overall. To analyze these in

relation to my socio-cultural and musical background, including my cultural and

musical patterns from previous experiences provided me a clearer understanding

about the nature of my relationship to Dr. Balaji. Which motivations brought me to

learn Indian music in India? How were my previous experiences of learning music

and how do they affect the ongoing learning process? Which relation do I have to the

spiritual/religious setting and how it is affected by my belief systems? Dunbar-Hall

(2010) in his article about his reflections on learning music in Bali states:

… it [autoethnography] exposes one’s insecurities, forces questioning of assumptions, and

requires re-assessment of ways of thinking and believing. For me it created large amounts of

knowledge to be learnt and assimilated, not only about music, but also about pedagogy,

music as cultural practice, research, and personal interaction. (Dunbar-Hall, 2010, p. 154)

While writing the thesis, looking at the personal turning points in my study period

placed beside the deciphered recordings of the conversations and the lessons with Dr.

Balaji revealing his acts and views on music, and the interviews with his former

students gave me a better insight of which underlying mechanisms, belief and

ideational systems were at work, both on a personal and socio-cultural level. I used

autobiographical information to provide background for the reader and myself,

layered accounts to make sense of the data and literature provided, personal

narratives and thick description for the sake of a lively description of experiences.

1.3.3 Interviews

In the course of the fieldwork, I conducted various audio and video interviews with

Dr. Balaji. The audio interviews were where I asked questions about his experiences

in and thoughts on teaching. In the video interviews, his self-designed and self-made

violins, his workshop and his collection of instruments were documented. Although

he was very willing to document his violins and his work as a maker, he had been

hesitant to do the audio interview where I would ask him questions, still, he accepted

to do that, too. Looking back to his hesitation, I realized two important ‘mistakes’ I

made in the process. First, Dr. Balaji’s and my thought patterns worked differently.

8

As I had explicit goals in my mind, he liked to integrate stories in his talking, being

swept away to the mood of the story in an associative way and maybe returning to

the point I had asked about in the particular question. Though when he wanted to

make a point himself, he was definitely hitting that point. Finally, the interview

concept was not very meaningful in his universe and I decided to gather the

information I needed during the course of our regular conversations. Second, the

understanding of what an interview is turned out to be culture-specific. Although I

summarized him the topic of the interview as his experiences of teaching, he was

suspicious that it was like a test about the limits of his musical knowledge. While I

had the expectation of having a conversation-like communication, he saw it like an

interrogation. In this case, I should have given him the questions in print or told him

beforehand. Both shortcomings were in my responsibility to realize, which I

remarked as that the culture blindness is a trap one should be aware of in every step

of the research.

I had better results from the interviews done with his former foreign students over

Skype and e-mail. I could reach four of his students; Gabriele Politi from Italy,

Perrine Vincent, Arnoud Bourdonnay, and Marie-Line Aubry from France. Dr. Balaji

kept a diary where his students would write their impressions and contact details

after their study periods. As I asked how I could contact his former students, he

shared this diary with me and gave his reference. All of the interviewees were

violinists and they had various backgrounds of learning and playing, varying from

classical training to traditional musics.

My interview questions were:

1. Would you please introduce yourself?

2. How would you name your relationship with music; i.e. professional, amateur,

music lover, other than that?

3. What were your motivations to travel India to learn music?

4. How did your perception of music and playing change after your travel?

5. What kind of teaching methods Dr. V. Balaji used?

6. How was your experience about his methods; the effects of the methods, your

perception of them?

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7. Can you make a short comparison with the music education you had before?

8. How would you describe the musical and cultural aspects of your study period

with Dr. V. Balaji? Originating from different cultural and musical backgrounds,

which kind of influences had your study period on you and on him?

Three interviewees preferred to answer via e-mail, whereas we had two Skype

sessions with one interviewee from France, Perrine Vincent. The Skype interview

turned to be more fruitful as the setting is closer to face-to-face interaction and

makes in-depth conversation possible. Therefore, I refer mostly to the answers of Ms.

Vincent in the main text, whereas I summarize the other interviewees’ answers at

times.

1.4 Literature Review

The writings of music in India reach from the late Vedic times (c. 1100 BCE) until

today. The researches on Indian music by the Western scholarship have just started

compared to this vast accumulation of knowledge. Keeping this panorama in mind,

the literature review moves along the focus of the thesis. Amanda Weidman (2012)

refers to Bourdieu, saying, “it is in those things that remain unspoken that the most

powerful lessons are embedded” (Weidman, 2012, p. 229). The mechanisms at work

throughout the embodiment process happen in a non-articulated, unconscious,

nonverbal level. Dard Neuman mentions this in the context of practice demands:

“Hindustani music practice demands do not work to burn musical patterns into the

mind (...) but rather onto the hands or throat” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 446).

Moreover, the posture while playing, the enactment of the rituals, such as showing

respect for the guru, nonverbality during playing, and the dress codes are some of the

things that are not instructed explicitly. On the contrary, the student’s body is

expected to adapt through ‘being in the space of the guru’. Here, nonverbality needs

clarification as I use it as a concept. On the one hand, nonverbality implies simply

not having talks, discussions, or even elaborate directions given by the teacher while

playing. On the other hand, it encompasses the transmission of musical knowledge

through nonverbal channels, such as directing the student with a blink of an eye, with

an exaggeration of a bow movement, or clarifying student’s confusion by playing a

musical phrase. Related to these, my goal in this thesis is to reveal the ‘unspoken’ in

10

the teaching of Dr. V. Balaji, which led me through the intricate ways to become a

musician in Indian classical music context.

In this literature review, I discuss the two main components of the thesis, namely the

concept of embodiment and the context for spiritual/religious setting of the

transmission of musical knowledge in relation to the relevant literature.

1.4.1 Embodiment

As Clayton and Leante (2013) state, the embodiment concept is well established in

the disciplines of cognitive science, philosophy and linguistics (Clayton and Leante,

2013, p. 188). There has been an ongoing discourse of embodiment in the disciplines

of phenomenology, sociology, anthropology and ethnomusicology, too. One closely

related example is the remarkable contribution of the discipline of somaesthetics,

which was proposed as a subdiscipline of aesthetics by Richard Shusterman in 1999.

Below is a rough definition:

Somaesthetics, roughly defined, concerns the body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic

appreciation (aiesthesis) and creative self-fashioning. … It seeks to enhance the meaning,

understanding, efficacy, and beauty of our movements and of the environments to which our

movements contribute and from which they also draw their energies and significance. …

Recognizing that body, mind, and culture are deeply codependent, somaesthetics comprises

an interdisciplinary research program to integrate their study. (Shusterman, 2006, p. 2)

Besides valuable contributions in various disciplines, as the scope of the discourse is

way beyond the scope of my thesis, I discuss the following approaches below, in

relation to the issues I investigate in the next chapters. First, I look at the definitions

of embodiment by discussing the works of three groundbreaking scholars cited by

the prominent authors in the embodiment issue, namely, Maurice Merleau-Ponty

(1962, 1964), Marcel Mauss (1973), and Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1984). In this part, I

discuss the issues of agency of the body, its centrality in our perception of the world,

and the concept of habitus, proven to be one of the most useful concepts despite its

various shortcomings. Second, I continue with the discussion of two main

approaches in anthropology, namely, the semiotic/textual and the

phenomenological/embodiment standpoints. At that point, I discuss the concept of

being-in-the-world related to the scope of my thesis. Third, I will present the main

questions in the fields of phenomenology, anthropology, and ethnomusicology,

which are the body-mind-world unity, agency of the body, and embedded social

11

meanings in bodily practices. Furthermore, I discuss the former presented three

questions in the frame of the ethnomusicologists’ works and present how the scholars

deal with them.

When we look for definitions of embodiment, we encounter various suggestions

developed in the disciplines of phenomenology, anthropology, and sociology.

Merleau-Ponty is one of the first scholars in phenomenology who assigned the role

of being the primary site to know the world to the body. Opposed to the Cartesian

tradition of mind-body dualism, where the consciousness is defined as the source of

knowledge, he discussed the unity of the consciousness, the world and the human

body. Deschenes and Eguchi (2018) sum up Merleau-Ponty's view as that the body

provides the mind with “what is necessary to make sense of what is experienced”

(Deschenes and Eguchi, 2018, p. 63). Merleau-Ponty (1962) argued that the human

body and that which it perceived are intricately intertwined: “We do not have a body;

we are the body” (as cited in Deschenes and Eguchi, 2018, p. 63). As Csordas (1993)

state:

For Merleau-Ponty, perception began in the body and, through reflective thinking, ends in

objects. On the level of perception there is not yet a subject-object distinction–we are simply

in the world. Merleau-Ponty proposed that analysis begin with the pre-objective act of

perception rather than with already constituted objects. He recognized that perception was

always embedded in a cultural world, such that the pre-objective in no way implies a “pre-

cultural”. (1964, as cited in Csordas, 1993, p. 137)

According to Merleau-Ponty, the human body acts as the means by which the mind

subjectively experiences a shared world. He proposes that it is not an object that

thinks but an animate and living form that is shaped by experiences, hoping to reach

equilibrium (1962, as cited in Deschenes and Eguchi, 2018, p. 63). Merleau-Ponty’s

work remains important as it provided strong arguments about the unity of body and

mind. Though Merleau-Ponty himself acknowledged that he didn’t put his theory

into the socio-cultural and historical context. As it is recognized in social sciences,

the phenomenon of culture wraps the perceptional and experiential processes of

human life in every step. Without the cultural analysis, the arguments fall short of

revealing the underlying mechanisms in the perception of the individuals as the

members of societies.

12

At this point, Marcel Mauss’ (1973) work comes forward where he placed the

embodiment in the context of sociology and anthropology. He argued that in order to

develop an understanding of the facts about the bodily practices, we need to

understand them from the viewpoints of physiology, psychology, and sociology:

“We need a triple viewpoint, that of the 'total man' that is needed” (Mauss, 1973, p.

73). He talked about the techniques of the body as the “physio-psycho-sociological

assemblages of series of actions” that are passed on through apprenticeship (Mauss,

1935, p. 85). Furthermore, he is the one who elaborated extensively on the concept of

habitus and stated that the 'habits' “vary especially between societies, educations,

proprieties and fashions, prestiges” (Mauss, 1973, p. 73).

Habitus has been a concept with a long history in social sciences. According to

Bennett (2010), it is one of the key aspects in Max Weber’s (1864-1920) works.

Mauss (1973) utilized it as a tool in his research on cultures of colonized peoples.

Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1984) made an influential move, expanded habitus’s

definition, and put it into work in his analysis of the French society in 1960s. Tony

Bennett (2010) states in the introduction to Bourdieu’s (1984) work Distinction:

The habitus, for Bourdieu, consists in the set of unifying principles which underlie such tastes

and give them a particular social logic which derives from, while also organizing and

articulating, the position which a particular group occupies in social space. But this, of

course, is always a position that is relative to the positions occupied by other social groups.

(Bourdieu, [1984] 2010, p. xix)

Bourdieu suggested that it consists of both the physical aspects like posture and

accents, and mental aspects like schemes of perception (Bourdieu, 1977). These are

determined by the socio-cultural and collective mechanisms “without going through

discourse or consciousness” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 87). He defined embodiment as “a

process by which historically emergent and socially embedded practices are turned

into “second nature’” (as cited in Weidman, 2012, p. 218). According to Weidman

(2012), habitus is “a constellation of variously acquired habits and experiences that

produces certain results while itself remaining unnoticed, invisible, and difficult to

define or articulate” (Weidman, 2012, p. 229).

Although Bourdieu’s work had been certainly groundbreaking and continues to be

influential in social sciences, the recognition of its shortcomings is important. In the

overall schemata he built, the possible choices the individual would make, hardly

13

finds a place. Given the exceptions, the processes and mechanisms shaping the

habitus in the society are seen as the ultimate structures where the free will or

deliberate actions are rarely talked about. Bourdieu himself recognized this as the

“dilemmas of determinism and freedom, conditioning and creativity” (as cited in

Csordas, 1993, p. 152). Despite his main arguments’ call for a keen awareness of

existing structures, the phenomena such as pioneering, innovation, and creativity

present in social life are hardly revealed. Csordas (1993) claimed, “these are perhaps

dualities he was too quick to collapse, however, unless the “conditioned and

conditional freedom” of the habitus’s “endless capacity to engender products”

includes capacity for its own transformation” (1997, Csordas, 1993, p. 152). Rahaim

(2012) points out the same issue: “Bourdieu’s approach tends to focus on

unconscious, coercive constraints on the body from above. He rather understates its

dialectical counterpart: the deliberate choice of bodily discipline in accord with what

one wants to be” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 118). Despite its shortcomings, habitus is one of

the key concepts in my research on embodiment, too. Taking it as a concept to

understand the underlying mechanisms that shaped my experience and the

acquisition of the bodily dispositions, I added the aspect of volition in my research.

Here I use the word volition referring to Rahaim (2012), where he underlines the

volition of both master and disciple stepping on the path of mutual dedication and

close bond. Related to this aspect, I chose deliberately to submit to the unconscious

and invisible processes in the establishment of and participation in the habitus in

Varanasi, India, in order to reveal and understand how the embodiment of musical

ideas works in the context of teaching by Prof. Dr. V. Balaji.

In the next part, I discuss the two main standpoints in anthropological discourse and

the concept of being-in-the-world, referring to Csordas, to contextualize the concept

of embodiment.

As Winkler-Reid (2014) cites Mascia-Lees (2012) in her review of A Companion to

the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment, two insights have become central in

the 'anthropology of the body'. The first one treats the body “as object or concept of

study to be specified, or pluralized” (Winkler-Reid, 2014, 389). The second insight is

relational and defines the stance of the body not separate from the “lived

experiences” (Winkler-Reid, 2014, 389). The standpoint of the semiotic/textual

14

approach of the former is criticized by the phenomenological/embodiment standpoint

of the latter, mainly because of the rejection of agency of the body in the world.

David Howes (2003) discusses this point by citing Michael Jackson (1983a), that

“by taking what is done with the body as the touchstone of anthropological

knowledge we can access that meaning in its integrity” (as cited in Howes, 2003, p.

50). Thomas Csordas (1993), on the other hand, elaborates on this point by

presenting the problem of the two approaches as the semiotic/textual standpoint of

the body as representation and the phenomenological/embodiment standpoint of the

body as “being-in-the-world” (Csordas, 1993, p. 136). Csordas draws a distinction

between the body and embodiment. He supports his argument on the analogy by

Barthes (1986) who drew a distinction between the work and the text: “In parallel

fashion, the body is a biological, material entity, while embodiment can be

understood as an indeterminate methodological field defined by perceptual

experience and the mode of presence and engagement in the world” (Csordas, 1993,

p. 135). Csordas argues that both the semiotic and embodiment approaches should be

taken as complementary and not mutually exclusive (Csordas, 1993, p. 136-137).

Nevertheless, his argument of understanding embodiment through the concept of

being-in-the-world remains strong; he acknowledged that his approach demonstrates

a blurred conceptualization of the intersubjective milieu of bodily attention, which he

describes as “attending to and with the body” (Csordas, 1993, p. 139). Stating that

the act of attending is always culturally constituted, there is ambiguity in the

categorization of different kinds of attention. In the scope of my thesis, I adapted the

concept of being-in-the-world as ‘being in the space of the guru’, as the main tool

through which the transmission of musical knowledge happened. The more I was

informed of the bodily dispositions of Dr. V. Balaji and exposed to the elements in

his space; such as, the centrality of music in designation of his daily life and the

spiritual/religious acts inherent in the music and its transmission, the more fluid and

transparent the transmission of musical ideas became. Michael Jackson (1989)

describes it as the shared ground of bodies, where we are informed about our own

bodies through others’ bodies:

To recognize the embodiedness of our being-in-the-world is to discover ground where self

and other are one, for by using one's body in the same way in the same environment one finds

oneself informed by an understanding then be interpreted according to one's own custom or

bent, yet which remains grounded in a field of practical activity and thereby remains

15

consonant with the experience of those among whom one has lived. (1989, as cited in

Csordas, 1993, p. 151)

Looking at the main questions in the literature of anthropological and

phenomenological discourse about embodiment, we see that they revolve around the

body-mind-world unity (the integration of sensational, visceral, kinesthetic and

verbal layers of knowledge), the agency of the body, and the interpretation of

embedded social meanings in bodily practices. In the part below, I look at these three

questions through the works of scholars in the discipline of ethnomusicology.

What are the ethnomusicologists' perspectives on the three issues, namely the body-

mind-world unity, agency of the body, and the embedded social meanings in the

bodily practices? In the area of embodiment, particularly about the music of Asia, we

encounter numerous scholars who elaborated on these issues. Among them, I refer to

David Henderson (2009), Amanda Weidman (2012), Clayton and Leante (2013),

Dard Neuman (2012), Tomie Hahn (2007), Bruno Deschenes and Yuko Eguchi

(2018), and Matthew Rahaim (2012) for the sake of relevancy of their researches,

discussions, and perspectives. They build their arguments predominantly on the

phenomenological/embodiment standpoint of the body; obtain a relational stance,

linking it to music scholarship. To address these three questions, scholars such as

Henderson, Clayton and Leante take into account the physio-biological side and talk

about the developments in neurology and cognition, on the other hand, scholars such

as Weidman, D. A. Neuman and Rahaim make analysis in socio-cultural context and

additionally, support/base their arguments on the concepts borrowed from the very

traditions they study.

One of the important questions the scholars deal with is the mind-body dualism. This

dualism as the heritage of Plato and Rene Descartes still continues to haunt the

Western tradition of thought. Clayton and Leante (2013) refer to Raymond Gibbs

(2005) to demonstrate how far the effects of the dualism worked into the perception

in the Western thought:

[The] bifurcation of the person into mind and body has subsequently given rise to many other

dualisms, including subjective as opposed to objective, knowledge as opposed to experience,

reason as opposed to feeling, theory as opposed to practice, and verbal as opposed to

nonverbal. Cartesianism has also led to the romantic view of the body as the last bastion of

what is natural, unspoiled, preconceptual, and primitive in experience. Bodily movement is

16

viewed as behavior, with little relevance to language, thought, or consciousness, and not as

meaningful action. (2005, as cited in Clayton and Leante, 2013, p. 189)

Opposed to this division, Gibbs (2005) argues that language and thought are direct

products of “recurring patterns of embodied activity” and cognition shouldn’t be seen

as “purely internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied” (as cited in Clayton

and Leante, 2013, p. 189). Linking it to musical performance, Clayton and Leante

(2013) draw examples to singing, where we experience “a direct and embodied

knowledge of the relationship between physical tension and musical pitch” through

the vocal chords (Clayton and Leante, 2013, p. 195). David Henderson (2009) in his

article about the Nepali drumming links the question of mind and body to sensations.

He refers to Damasio's (1994) neurological work in that memory preserves not only

what happened, but also the basic neural and chemical effects of what happened:

“We know something makes “sense” in part because of how it feels” (Henderson,

2009, p. 187). Taking Damasio's hypothesis further, he suggests “in learning how to

make musically sound decisions, one draws simultaneously on sensation, emotion,

and reason” (Henderson, 2009, p. 187).

Tomie Hahn (2007) suggests that embodiment paves the way for self-understanding

of the person: “Since we cannot engage solely our mind in life, it is through our body

that the mind makes sense of the world” (2007, as cited in Deschenes and Eguchi,

2018, p. 66). Furthermore, she argues that as the dance movements become “natural,

effortless, and spontaneous”, it leads to “self-freedom and self-realization” (2007, as

cited in Deschenes and Eguchi, 2018, p. 66).

In the question of body-mind, Rahaim (2012) investigates the acting out of

embodiment in the course of performance and the transmission of embodied musical

knowledge through generations. In his book (2012) Musicking bodies: Gesture and

voice in Hindustani music, we are introduced to two concepts: musicking body and

paramparic body. The word musicking is actually first introduced by Christopher

Small (1998) as “the present participle, or gerund, of the verb to music” and as a

useful conceptual tool (Small, 1998, p. 9). He proposed a new definition for the verb

to music: “To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance,

whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing

material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing” (Small, 1998, p.

9). Rahaim doesn’t really make use of the broad definition as proposed in Small but

17

confines the concept of musicking to the bodily dispositions and gestures related to

the performance practice. He defines the musicking body “as the body that comes

alive in the moment of musical performance” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 22). The chain of the

teaching lineages carrying the musical knowledge through generations, reaching

from the past to the present, is called parampara in the Indian music context (for Dr.

Balaji’s predecessors and descendants in V. K. V. Parampara, see Appendix B, figures

B.4, B.5, B.6, B.7, and B.8). Coming to the definition of paramparic body, it is “the

disciplined disposition of a particular singer's musicking body, developed over many

years of training and practice” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 22). According to Rahaim, these

concepts cannot be reduced to the flesh-body as an object in the branch of biology

but a knowledge accumulated through years of practice in the body. Furthermore, he

examines the question of mind and body in the register of Hindi-Urdu language,

elaborating on the concepts of dimagh and man, which are used relating to the

musical performance practice.

Dimagh is located in the head, is the faculty that analyzes, conflates, distinguishes, and

reproduces for evaluation. Man, by contrast, is typically located in the chest, receives and

cultivates aesthetic impressions, imagines, and is the seat of more or less permanent effect,

particularly enchantment and devotion. (Rahaim, 2012, p. 25)

In my thesis, I refer to the concept of gatra veena in a parallel fashion. Dr. V. Balaji

brought it up in one of our conversations to point out that the human body is seen as

the singing instrument of god as mentioned in the Vedas. The mind-body unity seems

to be present already in the very traditions we study, in the Indian tradition of thought

in this case, enacted through music, dance, and theater and articulated in the

scriptures since ancient times. Referring to the definitions of dimagh and man,

Rahaim comments that these and other “liminal body-mind” activities cannot be

divided into mutually exhaustive categories of “subjective mental noumena” and

“objective physiological phenomena” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 25-26). He points out that he

could call the concept easily as the musicking body-mind: “Musicking, perhaps more

than any other familiar activity, defies the handy distinctions between subject and

object, mind and body, matters of concern and matters of fact” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 25-

26). Rahaim states that he tried to find a balance between the physical aspects of

performance and the “musical metaphysics” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 25-26), which rely on

the local descriptions, and experiences of the musical universe.

18

While Rahaim sets his goal for a balance of two approaches, Dard Neuman argues

that the “creativity starts apart from a directing mind” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 427).

His research is noteworthy in the sense to understand the underlying reasoning of

traditional practice demands of Hindustani music. Though his approach to overcome

the duality problem seems to be trapped in the use of the language at times. He tries

to avoid this, by saying that his argument is not a positivist one about the

neurological processes but an ethnographic one about the pedagogical practice:

That is, I am not suggesting that the cognitive process—or the brain—is inoperative in these

preparatory exercises. I am instead suggesting that the cultural sense of the “I that thinks” is

kept in check until the “thing that thinks”—the body instrument—is properly trained to direct

musical ideas. (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 427)

Coming to the second main question about the agency of the body, we enter the

discipline of phenomenology and the cultural analysis in context. One of the

pioneering works about this issue in phenomenology is the Ways of the hand by

Sudnow (1978). Henderson (2009) connects his arguments to Sudnow's work where

he mentions the “sense of detachment” of his body that he experienced during his

learning process of jazz piano (as cited in Henderson, 2009, p. 195). Sudnow states

that his hands seemed to take over in the process, acting independently of the forced

will of the brain. In his descriptions, the agency of the body is represented as

independent of the mind’s control mechanisms. Although Sudnow made an

important contribution to the phenomenological approach, he falls in the trap of the

divisive language use by allocating keen edged different roles to body and mind.

Henderson (2009) brought a more clear approach, saying, the bodily knowledge has

a procedural nature “that is knowing how to do something rather than knowing

something” as opposed to declarative knowledge (Henderson, 2009). He labels it as

“thoughtless thought”, as in the quotation below:

My hands became more and more able to produce sounds seemingly on their own, without

my having to pay attention to what they are doing. But clearly I must have been thinking

about them in some way, and this chapter is in part an exploration of what my teachers did to

inculcate in me this capacity of thoughtless thought. (Henderson, 2009, p. 185)

Another argument in the issue of body’s agency during transmission process is

presented in Dard Neuman's (2012) work with the focus on the embodiment in

pedagogy and creativity in Hindustani music. He referred to the Hindustani

instrumentalists that they say “musical knowledge occurs when the fingers can see”

19

and supports his idea with quotations from masters, especially from his master

Vilayat Khan, such as; “where the hand is moving should not be decided by you”

(Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 438). Neuman stresses the body autonomy, distinct from

the automaticity, where the hands “do not just move on their own according to habit;

they rather walk and travel (chalan and barhat) into the spaces (jagah) of a rag with

an independent agency” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 447).

Neuman proposes that there are three levels in the acquisition of this knowledge.

First level is body habits or automaticity, where “the fingers move according to

prescription without constant mental directive” (Neuman D. A., 2012). Second level

moves into the category of body sight: learning to play without physically looking at

the instrument. It is assumed that it just comes through practice. Third level body

sight happens when “the fingers and/or throat learn to explore on their own”

(Neuman D. A, 2012), meaning that the body gains agency.

Amanda Weidman (2012) argues in a parallel fashion, utilizing the Tamil-Sanskrit

concept of gnanam in her work about the learning process of South Indian classical

violin (Weidman, 2012, p. 221). Gnanam literally means “wisdom” or “knowledge”,

practically defines the bodily disposition showing the mastery of the musician, and is

often used by musicians in relation to musicianship. In South Indian classical music

culture, the approach to musical competence is less about “willful agency” and more

about “making oneself receptive through listening” (Weidman, 2012, p. 221).

Weidman's teacher gave an example of a flutist with the habit of sleeping with an

electronic sruti box turned on under his pillow. Therefore, gnanam is a bodily

disposition to be invited to enter the body by preparing the bodily conditions so that

it can be hosted.

In the arguments of Henderson, Rahaim, D. A. Neuman, and Weidman so far, the

agency of the body is seen apart from deliberation and willfulness, due to

unconscious and invisible processes that shape the body. In other words, that the

body can gain agency, it is supposed to be exposed to and immersed in the repetitive

bodily practices and in a way to be reserved from the detached perspective of mental

activity about these practices. In the thesis, I look at the mechanisms, processes, and

settings that make it possible, paving the way for embodiment of musical ideas.

20

The third predominant question in the embodiment literature is about the embedded

socio-cultural meanings inherent in the bodily practices. Clayton and Leante (2013)

refers to Barsalou et al. (2003) in the context of social dimensions of embodiment:

First, perceived social stimuli do not just produce cognitive states, they produce bodily states

as well. Second, perceiving bodily states in others produces bodily mimicry in the self. Third,

bodily states in the self produce affective states. Fourth, the compatibility of bodily and

cognitive states modulates performance effectiveness. (2003, as cited in Clayton and Leante,

2013, p. 193)

On the issue of social embodiment, Clayton and Leante refer to Tomie Hahn’s (2007)

work on Japanese dance nihon buyo, pointing out that the issues of awareness and

attention are cultural and psychological: “different musical practices invite and afford

different attentional behaviors and heighten awareness of some aspects of our

environments at the expense of others, achieving these effects by means of embodied

practices” (Clayton and Leante, 2013, p. 197). Hahn suggests “the meanings that are

shared through embodiment are not only movements, gestures, moods, emotions, and

beliefs but also sensibilities grounded in shared intentions and cultural experiences”

(2007, as cited in Deschenes and Eguchi, 2018, p. 66)

Here I would like to bring out Csordas’ (1993) concept of "somatic modes of

attention" (Csordas, 1993). He defines the somatic modes of attention as "culturally

elaborated ways of attending to and with one's body in surroundings that include the

embodied presence of others” (Csordas, 1993, p. 138). In particular, he gives

examples, such as; “the imaginal [imaginary] rehearsal of bodily movements by

athletes”, or “the sense of somatic contingency and transcendence associated with

meditation and mystic states“ (Csordas, 1993, p. 139). Weidman (2012) relates to this

concept when she talks about the learning process of the ragas (Weidman, 2012). She

mentions that two different modes of attention possibilities can be at work in the

learning process. Whereas the first one focuses on “recognizing individual notes and

their presence or absence", the latter one focuses on "grasping the taste [rasa,

Sanskrit; cuvai, Tamil], mood, or impression of the phrases" (Weidman, 2012, p.

222). She relates the second one to the somatic mode of attention. To be able to

perform the raga alapana accordingly, which is an improvisational elaboration of the

raga section with no reliance on notation; one needs a kind of knowledge more than

the conventional one, employing the scale and the important individual notes. The

21

performer has to depend on her/his "store of embodied experience listening to and

playing music" (Weidman, 2012, p. 222).

Throughout this chapter, I have examined main concepts in the embodiment

literature relating them to my thesis. First, I looked at the central role of the body in

perceiving, becoming aware of, and attending to the world where I discussed this role

in the physiological, psychological, and sociological context, bringing out the

concept of habitus. This I did through presenting the arguments of three prominent

scholars, namely, Merleau-Ponty, Mauss, and Bourdieu. Second, I mentioned the two

main standpoints about embodiment in anthropology, namely the semiotic/textual

and phenomenological/embodiment. Moving from there, I discussed the concept of

being-in-the-world based on the arguments of Csordas and Jackson linking it to my

adapted version of ‘being in the space of the guru’ in the context of this thesis. Third,

I presented the three main questions concerning the scope of my thesis about the

body-mind-world unity, agency of the body, and the sociality of embodiment.

Finally, I discussed these three issues in light of the arguments by

ethnomusicologists, namely, Henderson, Weidman, D. A. Neuman, Hahn, Deschenes

and Eguchi, Rahaim, and Clayton and Leante. Throughout the thesis, I continue to be

in dialogue with the literature while presenting my arguments about the embodiment

processes in the transmission of musical knowledge by Dr. V. Balaji.

In the next section, I would like to contextualize the spiritual/religious setting in

which the transmission of musical knowledge in India takes place referring to the

literature about the spiritual/religious elements inherent in the performance practice

and the transmission phase.

1.4.2 Spiritual/religious setting

In the transmission of musical knowledge in Indian music tradition, the traditional

system has been the gurukul. Gurukul literally means "living with the guru"

(Weidman, 2001, p. 222). "The long years in which the shishya, or disciple, lives

with the guru, learning music by a process of absorption, serving the guru, and

learning humility before the guru, are considered the classic form of gurukulavasam”

(Weidman, 2001, p. 222-3). Although the necessities of the modern life has affected

the practice of it, as there is a heavy reinforcement for the present-day musicians to

22

get a university degree in music, the underlying ideas of the gurukul still dominate

the music education scene. It is valued as the highest possibility to learn music.

The Indian classical music is seen predominantly as a tool to reach the divine. This

statement is not to confine the assigned sacredness only to the classical music area,

as there are genres such as bhajan, kirtan, and qawwali both in Hindu and Muslim

traditions (See Qureshi on qawwali, 1995). The emphasis on Indian classical music

here is just because my learning process focused on the Indian classical music with

Dr. V. Balaji.

Though I had limited time with my guru, still I can say that I had a taste of gurukul,

where as a disciple/student I had the chance to attend the whole existence of the

master with my body-mind. The spirituality and religion was omnipresent in the

guru's space, both in verbal and non-verbal ways. In this section, I will provide the

context for understanding the links between guru-shishya (master-disciple)

relationship and the spiritual/religious setting by referring to the relevant literature.

The guru-shishya relationship has strong spiritual/religious connotations in itself. Be

it Hindu or Muslim, which is one of the main divisions in the music scene, the music

platform is seen as where the divine speaks through the musician. This understanding

had been articulated since ancient times in treatises in music: "...explanations of

Indian musical spirituality... are quite clear that God dwells in sound (Nada Brahma)

and that the guru is a kind of priest or conduit through which humans can connect

with God" (as cited in Keister, 2005, p. 44). According to Regula Qureshi (2009), we

see the concept of spiritual guidance also in Islam as in the piri-muridi relationship

so that both traditions pave the way to “spiritual validation for discipleship”

(Qureshi, 2009, p. 170).

In addition, Rahaim (2012) refers to Slawek (1996) that although there are not so

many musicians who are also "authoritative spiritual masters", many of them make

use of the concepts such as; "contemplation and devotion" in relation to music

(Rahaim, 2012, p. 25). Gharana literally means "of the house" and signifies the

family tradition of music; a stylistic school and/or members of that school (Neuman

D. M., 1990, p. 272). Gharana has uttermost importance in musicians' training and in

establishment of their identity. As Rahaim points out, the structure of the gharana is

"similar to Bhakti sampradayas or Sufi silsilas who trace their present-day spiritual

authority to an originary saint" (Rahaim, 2012, p. 106). Mostly, the founder of the

23

gharana is often accepted as a "spiritual adept" as well and the teaching passed down

through generations is thought to “contain esoteric knowledge” (Rahaim, 2012, p.

106-107). In the Hindi-Urdu register we encounter many common words about the

musical and spiritual process, such as; chilla, khalifa, and guru, indicating that the

horizon of music shares the same sphere of the horizon of spirituality.

To nurture the context with the understanding of ancient texts, I will bring out the

concepts from Lewis Rowell's (1992) book Music and musical thought in early

India. Rowell comments that his research is an investigation of the past from ancient

times until the middle of 13th century, which informs the present-day situation of

musical understanding. In Hindu mythology, the sound is revered as sacred. The

sacred syllable om (or aum) is said to be intoned so that the universe was created.

Rowell talks about om as "the eternal syllable that contains in itself the entire

phenomenal universe, and as the nucleus from which all audible sounds proceed and

to which all such sounds must ultimately return” (Rowell, 1992, p. 36). According to

him, when we analyze the Sanskrit word for music, sangita, gita forms the core as

the song and indicates the “quintessential humanism” in the ancient Indian

understanding. The sound is seen as primarily vocal and the profound cultural

metaphor about sound implies that “the emanation of vocal sound from deep within

the human body has been linked with the process of creation as a “bringing forth” of

the divine substance that lies at the heart of our innermost being” (Rowell, 1992, p,

5-6). Rowell points out the dominant “anthropomorphic imagery” (Rowell, 1992, p.

232) in Hinduism as well, where the inner mechanisms of the body-mind-soul is seen

in direct relationship as the microcosm with the macrocosm, i.e., the universe.

In this subchapter, I provided a context for the spiritual/religious setting in the

transmission of musical knowledge, nurtured by the works of Weidman, Keister,

Qureshi, Rahaim, Slawek, and Rowell. In the fifth chapter of thesis, I will return to

this issue, providing detailed accounts of my experiences about the spiritual/religious

setting in dialogue with a deeper look into its literature.

1.5 Overview

The second chapter carries the title ‘Guru-Shishya Relationship’, consisting of two

subchapters. First is the introduction to the guru-shishya system as I experienced it

24

and second includes the thick description of our first lesson with Dr. V. Balaji along

with transcriptions of the technical exercises he taught. Third chapter is titled

‘Teaching Methodology’ and consists of two main subchapters. In the first

subchapter, I look in the technical transmission process and the mechanisms related

to embodiment. In the second one, I investigate the concept of immersion in music

through looking at cyclicity, continuity, nonverbal space, focus on music, riaz, and

the drone. Fourth chapter is ‘Pedagogy’. Here I take a closer look at the pedagogical

features in the teaching of Dr. V. Balaji. Fifth chapter is titled ‘The

Spiritual/Religious Setting’ and talks about the omnipresent spiritual/religious

elements, which, I argue, fulfilled an important role in the embodiment process.

Sixth chapter’s title is ‘Engagement’ where I focus on the socio-cultural engagement,

including the discussion of the issues such as being part of the family, the close bond

in the guru-shishya relationship, the aspect of submission, and being engaged in the

riaz and music making. Finally, in the sixth chapter where I present conclusions and

recommendations, I summarize the findings of my thesis and provide suggestions for

further research.

25

2. THE GURU-SHISHYA RELATIONSHIP

2.1 Introduction

When we talk about the learning process in the guru-shishya relationship, we cannot

talk about “a lesson” in the eurocentric sense, where you meet with the teacher in a

designated hour for a limited time on a weekly basis. In the traditional sense, guru-

shisya system is the time you spend with the guru or ustad including the practice

(riaz) done in his house—together with him or by the disciple alone—, eating,

listening to music together, joining the puja (prayer ritual) if invited, and helping out

in daily chores. Weidman comments on the ‘interruptions’ that happened during the

'lesson time' she had with her guru, such as; a sari salesman would drop by and her

guru would choose some to buy. Her conception changed over time, realizing that

they were necessary intervals as “learning music is integrated into the rhythms of

everyday life” (Weidman, 2012, p. 220).

The learning happens throughout the time of being in the space of the guru, as one

joins the manifold aspects of his existence. Daniel Neuman (1990) describes this

space as: “… in addition to perpetuating the tradition through time, the guru

embodies in his “space” an identity which his disciples will assume and transmit to

their disciples” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 31). The teacher's existence is not seen as

separate from the music. Qureshi (2009) states: “There is no separation between

music and music maker –the Musician Is the Music. Or, as Shujaat Khan, the

illustrious offspring of India’s most venerable sitar lineage, responded to Canadian

students: “I am Indian culture”’ (Qureshi, 2009, p. 166). In Dr. V. Balaji's house, the

main room is the music room, which I used to call “music temple”, as I had the

impression of entering a temple, coming face-to-face with a fairly big Lord Balaji

statue nested in an exhaustive altar. It was a place where the guests were welcomed,

Dr. Balaji played, practiced, and finally, where the music lessons were held.

Weidman (2012) notes that “Musical competence is assumed to flow from the guru’s

embodied practice to that of the disciple” and this process is “aural, visual as well as

kinesthetic” (Weidman, 2012, p. 220). Through all means of guru’s existence, the

26

disciple is responsible to observe and take on guru's stance, bodily disposition and

expression.

In the following subchapter, I investigate the space of Dr. V. Balaji, looking at it

through the window of my edited fieldnotes of our first lesson. The chapter starts

with background information on Varanasi and its music traditions and continues with

the depiction of our first meeting and lesson with Dr. V. Balaji.

2.2 The ‘Lesson’

2.2.1 The setting

Varanasi—or Banaras—is situated in the banks of the Ganges in state of Uttar

Pradesh in North India. There are other common used names for Varanasi; such as,

Benares and Kashi. Figure 2.1 shows the map of South Asia and Figure 2.2 shows

the map of North India where Banaras is located.

Figure 2.1: Map of South Asia (Arnold A., Garland Encyclopedia, 1999).

27

Figure 2.2: Map of North India (Arnold A., Garland Encyclopedia, 1999).

Varanasi is seen as one the holiest city for Hinduism and Jainism, while being home

for a big Muslim population, too. It is a colorful and busy pilgrimage destination

primarily for Hindus and claimed to be one of the oldest cities in the world. Besides

being a religious center, Varanasi has been a cultural and musical center as well.

Many renowned musicians such as, Bismillah Khan and Ravi Shankar originated

from here. Banaras Hindu University has a high impact on the musical life in the

city. Varanasi is also known as the musical learning center for the foreigners, which

have multi-sided effects on the ever-changing music scene. One example is that the

foreigners bring along their music and fusion music is widely practiced. Another

would be that there are many centers and teachers where short time courses are

available, advertising for instant education, whereas to learn Indian classical music in

the ongoing guru-shishya system, traditionally a life-long devotion is demanded.

The classical music tradition in India with its vast diversity can be understood in one

major division, namely, the North and South Indian music—or the Hindustani and

Carnatic music. Despite Varanasi’s location in the North, Carnatic (South Indian)

music is also performed and taught in the city, mainly because of the impact of

Banaras Hindu University (BHU), where there is a Carnatic music section as well. It

28

was established by the father of Dr. V. Balaji, Dr. Venkataramanujam with the

request by Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, the founder of the music college in BHU (Dr.

V. Balaji still teaches in the same room as his father did to this day. Appendix B,

Figure B.2). Besides Varanasi is home to many gharanas, including the Banaras

gharana. The Banaras gharana is one of the biggest music traditions in India,

especially in the vocal genres of thumri and khyal, in the instrumental music lineages

like tabla, and in the dance genre of kathak. Moreover, Dr. Balaji’s guru Smt. N.

Rajam is known as one of the instrumentalists who brought the style of gayaki ang

(singing style) in violin to high levels of mastery.

It was on December 20th when I first met with Prof. Dr. Balaji, in his house near

Hanuman Ghat, in Varanasi. He had given me an appointment at 7 pm, the time

when he returns from the Banaras Hindu University where he teaches as the

Professor of violin.

Our guesthouse seemed not very far from the Hanuman Ghat but as I was new in

Varanasi and didn't know yet about the safety conditions especially after sunset, my

husband Ertuğrul came along with me. We walked there through the narrow and

busy streets, trying to avoid the cow dung basically everywhere. The Ghats and the

neighborhoods around them form a diverging layer of the city, the oldest buildings

remain there, untouched by any restoration. The car noise from the main street hardly

penetrates inside, which creates a relatively calm atmosphere, which is cut through

by shrill motorbike horns. While it is still very busy with tiny shops selling almost

everything, tuk-tuks that can hardly go through the streets, along with the people,

cows, buffalos, and monkeys.

Although I was imagining that Dr. Balaji as an old man, calm and slow, it turned out

to be the opposite, when he came out to the gate of the community—a group of two-

story houses—where he lived. A lively man, tall, white hair and a short beard with

glittering, wide-open eyes waited for us, in traditional skirt-like orange down part

and a shirt top, wearing a shiny drop earring. He welcomed us energetically and

seemed in total control of the situation with his presence.

After that, Ertuğrul and me went to Dr. Balaji's house on a daily basis except his

concert dates in Madras. As I introduced Ertuğrul to Dr. Balaji, as he was a musician

as well, he invited him insistently to join the lessons, so that both of us became

students of Dr. Balaji, except the few days when Ertuğrul was sick. Our meetings

29

took place usually in the evenings, mainly because of his duties in the university. The

'lesson's lasted for two to five hours. Frequently, we spent lot of 'informal time'

together, varying from having late-night dinners after the lesson to spending time in

his violin workshop where he builds his self-designed violins with added resonance

strings.

The below depicted lesson in the sections 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 is our first one, along with

one of his disciples, Sushil, joining. Our time together lasted around four hours in

total. During this time, we played various exercises together in three different ragas,

he showed us a composition, and how to play the improvisational parts in the

particular ragas. Explanations and stories were woven into this process, where Dr.

Balaji talked about some characteristics of Indian music and his approach using life

metaphors. In between, he had phone calls, and a group of men from the nearby

temple visited him, who sang a Vedic chant together along with Dr. Balaji playing.

His disciple Sushil’s presence was very important. Where Dr. Balaji started to do

advanced practices and I couldn't follow anymore, Sushil could continue, so that it

created an opportunity for me to watch how the advanced stages of teaching would

flourish. Ertuğrul didn't join the playing on this first day as his participation was

spontaneously decided and he didn't bring his instrument (Turkish tanbur) with him

(For a dialogue excerpt of Dr. V. Balaji and Ertuğrul, see CD 1, track 4).

The episode consists of two parts, contains the exercises and their transcriptions, at

the same time, reveals some of the common characteristics of our lesson time, such

as; imitation, continuity, Dr. V. Balaji’s overall leading and controlling presence, and

the non-verbal space.

2.2.2 First part

Saying that it's not necessary to teach me about bowing, Dr. Balaji declared

that we will start with the scale that I just played before, though he didn't name

it. The method was that he played slowly one measure phrase so Sushil and me

would repeat after him. The imitation of the teacher and the repetition the

phrases were the main techniques used throughout the lesson.

The first practice constituted going up and down the scale in a slow tempo with

little ornamentation added. Table 2.1 shows the transcription of the first

30

exercise and it is in Indian notation system in Latin letters2. The Sa in the upper

octave is indicated as ´Sa:

Table 2.1: The transcription of the first exercise.

Sa–Ri–Ga–Ma Pa–Da–Ni-´Sa ´Sa–Ni–Da–Pa Ma–Ga–Ri–Sa

The ornamentations added were two types. Going up the scale, they were placed on

Ga and Ni, such as: 1. Ga-Ri-Ga, and 2. Ni-Da-Ni. Going down the scale they were

placed on Da and Ri, such as: 1. Shifting from Da until Pa, and 2. Ga-Ri-Ga-Ri-Sa.

Indicating that my sound was weak, he told me to play with the full bow consistently.

Thanks to my prior practices, I felt familiar with the concept and followed the

process. Playing along his disciple encouraged me; he acted as an anchor for me.

After some minutes, he stopped to show me two fingering possibilities to use for

shifting, which were:

1. The second finger is used to go all the way up the scale on one string.

2. The first finger is used to go to the high Sa; third position in Western system.

We started to play the second exercise. Dr. Balaji sang the phrases in Indian notation

and then played along with us on the bass strings of his violin. First, he sang them

without gamaka (ornamentation), over time adding gamakas lightly. One example of

the gamakas was utilized in the fifth column of transcription below (Table 2.2),

employed on the note Ni, such as: Ni-Da-Ni. Dr. Balaji occasionally sang adding

gamakas but most of the time he preferred to sing plain notes, probably for the sake

of my understanding. Merely the tanpura machine was on (CD 1, track 1); there was

no aid for the rhythm and no use of the tabla machine.

The second exercise started in slow tempo (72 beats per minute). He pointed out this

particular exercise was a very difficult one, which until this day he also have been

practicing. Table 2.2 shows the transcription of the second exercise and it is in Indian

notation system in Latin letters. The notes are indicated in short with their first letter,

i.e. S instead of Sa. The high Sa in the octave is indicated as ´S.

2 In Indian music Sa-Ri-Ga-Ma-Pa-Da-Ni-‘Sa corresponds to Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si-(high)Do and/or C-D-E-F-G-A-B-(high)C in Western notation.

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Table 2.2: The transcription of the second exercise. The audio recording of this exercise can be listened from the attached CD 1, track 3.

S – R – G – M – G – R S – R – G – R S – R – G – M

R – G – M – P – M – G R – G – M – G R – G – M – P

G – M – P – D – P – M G – M – P – M G – M – P – D

M – P – D – N – D – P M – P – D – P M – P – D – N

P – D – N - ´S – N – D P – D – N – D P – D – N - ´S

´S – N – D – P – D – N ´S – N – D – N ´S – N – D – P

N – D – P – M – P – D N – D – P – D N – D – P – M

D – P – M – G – M – P D – P – M – P D – P – M – G

P – M – G – R – G – M P – M – G – M P – M – G – R

M – G – R – S – R – G M – G – R – G M – G – R – S

We continued without a break for verbal explanations. The continuity of the musical

space was created with the aid of the non-verbal space. Long time we remained in

the same speed. The repetition had a cyclic nature; the phrases formed a composition,

and we kept coming back to the start. There was nearly no talking involved, apart

from Dr. Balaji's one word instructions like “Start!” and “Full bow!”. His overall

leading presence and control was emphasized with these short verbal exclamations.

My mind chatter vanished gradually in the repetitions as I focused on imitating his

musical gestures, timbre and technique as precise as possible. After around eight

minutes, Balaji increased the speed to (126 beats per minute) without giving a verbal

hint or making a break in between. This part lasted around 6 minutes. Suddenly, he

increased the tempo again to more than (208 beats per minute). We played two and a

half minutes in what he called the third speed before changing to the fourth. Our

playing in the fourth speed resolved just after one minute, which felt like longer, and

we finished altogether.

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In the fourth speed, it was hard for me to play the notes clearly. I continuously tried

my best, getting out a blur of notes mostly. Dr. Balaji didn't stop for our mistakes but

as we repeated the phrases in a cycle, there was always the chance to get into the

flow again. I felt that the space he was holding and the atmosphere we created

together as a group, working nearly as an organism, was pushing me to play beyond

my limits. No time was left for the mind to create borders and think about the

possible limitations, such as the level of my agility. None of us gave up playing until

Dr. Balaji signaled us to stop. I was pretty surprised at how fast I was able to play in

a pretty new position on the instrument. Actually, that there was no time left for the

mind to analyze the phrases and to be sure of the general structure. Indeed, this was

one of the main conditions why I could continue to play. My inner voice got silenced

which would otherwise give a constant report of what is possible and what is not. Dr.

Balaji was always in a leading position and in total control of the situation. Every

time, he sang or played the phrases ahead, while we got ready to imitate. He assured

his control with his loud, dominant singing, with short, effective instructions in

between, and with the dominant sound of the Rajam Bela, a violin of his invention

with added resonance strings, a double-body, and double-neck. All these moments,

he generated the feeling that he was totally aware of what everybody was doing.

Figure 2.3 shows him playing the Rajam Bela.

Figure 2.3: Dr. Balaji playing the Rajam Bela. It is a violin-viola of his invention with double-body, double-neck, 4 main and 11 resonance strings. He brought two viola bodies together and built it for the 75th birthday of his guru, N. Rajam. The double-body represents that N. Rajam plays both North and South Indian styles. The front part represents the students and the back, the guru, holding them

together. (Büyükköksal, 2018)

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2.2.3 Second part

Dr. Balaji started to show raga Bhairavi by playing the ascending-descending of the

scale. He switched to alap, Sushil accompanying him (For a teaching excerpt in raga

Bhairavi on 13th January, see CD 1, track 5). Then we did an exercise together on the

first and second strings. We did this exercise using the shifting technique, where Sa

is open string and the rest of the notes in the scale are played with the second finger,

shifting continuously. Table 2.3 shows the transcription of the exercise in raga

Bhairavi.

Table 2.3: Transcription of the exercise in raga Bhairavi.

S–R–G–M R–G–M–P G–M–P–D M–P–D–N P–D–N-´S

´S–N–D–P N–D–P–M D–P–M–G P–M–G–R M–G–R–S

After that Dr. Balaji turned on the tabla machine on teental and said, “Are you ready

to fight?” We worked on the exercise in 3 speeds. Then Dr. Balaji started to play

different variations of phrases in raga Bhairavi, syncopating some. As the phrases got

harder, containing various gamakas rendered with shifting technique, I rather

watched Sushil and Dr. Balaji having 'a fight'. In this musical fight, Dr. Balaji was

improvising in raga Bhairavi, demonstrating various gamakas and Sushil was

imitating his phrases. He didn’t wait or repeat for Sushil if he didn’t get out the

phrase correctly in that instant but would moved on to even harder phrases, pushing

Sushil consistently beyond his limits. Without a break, Dr. Balaji passed on to a

composition in raga Bhairavi, the accentuation in the gamakas reinforced with his

extensive bodily and facial gestures. Then he gave an explanation about the aesthetic

elements:

This part is improvisation. The way of alap is smooth and you should feel that each note

behind and above, they are all friends. How you go along with your friends, kicking, cooking,

... It [the lyrics] says to Lord Krishna, the composer, “Hey my lover, get up!” So how to

reproduce the love, the affection through the violin? It should come through the bow with the

help of the tension and the intervals. Notes are there, which are not visible but you can feel.

(Personal communication, 20 December 2017)

I was feeling already overwhelmed with the practices, his dominant musical presence

supported by strong voice, the highly resonant sound of his violin, Rajam Bela, and

the ongoing tanpura sound in the background. It felt like being under a waterfall of

34

music, while Dr. Balaji said that it was just a 'warm-up'. Everything was new and

fast. Taking just short breaks, Dr. Balaji seemed totally fit but I started to lose my

concentration. Naturally, I started to watch them while trying to join at times. He was

encouraging me to play along but also didn't intervene when I preferred to watch.

When our time together came to an end and we stepped out into the foggy Varanasi

night, I felt drunk with the impressions of our meeting and the continuous flow of his

strong musical and emotional presence.

In the next chapter I discuss Dr. V. Balaji’s teaching methodology in two parts. The

first part is about the technical transmission of musical knowledge and investigates

the exercises, linking the exercises to the performance-related material, the priority

of left hand’s fluent movement, the role of rote repetition, the importance of

continuing with the same teacher, the use of language, and the notation. In the second

part, I explore the concept of immersion in music through the issues of the cyclical

nature of Indian classical music, the emphasis on continuity and nonverbality

throughout the lesson, the focus on music in life, the meaning and implications of

riaz, and the effects of the continuous drone sound.

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3. TEACHING METHODOLOGY

The path Dr. Balaji followed in his teaching constituted of the exercises for playing

technique, aesthetic elements, performance-related material, explanations about the

apprehension of Indian classical music and the role of the artist, and the

observational and recording sessions, which can be classified as the accumulation of

practice material for the future. As I tried to display in the thick description of our

first 'lesson', Dr. Balaji combined these five elements in the actual 'lesson' times. The

technical exercises aimed to free the hand and prepare the student for the various

renditions in performance. The aesthetic elements showed the way to convey the

musical ideas and feeling. The performance-related material included the teaching of

ragas, compositions, and improvisation. The explanations and stories were woven

through our time together, providing examples and role models how the artist should

feel and behave. Ethical considerations were often attached to the stories revolving

around music. As Dr. Balaji was very fond of the technological facilities, such as;

video and audio recording, he wanted us to record our sessions and many times

played exclusively for the video recordings. All these present just a rough plan with

set goals inside but the tools to reach the goals were adjusted according to our needs

at the moment, often spontaneously improvised.

In this chapter, I discuss Dr. Balaji’s methodology in two sections. The first section

investigates the technical side of the transmission process in relation to embodiment

through the titles of the technical exercises, linking the exercises to the performance-

related material, 'First the movement!' (about the priority given to the movement of

the hands), rote repetition, 'You can't change the teacher' (about the lack of

standardization and its effects), the language, and the notation. The second section

looks deeper in immersion in music through the titles of the cyclicity, ‘Take your

violin in hand, don't stop, work!' (about continuity and non-verbal space), focus on

music, the riaz, and the use of the drone.

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3.1 The Technical Transmission

In this section, I look at the technical exercises, how Dr. Balaji linked the exercises

to the performance-related material, the priority given to the movement of the hands,

the lack of standardization in the teaching process, the importance given to

observation and recording, the use of the language, and the notation.

3.1.1 Technical exercises

Dr. Balaji put a strong emphasis on technical exercises. He has written a book as his

PhD dissertation, including the presentation of the parts of the violin, the

accomplishments of violinists in South and North India, and a textbook of technical

exercises. He used the book as a mnemonic device when he couldn't remember an

exercise, so that he could look it up. Although he presented it to me as a gift at the

end because of my research project, he taught the exercises through imitation by ear,

followed by endless repetitions and renditions in what he called the first, second,

third, and fourth speeds. He found it crucial that we recorded the exercises in audio

and sometimes video format, as we had just one month to spend together. Many

times he pointed out that it's a very short time to internalize the exercises and the

other material, which he wanted us to take home with us. One time, Dr. Balaji talked

about his way of teaching in the university, where it is usually in the form of group

lessons for twelve students. He said that he dwelled only with two-three different

ragas throughout the year and underlined that the exercises were the foremost

important elements he emphasized.

3.1.2 Linking the exercises to the performance-related material

The interesting feature of Dr. Balaji's understanding and utilizing the technique was

that it was not seen as separate from the performance practice. First, the exercises

carried the seed information how to carry out phrases in elaborations of ragas. After

focusing extensively on the exercises for the first three days, Dr. Balaji slowly started

to introduce performance material, such as; various ragas, elaborating on their

important phrases, compositions in these ragas and the ornamentations belonging to

them. For instance, in the course of showing the phrases, he was often linking this

performance material to the exercise material. He was playing or singing the phrase

for us to imitate right after him. If we wouldn't render it appropriately, he was

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reminding us which particular exercise established the basis to render the phrase,

even pointing out, on which day he taught it to us. Then he would take us back to the

exercise so that we would practice it together until he felt we were ready to go back

to the phrase in the particular raga.

Second, the exercises were seen as the fundamental practices to 'free the hand'. To

'free the hand' meant that the necessary shifting movement and places of the notes in

the particular raga were to be internalized in the body, embodied in the fingers and

the left hand. Dr. Balaji used many times the expression of 'freeing the hand', in the

contexts of the exercises and in the execution of the improvisational parts as well.

3.1.3 ‘First the movement!’

The expression of 'free the hand' has a strong connection to Vilayat Khan's

expression, quoted by Dard Neuman (2012): “This is not a matter of the ear, this is a

matter of the hands” (as cited in Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 440).

One of the most important characteristics of Indian classical music is shifting. As

Hutchison (2014) mentions this in her dissertation about her learning process of

North Indian classical violin coming from the Western classical tradition: “While

there are many techniques to learn, learning to shift with the left hand is the most

basic and important step” (Hutchison, 2014, p. 43). To ease the shifting, extra oil is

applied to the fingers of the left hand as well, before and during playing.

The striking part of practicing the shifting exercises with my guruji was that he

primarily focused on the movement of the hands and fingers, rather than the right

intonation. This is not to say that he didn't pay any attention to intonation. On the

contrary, he was explicitly warning me about intoning the right sounds during the

course of his teaching. Though when it came down to shifting exercises, which are

necessary prerequisites to execute the ornaments, he encouraged me to repeat the

shifting movement, regardless of my bad intonation. At times, I was literally lost on

the keyboard and tried to focus my mind where the accurate places of the new

positions are, which seemed to keep changing. This approach borrowed from the

Western methodology didn't help me much as “Hindustani violin does not include

the concept of positions on the fingerboard” (Hutchison, 2014, p. 60). I realized that

my experience of traditional Western method blocked me out with the idea that new

positions are ‘difficult to play’. In Indian methodology, the students are expected to

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learn shifting in very early stages. Opposed to my blockage about shifting, my guruji

insisted that I continued, saying, “The intonation will come”. He stated countless

times that freeing the hand and the fluent movement should be my primary aims. My

body searched for new anchor points. At this point, new hand memory was required.

He used get angry when I didn't pay enough attention to the bowing, right fingerings

and had weak sound but it was not the case when I had bad intonation. Finally, I

realized that watching the guru’s movements attentively without trying to analyze

them was a more effective method. Along with my acquisition of a more fluent

movement, my intonation got better in the same process.

The special kind of attention that I experienced in this process corresponds to what

Csordas (1993) called “somatic modes of attention” (Csordas, 1993). Before

Csordas, Mauss (1950) had argued that there is "what we are calling a somatic mode

of attention is associated with the acquisition of any technique of the body, but this

mode of attention recedes into the horizon once the technique is mastered" (Mauss,

1950, p. 139). To elaborate on the concept of attention, Csordas quotes Merleau-

Ponty (1962), saying “attention actually brings the object into being for perceptual

consciousness" (Csordas, 1993, p. 138). Merleau-Ponty argues that the attention

works to make new connections in and between the pre-existing data by taking them

as figures rather than elucidating it. The process of building new connections opens

new horizons in our perception. Attention is "the active constitution of a new object

which makes clear what was until then presented as an indeterminate horizon" (1962,

as cited in Csordas, 1993, p. 138). Csordas points out that we "attend to and with

one's body in surroundings" (Csordas, 1993, p. 140). Furthermore, he emphasizes on

the intersubjectivity of the process, including the attention to the bodies of others:

"Our concern is the cultural elaboration of sensory engagement, not preoccupation

with one's own body as an isolated phenomenon” (Csordas, 1993, p. 138-9).

Another implication of 'freeing the hand' is that each note should be on each finger.

This issue came up two times when I asked Dr. Balaji about the fingerings. In one

session, while he played, I named the fingerings aside for the audio recording.

Puzzled by frequent changes and blocked again by my former idea of Western

positions on the violin, I asked him for a clearer approach. Guruji assured me that I

would gain an understanding of it if I practiced with the recording and if I watched

him closer. Just after that, he showed another possibility to play the same phrase.

39

Another time was when I tried to make a chart of fingerings. He accepted to help me

with that but during the process, it turned out that the fingerings change not only due

to the technical necessities but also due to varying aesthetic expressions of different

styles of Indian music. Finally, he ended up the process by saying, the ultimate aim is

to free the hand, to be able to play any finger on any note. He commented that the

accumulation of musical knowledge and time is needed to know when to use which

finger. The method he proposed was to listen and watch attentively not only his

playing but also other players’ renditions, using sources, such as; the live concerts

and the videos in the Internet.

3.1.4 Rote repetition

In India, rote repetition lies in the core of the 'lesson'. The method to remain on one

type of exercise for a long time is a common practice and it is done with the teacher,

either in her/his presence or directly playing along with her/him. Weidman (2012)

mentions the same characteristic that came up in her apprenticeship period with her

guru. Even when her teacher was satisfied with her interpretation of a phrase, she

made her continue to repeat: ‘”Memorizing” implies actively working to keep

something in one’s memory, “by-hearting” is, as the phrase implies, a process of

making something in the body, and this is achieved through repeating it until it

becomes effortless" (Weidman, 2012, p. 220). Weidman comments that this process

creates a strong bond between the guru and shishya, which is a prerequisite so that

the transmission of musical knowledge succeeds, mainly through bodily courses:

In contrast to Western classical musical pedagogy in which the student is not supposed to

“waste time” practicing in the company of her teacher or endlessly going over something that

the student has not yet mastered through diligent practice at home, here it is assumed that the

student learns “in real time” with the teacher. Time spent this way with the guru is not

“wasted” but, rather, accumulated in the body, where it becomes the physical evidence of the

disciple’s bond with the guru. (Weidman, 2012, p. 220-221)

Oppenheim (2012) brings out the importance of the guru's presence in the learning,

referring to the interviews he conducted with the foreigner students of Indian music:

When learning Western classical music, PE describes feeling as if she were getting

information from the book instead of the teacher, who served more as a coach. In contrast,

she feels that in her Hindustani music lessons information comes directly from the teacher.

(Oppenheim, 2012, p. 105)

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Our repetition phase with Dr. Balaji was especially throughout the technical

exercises, which formed an important part of our period together. Our special case

was the short time we had in Varanasi, so that he also focused on recording as much

information about ragas, talas and compositions as possible to provide us practice

material for future. Despite this time limit, his master plan included the repetition

done with the guru. During the course of our practices, I have observed myself, how

I learned the phrases without necessarily analyzing their structures while we

endlessly went over them. Usually, he would start an exercise very slow, him playing

the phrase ahead and we imitating, he would remain on the same speed for enough

time until we would render it effortlessly. Without giving a break, he would go to the

second speed, giving sharp verbal instructions about the bow strokes or

ornamentations and again we would repeat it until we found our way through it.

When he would switch to the third speed, I would realize that the more I let my

fingers do without the intervention of a mental process, surprisingly, the easier it

became to render the phrase. The fourth speed would be where he would demonstrate

how it should be played in that speed but many times I was also able follow him even

if in a clumsy way. One of his former students, Perrine, described this process as

finding your way through repetition with your body:

… You know where you are. Not with your mind but with your body actually. And you

change fingers for the same note, and you come back, ... it's ... useless, you cannot note it

[down], you can just experiment it, repeat it and slowly you find the correct way of doing.

There are many things that you learn, but you are not able to explain what you are doing.

(Interview, 27 February 2018)

During the course of learning, rather than analytically investigating the exercises, our

rote repetition together with Dr. Balaji resulted in the internalization of the sounds,

their places on the keyboard and their timbre executed by the bow in my body. When

the fingers moved independently, without a decision-making process, it was only

then that the exercises got settled in me.

3.1.5 ‘You can’t change the teacher!’

In the playing and teaching of Indian classical violin, there is hardly any

standardization. Therefore, the teaching is highly personalized so that the guruji and

the gharana s/he belongs determine the way and style to perform. Dr. Balaji

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mentioned this issue in the context that it's not possible to change the teacher in the

Indian classical music context:

Western techniques you have to learn from a teacher. Then compositions are written so

everybody can play. When you learn Indian music, you can't change the teacher. Here I play

according to me, my way, now you're learning from me. The fingerings are different.

Gharana; certain schools are there; we need to keep them. One teacher inside, you follow one

style and hear also so many others, you adapt one style and your own style comes like this. I

follow the school V. K. V. Parampara. My father's and grand-grand-'s. Now my

granddaughter is 7th generation and learning the violin. Because we don't live together, the

generation line broke down. She learns vocal from her mother and have a violin teacher

there, also takes Skype lessons from me. Recently, I told her that we will [would] not

continue our lessons. And she gets tears “Why papaji, I want to be with you.” But she learns

from another teacher and she sees something else [another technique] with me; it will make

her confuse. In Western technique, everything is written; up-bow, down-bow, … etc. 7 years

old boy along with the 70 years old man, they can play together. Here [in India] is freedom.

Our music depends on improvisations. (Interview, 27 February 2018)

Slawek (1999) and Weidman (2001) mention the same issue, talking about their own

periods of being a shishya (disciple). Slawek had studied sitar already seven years

under Dr. Lalmani Mishra, when he started learning from Ravi Shankar. As

Shankar's approach to technique was fundamentally different, so that Slawek

“needed to return the basic exercises” (Slawek, 1999, p. 464). Weidman had to make

compromises when she found her guru, having already taken lessons in Indian style

of playing the violin. They agreed that she would do the basic exercises from the

start on along with the performance-related material. The techniques and playing

styles, such as; gayaki ang (singing violin), gatkari (a North Indian style in violin

introduced by V. G. Jog) differ according to gharanas and even to individual

performers and teachers, whose transmission necessitates and creates an organic life-

long bond between the shishya and the guru.

Furthermore, the individualized styles imply and shape one of the basic

characteristics in the nature of Indian classical music, which is the constant change

and adaptation of the tradition. The tradition is alive, indeed, regenerating and

adapting itself to the evolving conditions of the modern world. Daniel Neuman

(1990) approaches it “as a species, which had continued to adapt to a world very

much changed from the one into which it had been born” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p.

6). He contextualizes it in an ecological model and wows its adaptation skills to

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“environmental exigencies” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 6). Oppenheim (2012) argues

that the traditional system of guru-shishya is the very reason of the “musical object”

that comes out. As the teacher transmits her/his knowledge relying on the gathered

and refined tradition at hand, “in these processes there is room for reinterpretation,

even error” (Oppenheim, 2012, p. 61). He quotes Raja (2005), saying, ‘“Imperfect

perception, imperfect retention, and imperfect reproduction” were the means by

which “the traditional system became an effective instrument of continuity within

change”’ (2005, as cited in Oppenheim, 2012, p. 61-62).

Although the institutionalization of the musical education had gained importance,

especially in the last two centuries, “the notion of the ideal guru-shishya relationship

remains, students often spend long evenings at their guru's house, or learn in small

groups that receive instruction for several hours at a time” (Slawek, 1999, p. 464).

In a system where the processes of reinterpretation, creativity and improvisation are

at work, there is the need to stress the importance of the embodied knowledge.

Where there is no standardization possible, the transmission happens mainly

throughout the long hours of sitting face-to-face of the disciple and the guru. Rahaim

(2012), investigating how singers in Indian classical music can learn “such complex

bodily-vocal dispositions without deliberate imitation”, cites Tomasello (1993) and

suggests that the process is related to learning “not from another but through

another” (1993, as cited in Rahaim, 2012, p. 111). He refers to Thioux et al.’s (2008)

concept of “action understanding”, defining it as “the empathetic apprehension of the

purpose of another's action as though it were one's own” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 111). For

the singing student, to approach her/his teacher's gesture as “tracing a melodic loop

rather than merely moving the hand in the air” creates an identification of the student

with the teacher, resulting in the learning through another's body (Rahaim, 2012, p.

111). Noel Carroll and William P. Seeley (2013) mentioned action understanding in

relation to kinesthesia3 and dance studies under the title of the “very possibility of

kinesthesis”:

The net result is that action understanding is an embodied cognitive response—we use our

own bodies to kinesthetically model diagnostic features critical for understanding and

3 The definition of kinesthesia is given in Merriam & Websters dictionary as follows: a sense mediated by receptors located in muscles, tendons, and joints, stimulated by bodily movements and tensions.

43

responding to perceived actions. We argue that these same crossmodal sensorimotor

processes, contrary to skeptical challenges, facilitate an embodied projective perceptual

understanding of the kinesthetic and expressive qualities of choreographed movements in the

more abstract context of dance. (Carroll and Seeley, 2013, p. 179)

In a parallel fashion, Deschenes and Eguchi (2018) talk about three notions raised in

the transmission of traditional Japanese arts: “minarai, learning by looking, implying

the ability to imitate the teacher through looking; mitori geiko, learning by looking

but in more practical terms (more commonly used in martial arts); and karada de

oboeru, remembering and knowing with the body” (Deschenes and Eguchi, 2018, p.

73). They point out that the types of looking underlined in the concepts of minarai

and mitori geiko is different than the Western approach where looking functions with

a detached attitude of the mind. In contrast, the terms imply a type where “the

attentive and intentional body-mind directs the eyes to look and pay close attention to

what is to be learned, the body tries to reproduce or embody it” (Deschenes and

Eguchi, 2018, p. 73). In one of our lessons, Dr. Balaji emphasized that what we were

learning from him was not only music but also the ‘aesthetic essence’:

You learn from me. What you are going to take with you? Not only music. The feeling; the

aesthetic essence of mine. That is what you take with you. … When I will miss you and I

conduct another class then I'll have the feeling, the same feeling. (Personal communication,

30.12.2017)

As we have examined, face-to-face interaction is the necessary setting for the

transmission in Indian classical music context so that the disciple unintentionally

learns through the guru’s presence and integrates “the several elements of excellence

into a whole...sub-conscious synthesis” (2008, as cited in Oppenheim, 2012, p. 61).

3.1.6 The language

Dr. Balaji's explanations about the historical and theoretical aspects of Indian

classical music, its aesthetic approach, his understanding and interpretation of music,

the Indian culture, the discussions of belief and religion, and stories from his life and

teaching past carried inherent ethical messages and formed an important part of our

lessons. Although the non-verbal space was dominant while we actually played, he

steered the flow of the lessons in a spontaneous and dynamic way, using

exclamations about our technique and warning us to gather our focus, switching to a

basic theoretical explanation to establish the context, and occasionally, translating

44

the lyrics for the sake of the musical expressions if we were to play a bandish with

lyrics. In his talks, there were directions about how to perform, metaphors of life in

music and the meanings attached to the lyrics. In addition, in the 'informal' time we

spent together in his violin workshop, having dinners and listening to his recordings,

our conversations revolved around the music, culture and our lives in Turkey.

David Henderson (2009) explores the role of language along with the transmission

processes of the bodily knowledge in his work about his apprenticeship of Nepali

drumming. He points out that the language acted as an anchor while his body

“struggled to repeat, to imitate, to learn, to know” (Henderson, 2009, p. 186). He

remarks that his two teachers' verbal instructions were of two sorts: “They provided

directions on how to reproduce their own body movements, and they trained me in

the arts of expectation, in knowing where to go next within the course of

performance” (Henderson, 2009, p. 188). Henderson describes the use of language as

”verbal scaffolding” which held the structure of the lesson together (Henderson,

2009, p. 193). One of his teachers, Hari Govinda, used often the word man,

“associated both with emotion (often linked to the heart in English-language

contexts) and with thought and memory (usually located in the mind in the English-

language contexts)” (Henderson, 2009, p. 197). Henderson translates it as ‘heart-

mind’. His teacher Govinda was guiding him to inscribe the strokes of the drum in

his ‘heart-mind’ instead of his notebook and see the movements of the strokes in

there, which Henderson defined as the difference between declarative and procedural

knowledge. “His [Govinda's] hands often helped his man remember, and mine

gradually became adept at reminding my man of things it knew too” (Henderson,

2009, p. 198).

As Dr. Balaji maintained a very good level of English, he would give us long talks

about his ideas and feelings in music and tell stories about his past experiences and

the mythical occurrences from the history of Indian classical music. He also

preferred to transmit the theoretical basics by characterization of musical elements.

In one lesson, after starting to show us how to play duet, he talked about the

important notes in ragas as a family:

V. B.: The important thing in the Indian music, which makes difference between other

musics, the name that's called, va-di, repeat.

A. B. & Ertuğrul Küçükbayraktar.: Va-di

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V. B.: Samavadi, anuvadi, vivadi. Now the practical example. This is your house. Your

husband , vadi is king, samavadi is queen, anuvadi is follower, vivadi is enemy. Like in the

court or house, naturally, male, father, mother, and then children. What the father, the king is

saying, the queen is supporting. And your children follow both of you. What is enemy in the

music? Out of tune. What is out of tune? Now, [for instance] raga Kafi. And the important

notes are ri-pa, sa-ma. Sa and pa are the most important notes. Come back to raga Yaman. Ga

and ni are very important [he sings phrases shortly]. You will start and end on ga and ni. ri,

ma, da, ni. The others. [Sings phrases] focus on ga and ni with the help of ma but sliding.

[Sings] Re mi fa si laaaa ... da, you cannot stress. You make potato sabji [a dish with potato

and vegetables]. You have 1 kg of potato, you won't put 1 kg salt. Little bit. Not one kg of

chilli. Little bit. Mainly potato. Bit of oil. Same thing, there are the important two notes, the

other notes will just help you. [Singing]. Ok? Now the question you should ask. Anuvadi.

The children, are not as strong as you, they are followers. They cannot make rule, you will

make them to follow the rule. But you cannot ask them to be the same level as you. Now

vivadi, the enemy. [singing another note out of the scale of raga Yaman] The notes which

you should not use in the particular raga, enemy notes. (Audio recording by the author, 30

December 2017)

The analogies Dr. Balaji used in his explanations conveyed his cultural

understanding as well, like the allocation of the roles in the family in this example.

The ethical concerns of how the artist should behave were another upcoming topic,

conveyed explicitly in the stories from his past experiences. In one of our first

lessons, he told the story of how he helped a Muslim man, who was trapped in a

financial difficulty and wanted to sell his violin to Dr. Balaji to be able to return to

his country:

V. B.: Did I tell you about the Muslim story? He came along with the violin. He wanted to

sell it. All his money was stolen in Delhi and he was cheated in Varanasi, too. He wanted to

sell his superb violin to be able to fly back home. He played it for me; it [the violin and also

his playing] was amazing. His father gave him the violin as a present. I cannot separate the

father and son. I gave him the money and didn't want it back. But I told him that I borrowed

him the money. He said, “I'm Muslim, in our country we kiss the hand. Can I kiss your

hand?” He was crying, me too. And he had written [in Dr. Balaji's diary where the students

write about their impressions]: “Around the world people say the god is there. But I have

seen the god in front me in India. You did what my father wouldn't do”. Every time he makes

a call. He asks to send my account number and I say, “Yes, I will send”. But I don't send it

of course. We are artists, teachers. I am costly in playing and teaching but we shouldn't

separate the father and the son, we shouldn't do these things. (Audio recording by the author,

22 December 2017)

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Apart from the explanations and stories, his usage of exclamations was of primary

importance during the course of playing. Dr. Balaji steered the lessons according to

our needs in the present moment whilst keeping up with the plan he had about the

whole duration of our stay. He demanded our active participation and attention

through the lesson, even if we were 'merely' observing him or it was a recording

session of his rendition of a particular raga. During the exercises, he was shouting

exclamations like “Full bow!”, “Repeat!”, “Use the second finger!”, “Try! Do the

mistake!” over the sound of our violins and the tanpura machine. His shouting was a

clear sign of Dr. Balaji's attentiveness and his demand from us for the same level of

focus. As I will elaborate in the pedagogy section, this ‘scolding’ had a psychological

as well as a physical effect on us, resulting immediately in more determined bow

strokes or a recollected state of concentration. They acted as encouraging nudges to

participate more and engage with our whole ‘being-in-the-world’.

As Ertuğrul and me were declared as the part of the family, we shared also some of

our privacy mutually, such as thoughts and events in our families and his personal

experiences and thoughts about his students and life. These conversations created an

intimate space and mutual trust. Although we had a limited and short time, it was

intense period; I recall how our intimacy grew day by day. As I will explore in the

section of the engagement later, this sharing gave the transmission process a unique

characteristic and created a feeling of close bond. As one of the informants says in

Oppenheim (2012), “You don’t just have a teacher, you have the essence of the

whole being” (as cited in Oppenheim, 2012, p. 113). The intimacy created the space

where the guru would open himself to “communicate something of his being”

(Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 48) and we would open ourselves “to receive what is being

given, to have that empty cup” (Oppenheim, 2012, p. 114).

Dr. Balaji wanted me to record not only when he played but also some of his talks,

especially his ideas about Indian classical music. Many times he mentioned his idea

that music is already present in the nature. He argued that in the ancient texts, Vedas

just inscribed observing the nature. Below is one of the numerous talks where he

argued for his idea:

V. B: Music is a part, you should know, the culture of our India. How to receive the energy;

this [the music] is one of the ways, one of the methods with which you can reach up to him

[god, pointing with the head to the statue of Lord Balaji]. In my concept, it is totally wrong

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about the music what they say, “This is from this Veda, that is from that veda.” No, you're

wrong. Music was in the nature. The person who has started to write the book [the Vedas],

the first person ... Just such as, you entered my room, you switched on the light. Already it

[the room] was there. But only the thing, once you show the light, immediately it has come to

you “Ooh, this is Balaji, this is the way he lives.” So you start writing. “Ooh, this is the way

he teaches, the way he shouts” ... I'm sorry sir we're all foolish. Humans are foolish in my

view. Because it [the music] is provided by the greatest God. … This why in the Veda it is

mentioned ... you know veena?

A. B.: Yes.

V. B.: In the Veda, it is clearly mentioned; this is called [showing the body] Gatra veena.

Gatra means singing. The whole body is singing veena. Once it comes from the hand, what

you are playing? What the heart is allowing you. You're keeping the picture in front of me.

This is what we need. So the music is one of the sources to reach up [god] … (Audio

recording by the author, 20 December 2017)

The language became one of the primary retaining walls in our learning process with

Dr. Balaji, which held the information flow together. The explanations and stories

created room for mutual understanding, trust and sharing where embodiment could

take place. As my fingers struggled to find their ways through the radical shifting

movements on the keyboard, my legs and neck were in vain with the new posture to

endure the long sitting hours and my right (bow) hand was trying to hold the right

pressure for the strings, the language, woven through our lessons worked for giving

us a purpose to remain in the process and opening ourselves for the new bodily

dispositions, necessary for internalizing the music.

3.1.7 Notation/textbook

Dr. Balaji used the notation in the lesson mostly as a mnemonic device, to remember

the compositions correctly and/or to remind them to us. As an academic in the

Banaras Hindu University, he is familiar with the written sources and he produces

them as well. He wrote a book as his PhD, including a textbook of exercises, a part

about the accomplishments of violinists in India, and a chapter about the parts of the

violin and their functions. The book opens up with depictions of god Ganesh,

believed to be the remover of the barriers and goddess Saraswati, believed to be the

goddess of art, music, and knowledge. Another book he used was handwritten by

him, included the compositions in various ragas.

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In just one incident, he used notation in the prescriptive sense, when he was teaching

me a composition. That day I was not able to follow him by imitation properly, so

that he took out his book of compositions and made me read the notes in sargam as

bona while hitting the teental rhythm on my knee. As there is no staff used in Indian

notation system, I found it difficult to understand the beats and the intervals at first,

until he led me through the composition. After reading, he instructed me to watch

him playing the phrase and watch the notation when I repeated the phrase, so that he

integrated the use of notes into the imitation/repetition system. Figure 3.1 shows the

first page of one of the South Indian compositions Dr. Balaji taught us. It is taken

from his notebook, where he notated the compositions by hand. Figure 3.2 shows the

first page of his published textbook for the technical exercises.

Figure 3.1: A page from Dr. Balaji’s notebook. He handwrote this South Indian composition. We worked on this composition, first using the technique of bono reading. He wanted me to rely on the

notes while playing with the condition that I should by-heart it later. (Büyükköksal, 2018)

Figure 3.2: The first page of the textbook written by Dr. Balaji. Originally written in Sanskrit, Dr. Balaji added the note names in Latin alphabet, to make it understandable for his foreigner students,

too. (Büyükköksal, 2018)

Dr. Balaji made us copy some of the notations of compositions but gave higher value

to audio/video recordings for future practice.

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In this section, I demonstrated the tools and techniques Dr. Balaji used during the

course of transmission, affective in the embodiment processes of musical ideas. In

the next section, I discuss the concept of immersion in music by demonstrating the

importance and roles of the inherent elements in Indian classical music.

3.2 Immersion In Music

One of my questions in the interview with Perrine was about her comparison of the

Western and Indian methodology. In her answer, she commented on the importance

of the repetition and the cyclical nature of the music. She experienced that these

features led to trance, immersion in music, and embodiment of the musical ideas:

Western is more sober. … As I mainly played alone, I was not aware how deep I was

influenced [by the Indian methodology]. Now that I play with people here who are in the

western system, I realize the Indian way. In Indian style, you have the trance, you repeat and

repeat and you come in trance. You repeat, but not because you want it to be better, you just

repeat it and it turns, it turns and it turns and you go on. And you improvise in this sense.

You need this kind of immersion in music to develop something. Also when you play with

somebody, with a tabla player, you don't fix anything before but you know each other

because you repeat together and go in the trance. I face some problems with the percussion

player I play now, he's not like this and I did not understand that. When he faces a problem in

music, he just wants to work it on his side, alone. I have the habit to repeat it and it comes by

itself. In the beginning, it comes from mind, but slowly it comes by itself, by the body. It

becomes embodied. And when it's embodied, then it's fine. But you need to repeat it in a

trance spirit. I think it's such a big difference. You use your mind of course but in cyclical

way, the aim is to go beyond that. Once it's embodied, then the heart can open, then you can

have a musical message. (Interview, 27 February 2018)

My experience of being an apprentice of V. Balaji had profoundly changed my

perception of playing music, in the sense that I felt I could immerse myself in the

music making process more than in my past experiences. Taking embodiment from a

sensational perspective as well, my fingers, posture of the body and finally, the way I

musically expressed myself were affected.

Interestingly enough, I realized this change when I returned to my previous style of

playing. Even though I played the repertoire I was familiar with, I rendered the

phrases in different ways and saw other possible renditions ahead. Many barriers in

the technique and expression with which I was working since a while such as; the

fourth finger problem, the distance of the fingers from the keyboard, the accuracy in

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the fast passages, some intonation problems and dynamics seemed to be mainly

solved through my practices in the Indian style and my being together with the

guruji. Hutchison (2014) talks about her experience of learning the North Indian

violin with her guru, Kala Ramnath in a parallel fashion. She points out that the

microtonal character and the different system of tonality present in the North Indian

classical music had widened her understanding of intonation. “It has taught me to

listen to my instrument and my performance of it in new ways” (Hutchison, 2014, p.

62). She was learning mainly through Skype lessons on the Internet but had an

intense guru-shishya period in Kala Ramnath's house for two weeks as well. “I

learned more in that two weeks of complete immersion about Hindustani music than

I had in all of my previous lessons combined” (Hutchison, 2014, p. 62). Furthermore,

Hutchison mentions the desired “artistic spontaneity” in music performance and

argues that the Indian way of learning is uttermost helpful to achieve this state:

Authors like Barry Green (1986) and Eloise Ristad (1982) have written extensively on how to

abate performance anxiety and achieve this artistic spontaneity in music performance, often

referred to as a state of flow. I have found through studying and performing Hindustani music

that the improvisatory style and requirement of spontaneity from the performer are significant

in achieving a state of flow in any performance. (Hutchison, 2014, p. 64)

This phenomenon is related to Dard Neuman's (2012) argument as I mentioned in the

literature review before:

That is, I am not suggesting that the cognitive process—or the brain—is inoperative in these

preparatory exercises. I am instead suggesting that the cultural sense of the “I that thinks” is

kept in check until the “thing that thinks”—the body instrument—is properly trained to direct

musical ideas.” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 427)

During our practices with Dr. Balaji when we worked on shifting with the left hand

and I struggled with the intonation, he used to say: “It [the intonation] will come”.

This simple sentence implies a basic approach, which is also bound to the concept of

gnanam, a Sanskrit word meaning wisdom in the playing but particularly a bodily

disposition. The simplicity of the sentence deceives us and triggers many questions

in the mind. When will it come? How will it come? What should I do that it comes?

The last question becomes relevant in this context because it is seen as the only area

we can have control of; the exercises to change bodily conditions and to prepare the

student to carry out the gnanam. The other questions might hinder the process of

‘be-coming’. One invites gnanam through the devoted and engaged practice rather

than pushing the process. There is a connection of this understanding to the approach

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of “de-subjectified states in the context of creativity and musical knowledge” by

Dard Neuman (2012):

I would like to suggest that in Hindustani music certain moments of creativity are utterly

unremarkable, resting on the opposite end of the spectrum from inspiration or epiphany. The

idea that “something is bound to happen” stands in contrast to more commonplace notions of

creativity, which are profoundly endowed with that paradoxical quality of being

quintessentially individualistic and divinely inspired, rigorously original and heavenly

ordered; the creative “artist” is both an autonomous individual and a vessel for divine

illumination. Hindustani notions of personal creativity are differently ordered, presented as

either haphazard surprises or passive occurrences (“it just happened”) that emerge through

the revelations of bodily instruments. Musical knowledge and creativity occur initially

through de-subjectifed states. (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 440-441)

In this part, I investigate the concepts of cyclicity in Indian classical music, the

continuity and non-verbal space in the course of transmission, focus on music, the

riaz, and the drone as elements of immersion in music in relation to embodiment.

3.2.1 Cyclicity

Martin Clayton (2000) extensively discussed the concept of cyclicity in his book

Time in Indian music: Rhythm, metre, and form in North Indian rag performance.

His main argument was that “Indian music is linear and progressive at a local level,

while non-linear features predominate at higher levels; tonal music extends the

principle of linearity to control the hierarchical organization of pieces as a whole”

(Clayton, 2000, p. 25-26).

He provides an explanation of the sam (the first—and the last—beat) and how it

functions in the rhythmic structure of the raga:

In Indian tals the most important beat, sam, is both first and last; it is usually written as first,

but more often than not functions as last in that it is the beat upon which rhythmic tensions

are resolved. It is this ambiguity of the function of sam and the cadence-oriented

improvisatory style, which are practical manifestations of this preference for cyclicity.

(Clayton, 2000, p. 71)

Clayton relates the different emphases on the cyclicity and linearity to the differences

in cultural ideologies: “where Western thought since the Enlightenment has valued

progress and development … Indian theorists have sought to emphasize music's

value as a state” (Clayton, 2000, p. 26). He quotes Rowell (1992), Such and

Jairazbhoy (1982), and B. C. Deva (1974), saying that there is an innate “connection

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between the cyclic tal structures and cyclic time in Hindu thought” (Clayton, 2000,

p. 15). Clayton points out that the cyclic understanding extends to “lunar, stellar, and

solar cycles up to the world cycles” (Clayton, 2000, p. 16) in Hindu cosmology. He

referred to Clothey, who argued that, this particularity does not imply an exact

repetition in the details but bears in itself the “world's eternal renewability” (1983, as

cited in Clayton, 2000, p. 16). This kind of understanding of time corresponds to the

aspects of tala and raga in Indian classical music, “the continuous process of rag

development, and the recurrent temporal substructure of tal” (Clayton, 2000, p. 16).

Clayton refers to Rowell (1992), saying that this characteristic had only came up

from 13th century onwards. The 13th century is the date of Muslim conquests in India,

namely, the time when the Muslim culture had been sinking into all fields of life. At

this point, he links the change in the performance practice to the influence of Sufi

thought, whereas in the ancient Indian musical system the performance should

actually regulate cosmic time, as opposed to representing cyclic time (Clayton, 2000,

p. 17). Relying on Hazrat Inayat Khan and Qureshi and regarding the mutual

influence of the Hindu and Sufi thoughts, he argues that we should take both

traditions into account. To exemplify “the images of cyclicity and circularity in Sufi

thought”, Clayton quotes Hazrat Inayat Khan:

The tradition of the Sufis Raqs, the sacred dance of spiritual ecstasy … is traced to the time

when contemplation of the Creator impressed the wonderful reality of His vision so deeply

on the heart of [thirteenth-century mystic] Jelal-un-Din [Celaleddin] Rumi that he became

entirely absorbed in the whole and single immanence of nature, and took a rhythmic turn

which caused the skirt of his garment to form a circle, and the movements of his hands and

neck made a circle. It is the memory of this moment of vision, which is celebrated in the

dance of dervishes. (1991, as cited in Clayton, 2000, p. 17)

Dr. Balaji’s former student Perrine put a strong emphasis on the cyclic nature of her

practice with Dr. Balaji, too. In the quotation below, she touches the subjects of

involvement, trance state, the continuity of the practice, and the non-verbal space as

well:

Once he [Dr. Balaji] starts, you have to follow, you improve because of that. It's a way of

repeating. There are many stuff, which helps in this music. Tanpura helps to be in a trance

state of being. Tabla also. Everything is in cycles, you think in cycles, you are in cycles.

Teaching is also like that. For the tans also. Let's say, we have a composition in 16 beats. We

will play together 8 beats of the composition. He will play alone the second part where he

improvises. Again we play together and it's my turn to improvise. If I manage to repeat what

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he did in improvisation it's ok, if I play just something similar it's also ok. And we repeat,

repeat, and repeat. This is one kind of repeating stuff, which makes you being in trance in a

sense. (Interview, 27 February 2018)

The cyclical understanding of music prevails in Indian classical music practices and

performance. It is one of the important elements creating a meditative state in the

riaz, which is an affective state for immersion in music.

3.2.2 ‘Take your violin in hand, don’t stop, work!’

The continuity and non-verbal space were other important features in our 'lesson's

with Dr. Balaji. He used to warn us that we shouldn't stop to play even when he gave

a break.

Please kindly don't stop because I'm hearing from there [the kitchen] and please don't,

because this will make some habit. You should continue for two hours, three hours. (Personal

communication, 26 December 2017)

The raga performances of Indian music can last one to two hours, depending on the

concert's arrangement, on the mutual affection between the expectations of the

audience and on the performer's mood. Related to the performance practice, the riaz

is thought that it should have the same a continuous character, so that the students

can practice according to the conditions of performance time and develop their

endurance. Dr. Balaji taught us in a parallel fashion. Whenever I gave short but

frequent breaks to relax my sleeping legs and to get some blood circulation down in

my body, he would warn me that I have to exercise to be able to sit for long time.

You have to practice for your legs. You have sit at least for one hour, one-and-a-half hour.

That has to make a habit. (Personal communication, 28 December 2017)

Weidman (2012) gives a parallel account about her learning period of playing the

South Indian violin:

Just as my training in Western classical violin demanded the straight back and upright

posture identified with “good technique” and “proper sound” in the West, so my training in

Karnatic violin involved this ability to sit, cross-legged, for long periods of time, demanding

a whole reeducation of my lower body. As Wacquant states, following Bourdieu, “‘the

function of pedagogical work is to replace the savage body with a body habituated—that is,

temporally structured’ and kinetically remodeled according to the specific demands of the

field.” (2004, as cited in Weidman, 2012, p. 223]

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Hutchison (2014) indicates that her guru, Kala Ramnath advised “that the scales are

played over and over (100 times in a row for each string and each fingering) in a

continuous cycle, accelerating in speed until the player “tops out’” (Hutchison, 2014,

p. 45).

Perrine pointed out that in her 'lesson's with Dr. Balaji, they would continuously

play, opposed to 'breaking things' in Western methodology:

He's going, you are going. Endless. He won't stop at the end of the 16 beats, he would go for

one cycle more. And then it's my turn. He will never cut to explain what we are going to do.

He's doing, I'm doing. If I don't understand, next time I will understand but he won't stop. He

will never stop to tell “Ok, we will start at this point”. In Europe, it's like that. You talk

together to decide when you start and you break the things. He just plays, you understand. If

you don't understand its your problem, next time you understand maybe. He goes on and you

have to follow. For everything, exercises and alap. Alap, we don't have cycles but its the

same. He will play one phrase, I will do, he's doing another one, I'm doing. Same principle.

(Interview, 27 February 2018)

The fact that Dr. Balaji was not in favor of giving breaks for verbal communication

and physical relaxation had two important implications. First, as I mentioned above,

the riaz should carry the same nature as the performance where the performer plays

on without any interruption for one to two hours. Second, once we started to play and

go into the repetitive loop structure, the bodily faculties were at work rather than the

faculties of the mind. Whenever I attempted to cut the process with my questions as a

habit I carried from the Western methodology, he would either answer me very

shortly over the sound of our violins or played indicatively as a musical answer to

my question. My questions were the callings of my mind to grasp the process in a

declarative way while my body had struggled to understand the new information in

procedural way. Deschenes and Eguchi (2018) talk about this phenomenon in their

research about the embodiment processes in Japanese music and dance.

... Teachers give very few instructions during classes while, paradoxically, the pupils must

not ask questions. When they do, the answer might be vague, short, or refer to something that

does not have much to do with the question; ... . The reason the pupils should not ask

questions is not solely for reasons of discipline or conformity, but it has to do with looking

and paying attention, considering that the questions being asked and the presuppositions one

might then have can interfere with how a pupil is attentive to what is being taught.

(Deschenes and Eguchi, 2018, p. 73-74)

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This kind of attention corresponds the somatic mode of attention, introduced by

Mauss (1950) and Csordas (1993), too (look at the section 3.1.3 ('First the

movement') above for a detailed investigation of the concept). In Turkish music, in

the tradition of meşk, there is a similar saying: 'Demini almak'. When the music starts

to 'cook' once, the space opens to go deeper in the music and the musicians prefer to

go on playing rather than stopping to talk about what to play next.

The continuity and the non-verbal space opened during our course of 'lesson's with

Dr. Balaji paved the way to embodiment of the transmitted musical ideas in the sense

that these elements provided the continuity of musical sphere and bodily, somatic

attentiveness needed for embodiment of the musical information.

3.2.3 Focus on music

One of the most prominent features I observed during my fieldwork was how the

music occupied the central place in Dr. Balaji's life and how he demanded the same

level of focus from his students. In our conversations, he argued that we, the

musicians, regardless of where we are, form as a distinct caste; the musician caste.

He introduced this explanation not as a formal and technical one rather to reinforce

the desired concentration on music in a musician's life. We see the same idea echoing

in Daniel Neuman (1990), where he refers to an Indian musician, saying, “all

musicians have one religion, music” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 60). Many times,

when we talked about politics or any other engagements in life with Dr. Balaji, he

brought the issue down to, that as musicians, our primary mission to fulfill in life is

to make music. This level of focus implied a devotional aspect. In one lesson, he

made the remark that the first condition was to love the instrument:

First you should love him [the violin]. One day, he will love you [back]. When he will love

you, then you will enjoy. Your motive of life will be to enjoy, once you become beloved.

(Personal communication, 1 January 2018)

In the interviews I conducted, his former students mentioned his passion about

music. One of his former long-time students, Marie-Line Aubry said:

I think he has a very personal way to approach music, very original, [different] even from

other Indian musicians. I used to be fascinated seeing his passion for music, seeing his

creativity. He could spend nights in the music room. He was completely into his music. That

had for sure a great impact on me, and how to consider music in one’s life. (Interview, 11

March 2018)

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Besides Dr. Balaji's explanations, the focus on music was omnipresent in his life and

even in the setting of his house. The main room in the house was the music room.

Although they used this room for some other doings, too, it was obviously designed

primarily for music. Apart from the tall Lord Balaji statue, covering one wall and

many other items, such as pictures, paintings, awards, and statues of various gods on

the other walls, there was no furniture in the room. They used chairs in the other

rooms of the house but the only chair in the music room was designed as an altar

where his father's garlanded photograph sat along with the father's violin and other

items that were put there as offerings. Guruji's place was set and respected with a

little carpet on a green mattress, covering the whole ground. Perrine described the

effect of the music room as:

What I really liked was that it [the music room] was empty, no furniture. You arrive. You

have the violin. The main thing is the violin and nothing else. It's full on the walls but the

room is almost empty. (Interview, 1 March 2018)

That Dr. Balaji's life revolved around music was expressed in his bodily dispositions

as well. In daily life, he experienced difficulties to move due to health problems.

Although he was a very active man both at work and in the house, he used to have

pain in his hands and sometimes difficulties to stand up after long time sitting and

playing with us. Which amazed me was that it was a turning point when he started to

play. He would render the complex phrases and fast bow changes with ease, as if he

had none of these problems. Immediately, he would transform into a performer/guru,

his bodily dispositions would change and form that of a fluent player. At times when

he said that he's very tired, sick or had a minor accident, we asked him if it is ok to

have the lesson under this conditions and he would always answer “For playing, I'm

always ok”. In our numerous conversations, Dr. Balaji accounted: “Music is my best

medicine for everything”.

Rahaim (2012) talks about the same phenomenon by referring to the Indic term

sanskar. Its meanings vary from “an inborn disposition” to “an early family

influence, or even a retained habitus from a past incarnation” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 177).

He argues that it's about “adopting “situated perspectives”’ rather than “mimicking

behaviors” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 177). Rahaim quotes Sameer Duplay talking about his

guru Jitendra Abhisheki, saying:

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Teaching bandish [compositions] was just one very tiny part of his entire being. And he used

to say, “If you want to really, really learn music, just be with me.” And he really had the

ability to … communicate many things without saying a word. (as cited in Rahaim, 2012, p.

117)

Referring to Duplay, Rahaim passes on to another Indic term, mudra. Having various

meanings, Duplay used it in the sense of “a complete presence”: “There is an

aphorism: 'Pure voice, pure mudra.' He [his guru Abhisheki] was unsurpassed in

keeping his mudra pure. So his mudra was such that when he sat down to sing, it

seemed as though some entirely different person was sitting there” (Rahaim, 2012, p.

117-118). Finally, Rahaim makes a reference to Tomie Hahn's (2007) book

Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture Through Japanese Dance. Hahn

remarks that her teacher's “presence as a performer differed so radically from her

quotidian presence that she had to remind herself that it was the same person” (2007,

as cited in Rahaim, 2012, p. 118).

To sum up, the focus on music the guru’s life reinforces the idea that the guru’s

presence itself is music and emphasizes the role of bodily dispositions. As the guru

demonstrates the features in her/his dispositions, the disciple is expected to acquire

these dispositions during the course of face-to-face sessions and through sharing

daily life with her/his guru. Furthermore, the focus on music establishes the space

suitable for immersion in music, as music is seen as the primary occupation in the

guru’s and disciple’s life. The material space and the overall organization of life are

designed according to this idea. In order to immerse in music, the necessary

seclusion from daily duties is echoed in the architecture of Dr. V. Balaji’s house as

well. Moreover, we can observe in the decoration of the music room how music sank

into every little detail. On the stairs around the altar of Lord Balaji, dancers

performing various figures were depicted. Beside the paintings of Hindu deities on

the walls, Dr. Balaji’s awards for his music, photographs of his family, all of them

being performers, were hung. The paintings depicting the Trinity of South Indian

music were placed on a high shelf as a sign of respect. Even on the ceiling, Indian

classical music instruments were painted as decorative figures. Figure 3.3 shows the

music room in Dr. Balaji’s house. For details of the music room, selected and

photographed by me, see Appendix B, figures B.3, B.10, B.11, and B.12.

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Figure 3.3: The music room in Dr. Balaji's house. A tall statue of Lord Balaji is situated on the wall across, and many awards, family photographs mainly taken during the concerts, and more depictions of various gods hung on the walls. The rug on the right is designated as the space of the guru, where Dr. Balaji always sat, taught, and played. We used to sit just across, in the place where Ertuğrul is

seen on the left, playing the Turkish tanbur. (Büyükköksal, 2018)

In conclusion, the organization of the material space and the daily life, and the bodily

dispositions of the guru are the elements helping to focus on music and therefore,

creating a space for immersion in music.

3.2.4 Riaz

According to Daniel Neuman (1990) “the concept of riaz encompasses more than its

translation as “practice” would suggest” (Neuman D. M., 1990, 34). He argues that

the long durations of riaz symbolically equals to the level of musicianship in Indian

classical music context. “It is not only a preparation for performance, but also a

preparation for an unattainable perfection” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 34). A

dedicated riaz results inevitably in a high level of learning. Furthermore, related to

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the dedication and devotion it requires, the concept “symbolizes a certain

accomplishment of one's inner development” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 34).

Although it's can be a years-long process to find the right way to do riaz individually,

there were basic rules which Dr. Balaji have mentioned during our 'lesson's. There

was no upper limit in duration but there should be a minimum of four hours reserved

to riaz daily. The instructions how to execute it were related to the particular raga we

worked on at times and he also mentioned the exercises which should be practiced

life-long. In riaz, continuity and the meditative state were aimed. This process

necessitates patience and endurance, inviting the 'right' dispositions of the body to

come, rather than pushing oneself towards the goal of 'becoming better'. Endurance

was an important component emphasized by Dr. Balaji. He recommended keeping

sitting as long as possible and extend the duration gradually. Breaks were not favored

apart from essential bodily needs. Furthermore, the focus time on one type of

exercise was longer, related to the technique of rote repetition. Dr. Balaji suggested

that just in the course of playing the ascending-descending of the scale, there were

endless variations possible, both in the left and right hand. The suggested route was

that the student should explore the variations in the light of observations she made

during the 'lesson's. Another goal of riaz is to ‘free the hand’, the fluent movement of

the left hand. As the positions in Indian style are not fixed in the sense of Western

style, freeing is preeminent. The flexibility of the left hand is foremost important to

be able to adapt itself to the musical necessities at hand. In addition to Dr. Balaji, his

wife Shanti Balaji gave us accounts of how he practiced:

He stays up all night and he plays always. I tell you, always. He always practices. He never

gives up practice. He practices before the student arrives, with the student, after the student

leaves. Now that you go, he will stay awake and play. You should also practice like this.

(Personal communication, 29 December 2017)

His two disciples, Sushil and Nuan—Wijekoon Bandara—asked us many times

about how many hours a day we practiced. They had the college and household to

take care of so it surprised me that they were practicing at least six hours a day.

When I complained about the weather conditions that it was so cold in Varanasi and

that made it hard to practice, Nuan suggested us to prepare hot water with salt and

keep our hands in it for a while to be able to do our riaz. This conversation shows the

level of importance put in riaz and there were no valid excuses to avoid it.

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As Daniel Neuman (1990) suggests the English translation of 'practice' doesn't meet

the implications of riaz. Rather than practicing to become better and improve your

playing, the riaz process is not separated from the very act of playing music and it is

also done for the sake of doing music. Of course, the inevitable result is that the one's

playing improves but even after the rendition of a particular phrase sounds 'good', the

student continues to render it to reach the “unattainable perfection” (Neuman D. M.,

1990, p. 34). This mechanism is related to what Dard Neuman (2012) calls as the

“creativity beyond boredom” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 436). He says that the same

phrase is repeated over and over, crossing far the frontiers of the boredom. He refers

to khandani (the name for the family lineage specializing in music) practice rituals

where “the student is made to grind over a musical sentence”: “The advantage of

“grinding the same tana a thousand times”—until it begins to open up and break

down into discrete musical places (jagah), into analytical phrase-bits that can be

expanded in different ways” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 437). Neuman argues that the

student in a modern context, such as; in the university, practice “toward perfection

but merely mimicked that thing which they perfected”, whereas the student in the

more traditional context practice went “beyond boredom and traveled toward

innovation through independent explorations of their body-instruments” (Neuman D.

A., 2012, p. 437).

In this sense, there is a strong relation of immersion in music to how the riaz should

be done. Immersion in music starts already in riaz, as the student immerses

her/himself in the meditative state of the practice. Perrine pointed out the meditative

nature of her practice as well:

Indian music, I practiced ... it was like a kind of meditation. Really personal thing. I was

really closed to people. I did not like to play for other people. I would like to play just for

myself. In a vertical way. (Interview, 1 March 2018)

The dedication and devotion required for the process brings us to the issue of

surrendering. Although improvement is expected as an inevitable result of the proper

riaz, the approach to practice is more process-oriented rather than goal-oriented. The

student is expected to surrender to the process of the practice with patience and

endurance rather than aiming levels of improvement deliberately. In this sense, riaz

has strong relation to the immersion in music in Indian classical music context.

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3.2.5 The drone

Bonnie C. Wade (1999) defines the drone in her book Music in India: The Classical

Traditions as “the sounding of a constant melodic pitch or pitch sequence that

undergirds elaborate melodic improvisation; it adds a “harmonic” element to the

music, … ” (Wade, 1999, p. 48). As the Indian music performance relies on one raga

at a time, the drone holds the space by resounding the important pitches in this

particular mood. Wade refers to Shri Chaitanya Deva (1967), who did an extensive

research on the drone, who suggested that the drone became a definite component as

late as the seventeenth century (as cited in Wade, 1999, p. 49). Clayton (2000) marks

the drone as the potentiality bearing the raga and the melody inside in his description

of a raga performance:

But the drone itself has, by this point, already become thoroughly fixed in the listener's mind,

since it has sounded throughout the tuning process—not just the Sa, and one or two other

important pitches such as (the fifth) Pa and (the leading note) Ni, but a dense cloud of

harmonics produced by the tanpuras which seems to envelop performers and audience alike.

At this moment I sense that the melody is already present in the drone, … and feel that I

know which rag is to be performed, … And even when I'm wrong, it seems as though the rag

actually presented was merely another of several possibilities, all latent, all potential.

(Clayton, 2000, p. 1-2)

Strangways (1994) argues in a parallel fashion that the drone consolidates the

melody and adds an expression by a Banaras musician, that without it the musician

would feel “like a ship without a rudder” (Strangways, 1994, p. 171). Jairazbhoy

(1995) agrees, saying that the drone acts like an anchor, “the ground-note is at rest

and needs no contemplation” (Jairazbhoy, 1995, p. 65). Pesch (1999) links the effect

of the drone to meditation, quotes Max Müller (1879-1910), in the foreword to the

Sacred Books of the East, saying:

Our minds are like Kaleidoscopes of thoughts in constant motion; and to shut our inner eyes

to everything else, while dwelling on one thought only, has become to most of us as

impossible as to appreciate one musical note without harmonies.” (as cited in Pesch, 1999, p.

26)

Pesch argues that the basic note can pave the way to “luminosity or depth to every

other note that follows …” (Pesch, 1999, p. 25). In addition, he provides a stave,

presenting the flow of overtones in tanpura.

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In my case, the drone was, first of all, a subtle marker of the non-verbal space in our

'lessons'. As the harmonics were enveloping us, the created space reminded us to

remain in the music and leave out the interruptions for later, such as; asking

questions. It was not a strict regulation—and I overrode it often with my questions

motivated by the fieldwork—, we were just invited to act that way. Overall, when

Dr. Balaji turned the tanpura machine on, it was the sign to start the tuning and when

it was turned off for a longer period, our 'lesson' time was ending (CD 1, track 1).

Figure 3.4 shows a tanpura machine, the same brand Dr. Balaji was using. It usually

continued to sound all through the breaks we made during the 'lesson'. Guruji

occasionally turned it down when he prepared to make a long explanation or to tell a

story. In addition, to tune according to the tanpura machine was a different

experience, regarding the harmonics at work, and it took time to adjust our ears.

Once Dr. Balaji warned Ertuğrul to tune each string separately when tuning to the

sound of the drone. I agree with Clayton in the sense that the sound of the tanpura

bears the potentials of the raga and helps to reveal it. It had a surrounding effect as a

bodily sensation as well, having the quality to carry and elevate the melody in the

particular mood we played. The resonance of the particular pitches sank in gradually,

which helped the process of immersion in the mood and the embodiment of the raga

Figure 3.4: A tanpura machine of Raagini brand. It works with battery or electricity. The switch in the front is for turning it on and off. The two knobs on the top adjust the volume and the pitch for the note Sa. The push buttons on the top are for regulating the pitches in the particular raga and the tempo of how they will be played. In some ragas only Sa-Pa-Sa-Pa is used, whereas in others Sa, Ma, Pa, and

Ni are necessary to be included. (http://www.indianmusicalinstruments.com/raaginidigitaltanpura.htm, retrieved in 29 June 2018)

through the hands and fingers. Finally, the drone played an important role in creating

the space for the raga to reveal itself through us and in playing 'in tune' with the

mood.

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In this chapter, I investigated the teaching methodology in Indian classical music

context, drawing on the examples from my experience with Prof. Dr. V. Balaji. In the

first section, I looked on the technical side of transmission and the affective

processes of embodiment through exploring the tools and techniques Dr. Balaji used.

In the second section, I discussed the concept of immersion in music through the

cyclical nature of Indian music, the continuity and nonverbality, the focus on music,

the necessities in riaz, and the drone. In the next chapter titled ‘Pedagogy’, I talk

about the three main pedagogical features in Dr. V. Balaji’s teaching, such as his

usage of exclamations, his technique of pushing the student beyond her limits, and

his dominating attentiveness.

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4. PEDAGOGY

Relating to the thesis, I define pedagogy as a socio-cultural construction nurtured on

the traditional understanding of transmission of musical knowledge in the Indian

context. To start with a provocative statement, Dr. Balaji's main pedagogical

features were to shout, to push and to be attentive. At first, these words might sound

scary, especially for the ones with a background of Western pedagogy but opposed to

their negative associations, Dr. Balaji used them to encourage the students in order to

reveal their true potential. I argue that these features are intricately linked with the

three basic elements in the transmission of Indian classical music, namely; discipline,

dedication, and devotion as Daniel Neuman (1990) stated:

… There are three elements required to become a performer of art music in India: (1) one's

will or discipline (riaz), (2) one's teacher or perhaps—more properly—one's guide (the guru-

shishya institution), (3) one's spiritual status or divine intercession or grace (the world of

Supreme Being). (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 30)

In addition, these features are seen more like familial characteristics or like in a

friendship relation in the intimacy of the guru-shishya relationship. First, Dr. Balaji's

shouting was not intended to shy the student away about her mistakes or to silence

the student if she played out of tune. On the contrary, his shouting worked to

encourage the student to try more, not to be afraid to make mistakes and to make

strong sound. Second, pushing the student beyond her limits is another main trend in

his teaching. For instance, he constantly demanded that I should play stronger and

didn't give up until I achieved the strong sound that he wanted. Dr. Balaji described it

as 'fighting' in one of our conversations, as I depicted before in the thick description,

presented in the second chapter. His former students in the interviews I conducted

also supported his expression of ‘fighting’. Third, his attentive presence about the

execution of the fingering, bowing, timbre, and phrasing demanded constant

concentration from the student. This feature corresponds also to the issue of focus on

music, not constrained to the duration of the lessons. These characteristics of Dr.

Balaji's teaching triggered effective processes in the embodiment of musical ideas.

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4.1 ‘You Know Friends Kick Each Other. It’s Like a Friendship.’

Our guru presented himself as 'the shouting teacher' already in our first days. Despite

his mighty, controlling presence, for me, his 'shouting' didn't imply the emotion of

‘anger’; rather I experienced it as a sign of his attentiveness. In Indian context, the

behaviors of teachers may seem harsh at times but in fact they are signs of the level

how serious the teacher takes the student. Finally, I was not even aware of his

shouting as an 'issue'. It attracted my attention when he spoke of it as a difference

between the Western and Indian pedagogy. He spoke of incidents when some

foreigner students didn't like the element of shouting in his teaching:

The person who has come to my house and digests my shouting, he never leaves my house.

Because he understands what I am. Sometimes when I'm teaching, I can get irritating, also to

you, I shout “Hey, what you're doing?!” Some foreigners, they don't like this. I say,

“Namasthe” [goodbye]. But this is the way [to teach]. (Personal communication, 27

December 2017)

Dr. Balaji gave an example of a professor of piano coming from Europe, who

watched his class, appreciated his teaching very much and likened it to the way how

it was two hundred years ago in Europe. Afterwards she became his long-time

student and a family member. The first time they met, she expressed her approach as

below:

The way you are shouting, you are asking them [the students] to play, make them repeat

again and again and again and how you ask the students to sing: this is what we lost about

two hundred years ago in Europe, in our country. (Personal communication, 27 December

2017)

His exclamations over the sound of our violins and tanbur, such as; “Two notes in a

bow!”, “Strong bow!”, or “Repeat!”, acted as strong reminders for me to recollect the

concentrated state necessary to play. They also triggered the awareness of the self,

pushed me to pay more attention, and brought me back to the rendition of the

particular phrase at hand, immediately. Dr. Balaji explicitly expressed himself on the

importance he placed in teaching and explained that the meaning of his shouting

equals to the relation in a friendship:

Tomorrow I will not be alive maybe but I will be there in your playing. This is your

responsibility. Sometimes I'm shouting in my flow of teaching, don't take it personal. You

know friends kick each other; it's like a friendship. (Personal communication, 26 December

2017)

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4.2 ‘Try, Do the Mistake!’

One of his former foreign students, Perrine, originally came for her engineering

studies to India and decided to learn Indian classical music. She went back to India

many times after that. First time in 2001, she had a guruji in Delhi, Joy Srivastava,

who occupied a very special place in her life. It was her third time in India when she

met Dr. Balaji. Their first period together lasted for six months, and she had an

intense learning duration with him. Besides talking about the issues of nonverbality

and imitation, she described the lessons as 'fighting' musically.

He [Dr. Balaji] was not saying much, more than Nanaji [Joy Srivastava] but still. He was

mainly pushing me; we were fighting actually. He was doing something, I was doing, he was

doing something harder, and I was trying. But even if I had some difficulties, I was

continuing anyway, we were fighting like that. And it was going on, on, on, ... I remember

once, we were together doing a scale from the lower string, I think it was 3 octaves. Going

up, going down, really quickly, he was increasing the beat in the tabla box. [After that] he

looked at the clock, it turned out that we played like that half an hour without stopping. It was

a fight! The first, who was giving up, was losing it. This kind of learning. (Interview, 27

February 2018)

Dr. Balaji many times used the expression I quoted in the title of the section: “Try!

Do the mistake!” We also had conversations about it in which he argued the lesson is

the time where the student should try to follow the guru whatever it takes and not be

afraid to do mistakes. On the contrary, the guru’s presence is the most appropriate

place to do mistakes so that the guru can act on them and lead the student to the right

path in the exercise: “In my teaching, you should try” (Personal communication, 26

December 2017). As the teacher practices with the student regardless of the

simplicity of the exercise, this practice phase is seen where the transmission of

musical knowledge is directly coming from the source, the teacher. The student’s

bodily dispositions are shaped in these sessions by observation and imitation of the

teacher. Another stress he put in the lessons was on the issue of confidence. Dr.

Balaji woke me up with his often-repeated exclamation: “With full confidence!” In

that way, he was pushing me to realize the expressive element in the particular

phrase and to manifest it in my playing.

The feature which displayed a striking difference between my past experiences and

Dr. Balaji’s teaching was expressed in his question, asked on a daily basis: “Do you

enjoy it?” It was not about if I was content with his teaching but if I was really

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enjoying to practice, to play, and to intensively work on music. This attitude opened

up for me a different understanding of the ‘work’. The working is seen no different

than music making, as the practice is not separated from the performance-related

aspects of music. Instead of an approach that divides the preparation for music and

the very act of doing music, the process was seen as a whole where the student was

expected to enjoy all of its phases. In Oppenheim (2012), there are parallel accounts

by foreigner students in the interviews: “It doesn’t matter what [one’s] skill level is,

it’s important to have fun and to improvise, even if [one] can’t do it, [they should]

just try” (as cited in Oppenheim, 2012, p. 108). Finally, ‘to have fun’ implies to be

engaged actively in the process, including its sensational aspects. A second possible

implication is that instead of loading an emotional weight on the question of which

level one has to attain, the desired state of the student is that she continues to practice

and let the development happen.

4.3 Attentiveness

Throughout our lessons, one of the important features was Dr. Balaji’s attentive

presence about the execution of the fingering, bowing, timbre, and phrasing, which

demanded constant concentration from the student. The overall lesson plan seemed

to be spontaneous and improvised while Dr. Balaji had a clear structure and memory

about what he planned to teach and which elements he already taught. The paragraph

below exemplifies his attentiveness about our level of learning and playing, and his

communication about the learning material.

In the last lessons, he wanted mostly that we just watch, listen and record him, to

collect enough material aimed for future practice. Although Ertuğrul and me enjoyed

the music, at the same time we became impatient to play with Dr. Balaji. In one of

the last lessons, I finally brought it up, said that we really enjoyed to play together,

and asked him why we didn’t do it anymore. It sounded like a reproach, too. Dr.

Balaji explained that if we just continued to play now like in the first half of our

learning period; going back home, we wouldn’t remember what we have done. He

argued that taking the video recording is like taking him back home with us, pointing

out that our time span together is very short. Two days later, he implicitly showed in

practice what he meant. He invited a tabla player to the lesson so that we can learn

the rhythmical structure of Indian classical music and have a real-time experience

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instead of having the tabla machine (a video excerpt of this lesson can be watched in

the attached CD 2, track 1). Before the start, he declared that we would play the

compositions together we learned so far. During the course of our playing, it turned

out that we didn’t remember all the compositions, having been overloaded with the

information flow. He demonstrated that he had a clear-cut plan and was aware the

process, saying, “You may not remember what I taught you, but I remember”. He

was attentive about our reproach and in addition to explaining us the reason he

emphasized recordings, he showed us in a practice that we were not ready, yet, and

that we should follow him.

Dr. Balaji was not only attentive to the lesson process but also to our states of health

and/or mood. When we went to our tenth lesson, I was feeling tired, which he

immediately noticed and act on it:

V. B.: Asli, today you look different, so … serious. Everything is ok, something happened?

A. B.: No, I think I’m just tired. … Music will do well to me.

After we finished tuning, I asked him if we could do video recording of the bow

exercises he showed one day ago. When I started to record, he stopped and just gave

a big smile to the camera, looking like a child. I was surprised and started to smile

back.

V. B.: Please smile, not so serious!

Finally, Dr. Balaji’s attentiveness had two main components; first, to our musical

development and second to our general state. In this way, he was shaping our time

together, communicating effectively about music and our presence.

In this chapter, I demonstrated the links between the three main pedagogical

characteristics of Dr. Balaji’s teaching and the embodiment processes, namely the

‘shouting’ and usage of exclamations, pushing the student beyond her borders, and

the guru’s attentive presence and acting in the lessons. I argued that the pedagogical

techniques used by Dr. Balaji are in accord with the nature of the transmission of

Indian music and result in the embodiment of musical ideas, through investigating

how the bond between the guru and the shishya was established in the course of the

long hours spent together.

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71

5. THE SPIRITUALITY - THE SPIRITUAL/RELIGIOUS SETTING

The first two paragraphs below are edited fieldnotes of our first meeting, depict our

first entrance to Dr. Balaji's house and highlight some of the spiritual/religious

elements omnipresent in his space.

After removing our shoes outside of an iron gate, we passed a well lighted outside hall

decorated with many depictions of the god Hanuman and other gods. From there, we entered

a big room with no furniture inside, again well-lighted and shiny, fully decorated with

pictures of the family, with more depictions of Hanuman, other gods, and the Trinity of South

Indian music. Many awards of various competitions and ranks were hanging on the walls. An

impressive statue of Lord Balaji with his black face, covering nearly all the wall across,

dominated the ambiance of the room. It felt like we were entering a temple of music.

When V. Balaji went to the kitchen, his disciple, Sushil showed his respect for Lord Balaji,

going down on his knees facing the statue, hands together in a gesture of prayer. He repeated

the same moves for the pictures of gurus V. K. Venkataramanujam—Dr. V. Balaji's father—,

V. N. Krishnan Iyengar—his grandfather—, and Smt. N. Rajam—his guru—which hung all

over the right wall. The pictures of the gurus served like an altar to show respect. The

spiritual and religious atmosphere was omnipresent in the Dr. Balaji's space, reinforced by

the continuous Vedic chant coming out of a recorder in the kitchen. (Fieldnote, 20 December

2017)

Because I focus on Dr. Balaji as a case study, who is a Brahman and a practitioner of

Hinduism, I mainly discuss the Hindu elements present in the music but also add the

ideas from Islamic Sufism as the both traditions mutually influence each other. In the

first section, I try to provide a picture of the overall context in India, in relation to my

field experiences with Dr. Balaji and the reflections of his former foreign students

based on the interviews I conducted. In the second section, I discuss my fluid stance

engaging in the spiritual/religious setting as a foreign student and a participant

observer. I focus on how I related to the setting and how this relational stance acted

on my behavior and playing in relation to embodiment. At this point, I utilize the tool

of autoethnographical writing to inform the reader about the socio-cultural

background of the researcher. I discuss these elements by looking into my past

experiences as an individual, expectations as a student and a researcher, referring to

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the discussion about Westerner’s experiences of spirituality in Asian musics, and

analyzing an excerpt from our sixth lesson where the spiritual elements were

explicitly shown in practice by Dr. Balaji.

5.1 Dr. Balaji’s Teaching in Relation to Hinduism and Islamic Sufism in India

In Indian classical music scene, the spiritual aspects are seen as inherent in musical

practice. The reinforcement of these elements is especially in the guru-shishya

relationship but also in the institutionalized education system of universities. The

Saraswati statue, which is believed to be the goddess of music, art, and wisdom,

welcomes the one who enters Banaras Hindu University’s music department to this

day (Appendix B, Figure B.1). The depictions of various gods and goddesses are

hung on the walls in teachers' rooms as well. Daniel Neuman (1990) commented on

the shared belief that:

… There are three elements required to become a performer of art music in India: (1) one's

will or discipline (riaz), (2) one's teacher or perhaps—more properly—one's guide (the guru-

shishya institution), (3) one's spiritual status or divine intercession or grace (the world of

Supreme Being). (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 30)

Slawek (1999) has also noted that the link between the music and spirituality have

existed since the ancient times in Hindu culture: “Philosophers and aestheticians

alike within the Hindu tradition have attributed mystical powers to music; thus those

who are capable of performing music are likewise invested with spiritual powers”

(Slawek, 1999, p. 458).

Dr. Balaji expressed his ideas about music in a parallel fashion in our numerous

personal conversations. Below is one excerpt where he talks about the concept of

gatra veena:

How to receive the energy; this [the music] is one of the ways, one of the methods with

which you can reach up to him [god. He points with the head to the statue of Lord Balaji]. ...

Because it [the music] is provided by the greatest God. … In the Veda, it is clearly

mentioned; this is called [showing the body] gatra veena. Gatra means singing. The whole

body is singing veena. Once it comes from the hand, what you are playing? What the heart is

allowing you. ... This is what we need. So the music is one of the sources to reach up [god]

… (Personal communication, 20 December 2017)

The concept of gatra veena, introduced in Natyasastra, implies that the human body

itself is seen as the primary instrument linked to the divine realm. The focus in music

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making process is on the vocal sound, or expressed in bodily means, the vocal

chords. Dr. Balaji talked about the pulse of the heart as the source of the laya (tempo)

and he exemplified rasa (taste) with the taste of the mother's milk in accord with the

doctrine of microcosm and macrocosm as I discuss referring to Rowell (1992) below.

The innate mechanisms and sounds of the body Dr. Balaji referred to as the basic

sources of music.

There are three things important in music. One is higher note and lower note [swara], number

one. Number two, they said the rasa, that is called taste, timbre. And third, that is the laya,

laya is tempo. … Because not a single child will cry like this [imitates a bird sound, talks

about the swara]. Mother gives milk, there is the taste, rasa. Laya is provided in the nature. If

you are angry at me, you won't say: [with a plain voice and in slow tempo] “Gu-ru-ji-I-am-

ve-ry-an-gry-on-you”. No, no one has taught you, it is already there, provided by nature to

the body. That's why each person knows; this is something no one teaches. (Personal

communication, 20 December 2017)

Rowell (1992) comments that the “anthropomorphic imagery” (Rowell, 1992, p. 232)

has been present in Indian philosophies since ancient times. He refers to Kapila

Vatsyayan (1983), talking about the “Man-Body symbolism”:

Briefly, these [the paradigmatic models] add up to conceiving human body as a living vital

symbol of the macrocosm with many inbuilt systems of organic relationships of the parts to

the whole and to each other. The unity of life, the interdependence and interconnectedness of

all manifestations is at the core of this vision. … This Man-Body is placed in an eternal

cosmic rhythm (Rta) of the universe. (as cited in Rowell, 1992, p. 232-233)

Rowell explores the understanding of music's sacredness, by relying on the doctrine

of microcosm and macrocosm. The doctrine is built upon the idea that “the entire

universe could be compressed into a drop of water [or] a grain of sand” and “the

innermost center of human existence, which is the source of all sound, has the

potential to encompass all worlds that can be imagined” (Rowell, 1992, p. 16). The

doctrine prevailed in Indian musical ideology and was a cause of “constant tension

… in that music is valued not only for the delight that it brings through sensory

experience but also because it provides a glimpse of the reality that is to be sought

beyond the reach of the senses” (Rowell, 1992, p. 18). Rowell argues that the central

idea of sound in Indian philosophies indicates the concept of akasa, “the audible

space that fills the universe”, surrounding everything that exists.

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It is one, universal, eternal, causal (but not caused), permeating both personal and

transpersonal consciousness, and manifested along the human pathway from inner to outer

space. Its discharge in the form of vital breath is both an act of worship and an affirmation of

universal process. (Rowell, 1992, p. 41)

Not only in Hindu tradition but also in Islamic Sufism in India, we can trace this

connection. Qureshi (2009) argues “Both Hinduism and Islam offer spiritual

validation for discipleship through the paradigm of spiritual guidance, through the

Hindu concept of gurukul” (Qureshi, 2009, p. 170). The guru – shishya relationship

resembles strongly the piri–muridi (the spiritual guide and her/his follower)

commitment in the Sufi discipleship. Qureshi claims “the general Sufi interpretation

… is to accord special significance to music as a means for giving a more universal

reach to Islam” (Qureshi, 1995, p. 83). Relying on my personal experiences in the

practice of Sufism in Turkey—excluding the orthodox Sufi sects which either take a

distanced stance from especially instrumental music or prohibit it altogether—

Islamic mysticism places the mystical music and the practice of sama (the whirling

dervishes' prayer in the form of dance) at its core as an expression of the divine love

and as a tool to achieve the ecstatic state where this divine love can be experienced

mentally and bodily. According to Qureshi (1995), the Chishtiya tradition and

qawwali music are two major expressions of Indic Sufism, where we can observe the

focus on music as a vehicle to reach the divine. David Roche (1999) cites one of the

sheikhs (mystic guide) of Chishtiya sect, Nizamuddin Auliya (1242-1325) of Delhi,

describing the sama' ritual and the role of devotional music in this assembly:

In listening, the devotee experiences a sense of spiritual bliss, which may be manifest as

celestial lights, mystical states, and physical effects. Each of these derives from three worlds:

the present world, the angelic sphere, and the potential realm, this last being intermediate

between the first two. And these three manifestations of spiritual bliss may occur in one of

three places: the spirits, the hearts, or the bodily limbs. At first, celestial lights descend from

the angelic sphere on the spirits, then mystical states descend from the potential realm on the

hearts, and finally physical effects from the physical world alight on the bodily limbs. In

other words, during the state induced by listening to music, celestial lights descend from the

angelic sphere upon the spirits. What subsequently appear in the heart are called mystical

states, because it is from the potential realm that they descend on the hearts. Next, crying,

movement, and agitation appear, and they are called physical effects because they alight from

the present world on the bodily limbs. (1992, as cited in Roche, 1999, p. 320]

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This quote from Nizamuddin Auliya, who was one of the most influential religious

leaders of Chishtiya sect in India, explicitly displays the relationship between the

Chishtiya tradition as a sect of Islamic Sufism in India and the understanding of

music as a tool to reach divine states. When we come back to the Hindu tradition,

Lewis Rowell (1992) gives a detailed account about the sacred status of the music

and particularly sound, investigating the ancient texts until the middle of 13th century

in his book Music and musical thought in early India. Referring to a statue of the god

Shiva, he indicates the primary importance of sound in the Hindu cosmology:

The small hourglass drum in Shiva's uplifted right hand represents the akasa (atmosphere)—

the “audible space that fills the universe”—which according to the Taittiriya Upanişad is the

first [to] evolute from the universal soul, the atman (3.6), which causes sound to issue forth at

the first moment of creation. (Rowell, 1992, p. 3)

Coming to the issue of embodiment in guru-shishya relationship, Rahaim (2012)

explores the intense, mutual devotion between the two parties through the

perspective of embodiment. “The relationship between teacher and student is marked

through various bodily disciplines” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 112). When the student

encounters her/his guru, the convention to show respect is to touch the feet, as we

were also instructed to do so by Dr. Balaji. In return, Dr. Balaji would place his hand

on our heads as a blessing. As I described in the above sections, he also led us

through various rituals, such as; the kneeling down in front of Lord Balaji's statue,

his father's and Dr. N. Rajam's pictures. The pictures were treated as being far more

than merely photographs. They carried the symbolic meaning of the gurus' presence.

Dr. Balaji also instructed us that we should do the kneeling down in a particular row,

according to the hierarchy of the gurus; Lord Balaji was the first, then came his

father V. K. Venkataramanujam, and after him Dr. Balaji's guru, Dr. N. Rajam. After

them was the turn for Dr. Balaji. Far more being just a ritual, these moves were

enacted in the sense that the gurus were present in the room. Dr. Balaji did the same

row of rituals like us before starting and ending his lessons. Rahaim (2012) describes

the same situation in Shaunak Abhisheki's house:

… Jitendra Abhisheki's son, Shaunak Abhisheki, lives and teaches in the same house his

father did, and his father is palpable presence—but not only as intangible memory. A

photograph of his father, draped with cloth and a garland of flowers, is displayed prominently

in the music room. Before Shaunak teaches a lesson, he touches the ground in front of the

chair, as he might if Abhisheki were sitting there in the flesh. … Nor this is a matter of dry

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ritual—as one of his students was recalling his teaching methods to me, he suddenly broke

down in tears of grief of his late teacher. (Rahaim, 2012, p. 112)

Weidman (2012) mentions the same ritual is enacted in South India. Her guru's father

whom her guru referred as “my mother, my father, and my guru” hung in an angle

“so that it looked down on anyone who looked at it and compelled them to look up”

(Weidman, 2012, p. 225).

Figure 5.1 shows the garlanded photograph of Dr. Balaji’s father, the late violin

vidwan and ex-reader of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) Dr. Venkataramanujam

(for detailed information on Dr. Venkataramanujam, see Appendix D). Figure 5.2

shows Dr. Balaji’s guru, Dr. N. Rajam.

Figure 5.1: The garlanded photograph of Dr. Balaji’s father, Dr. V. K. Venkataramanujam (for detailed information see Appendix D). Behind the photograph, the father’s violin rests. The picture is

set on the chair and with the added effect of the clothing; the setting shows him in a near-real presence, sitting on the chair. (Büyükköksal, 2018)

Figure 5.2: Dr. N. Rajam’s picture. Dr. N. Rajam is Dr. Balaji’s guru in Banaras Hindu University. The picture was hung above the human height on the wall of the music room, possibly out of respect.

(Büyükköksal, 2018)

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There was other various rituals done regularly and explicitly in Dr. Balaji's house.

Nearly everyday when we arrived, we would hear Vedic chant (attached CD 1, track

2) coming from the kitchen out of a special machine designed to play it. Dr. Balaji's

wife would do a blessing tour in the house on a daily basis at the same times,

carrying around a flame in a steel bowl of oil. She would enter the music room and

regardless of the situation we were at hand—playing or having a conversation—she

would slowly present the fire with minimal circular moves to the deities' presence in

the room and would go out to the outside hall to continue where there were more

depictions of the deities. Because a small temple was situated in the kitchen, the

plates were first washed in a separate washroom and then brought to the kitchen. The

innate spirituality was also present in Dr. Balaji's routines in the lessons. Every time

when we would exchange instruments, for instance, when I would give my violin to

him to look at it, we enacted the gesture of holding the instrument to our heads as a

sign of respect. The instruments were seen part of the sacred world and we were

explicitly led to behave accordingly. When we would walk across the room, it was

inappropriate to jump over the instruments that were usually laid down on the

ground; instead one should walk around them. It was also required to use the right

hand for everything, especially giving and taking things. Another common gesture

was to pull on one ear with the hand when talking about a respected elder or gods.

During our time in Varanasi, Ertuğrul hurt his knee in a minor accident and he was

not able join the lessons for a while. When he was able to come back after three days,

it was still painful for him to sit long time on the ground. Dr. Balaji offered him to sit

on the chair and brought a chair from another room, but Ertuğrul hesitated and finally

preferred the ground. Dr. Balaji interpreted his preference that it was a sign that he is

a good musician:

Dr. V. Balaji: You see Madame; I think his consciousness doesn’t allow him to sit on the

chair.

Aslı Büyükköksal: Maybe, he didn’t feel connected like this.

V. B.: No no, you know what I think. When his teacher is sitting on the ground his

consciousness was not ok to sit higher. It’s a good sign; it shows that he’s a good musician.

(Personal communication, 29 December 2017)

In this excerpt, we see that the respect for the guru is seen as essential for the

establishment of musicianship. As the guru is seen as a representative of god, this

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respect is connected to the respects for gods. Weidman (2012) points out the same

idea behind sitting cross-legged on the floor in South India: “During concerts, in

which―as the dominant ideology of South Indian “classical” music would have

it―musicians are projecting the personae of devotees worshipping and showing their

humility toward god through music, musicians sit on the floor ” (Weidman, 2012, p.

224).

Apart from the existence of the rituals, the spirituality was also integrated in Dr.

Balaji’s playing during the 'lesson's, especially in his gestural expressions. When he

played and sang to exemplify a raga or to show the possible aesthetic elements in the

rendition of a composition, his facial expressions and gestures would hint the deities

in the room. At times, he would turn his face and open his palms to Lord Balaji, in

gratitude, offering him the particular ornamentation in the phrase or looking at him in

search of inspiration. He would point to the Krishna statue with a nod of his head or

with the eyes, when the lyrics in the song were about Lord Krishna. Sometimes,

turning to his father's photograph, he would play the alap as if taking his consent

about it.

In one lesson, when I could do the shifting with the second finger all through the

scale accurately, he turned to Lord Balaji and thanked him for this explicitly. Dr.

Balaji’s behavior accords with the understanding that the music is seen as the gods'

doing rather than the musicians'; the human body, i.e., the vocal chords and/or

fingers, and the musical instruments are seen as the tools used by the ‘Divine Will’

(Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 43) so that the music is created. Daniel Neuman (1990)

points out this approach as below:

The musician often describes himself as merely the instrument for what is in essence the will

and thereby the music of God. Without riaz the instrument is itself incapable of expressing

everything. … Of course, given Divine Will anything is possible... (Neuman D. M., 1990, p.

43)

This understanding relates also to the concept of “de-subjectified states” in Dard

Neuman’s (2012) article about the creativity and pedagogy. Opposed to the Western

approach that the artist plays central role in the creative process, the creativity is

“presented as either haphazard surprises or passive occurrences” (Neuman D. A.,

2012, p. 441).

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When I asked Perrine what kept her connected to Indian classical music as she

continues to play in this style to this day, she described her connection had been

personal and used the word “verticality”:

I practiced and played it like a meditation. Really personal thing. … I cannot say divine or

anything but vertical thing. I was playing for I don't know who or what but this [pointing up].

Playing Irish music is horizontal; it’s for other people, to be together in the humans’ world.

Indian music, it was vertical for me. … I was not at all in a mood of playing with other

people, meeting, ... Really inside thing. (Interview, 1 March 2018)

When I asked how she related to the spiritual/religious setting in Dr. Balaji’s house,

she preferred to talk about her experience of India before meeting Dr. Balaji, saying

that she’s not bound with an institutionalized religion and she liked the connection

she felt:

Ok, I'm French, I'm not Christian by birth, I'm nothing officially lets say. But I believe in

something, I don't need to call it with any special word, I don't care about it actually. So I was

quite young, 21, when I first went there. It was really strong. In music, but also in all India. I

really like the connection that I had in this context. Its not a question of Hindu, I don't care

about that, it's not the important thing. With music also it’s very present. (Interview, 1 March

2018)

Later on, she also described how it felt for her in Dr. Balaji’s house:

Ok, with my first guruji ... there were no questions like that [touching the feet to show

respect]. But when I met Balaji, it's really present. First, he's Brahman first and my first

guruji was not. And Balaji is from the South [of India] that makes also a difference. I think, it

[the spirituality] is more present in the South. ... So he's asking explicitly to do it. I was quite

young and really flexible on these things. ... But he didn't ask me to do it with N. Rajam or

with his own father. ... I was “Ok, let's do that.” I was not totally comfortable with that. I had

no problem but I was just doing. (Interview, 1 March 2018)

As we see in this excerpt, the rituals in particular had no effect on Perrine’s learning

and/or playing, since she didn’t internalize them. When I explicitly asked if it

contributed in the learning process, she answered: “Not the external things”. She

elaborated on the special connection with her first guruji, calling it “from the heart”.

Another feature we can observe is that although the underlying spirituality had been

present, the rituals enacted or expected from the students to be acted differ also

according to the person or time. There are no strict rules; in the meanwhile the main

idea seems to remain the same. In the other interviews I conducted with former

foreign students of Dr. Balaji, there were no explicit details given but the spiritual

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aspect was a frequent topic mentioned. As an answer to my question about his

experiences of Dr. Balaji’s methods, Gabriele Politi said: “An absolutely new feature

for me, assimilated from his lessons, consists of a spiritual, mystical approach to

music, an approach that the master also demanded in our relationship” (Interview, 3

April 2018). Arnaud Bourdonnay answered the question about how his perception of

music and playing changed after he travelled to India, saying:

India added a spiritual side to music I suppose, like something sacred, partly due to their

culture and conception of music, with gods etc. They really respect music and their

instrument and really take it seriously to another level. This was new for me. … culture and

values infused in me later on. And the respect for teachers in general. (Interview, 5 March

2018)

Another former student of Dr. Balaji, Marie-Line Aubry, made a short comparison

between the music education she had before, saying: “In France, I used to go for

regular classes, individual or collective, with a strong frame, exams, step by step,

very organized. There was no dimension of the sacred power of music, which I

discovered in India” (Interview, 11 March 2018).

5.2 An autoethnographical approach

Spirituality has been a problematic concept both hard to discuss and define in an

academic context. Jay Keister (2005) brings it up in relation to the investigation of

the issues of “authenticity” and the “other” in his article “Seeking Authentic

Experience: Spirituality in the Western Appropriation of Asian Music”. He argues

that “the latest self-reflexive move in ethnomusicology calls for an examination of an

important discourse about music in which “authenticity” and the “other” play

significant roles: the discourse of spirituality” (Keister, 2005, p. 36). Although the

definition of spirituality is problematic, especially cross-culturally, he claims an

“experience-centered approach” can be useful in the context of ethnomusicology and

refers to Ho (2001) who presented four categories of “spiritual sensitivity” and adds

that this categorization is in accord how the music performance is experienced both

by the performer and the audience:

1. The here-and-now experience: a complete immersion into the experience of the present

moment, being intensely committed to the immediacy of the here-and-now in its full

concreteness; 2. Tuning: a complete “resonance” or “being in tune” with something outside

of oneself, such as a musical performance and nature; 3. Flow: a total absorption in the

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performance of a task, with the feeling that the activity, rather than the performer, is

managing itself; 4. Focusing: the “bodily felt sense” of any experience ... an expression of the

wisdom of the body.” (2001, as cited in Keister, 2005, p. 37)

As a foreign researcher and student in Indian classical music context, how was my

relation to the spiritual/religious setting in Dr. Balaji’s space? I will try to take my

experience under focus as a subject matter, to clarify the process of the selection and

interpretation of the data, and to investigate my individual experience as a source for

understanding the socio-cultural phenomenon of spirituality. To start with, I will give

background information about my relation with the concept of spirituality in the past.

As an inborn in Turkey and raised in a secular family context, I have had merely a

common-sense knowledge about the institutionalized Islam and its practices in the

Turkish society, feeling distanced to them. My concrete connection with Sufism—

the mystical Islamic tradition in Turkey with its various branches, carrying distinct

characteristics—started through music. Five years ago, I had joined an international

sama gathering held in Turkey, open to everybody regardless of their age, gender,

and belief. By that time, I already had other experiences with spiritual disciplines,

such as the Native American practices, and read books about various other spiritual

traditions, but had not experienced them in their original context. As a work of

literature, I was familiar with Mesnevi, the work of Rumi, who was one of the most

influential Sufi mystics in Anatolia and the Middle East. Originally going to the

sama gathering ‘just to play music’, I became involved in sama, semah and zikr

practices based mostly on Mevlevi, Chishtiya and Anatolian Alaoite (Alevi) teachings

throughout the time. Though I haven’t been defining myself with an institutionalized

religion so far. In summary, I had been familiar with comprehensive and well-rooted

spiritual/religious traditions since a while when I arrived in India. According to

Fuller’s (2001) categorization, as quoted in Keister (2005), I seem to fit into the

category of “seeker spirituality”. Fuller introduces the concepts of “habitation

spirituality” and “seeker spirituality”, whereas the first one refers to the bond with

institutionalized religions, the individuals who tend to the latter one “resist settling

with any particular church community and choose to follow their own individualistic

path, which they feel is a more authentically spiritual way of life” (as cited in

Keister, 2005, p. 39).

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Coming back to the fieldwork process, there were three main relational aspects of my

‘being in Dr. Balaji’s space’ with the background I had. First, as a researcher, I

carried a responsibility to the research, which required that I participated in the local

acts to gain an understanding of how ‘it feels’, and at the same time, preserve my

stance to inquire the hidden meanings through the researcher’s eye.

Second, again with my identity as a researcher, I was having anxiety about the

appropriation of the “other’s musics” and their attached meanings. Keister (2005)

argues that the widespread enactment of the spirituality by the Westerners has

multiple implications and one of them is the problem of “spiritual commodity”

(Keister, 2005, p. 38). Referring to Bohlman (1997) who talks about Sufism, saying

that musics originating from various Sufi traditions are introduced into world music

market as a broad category for the sake of marketing strategies: “Bohlman clarifies

that this move is less about classification of music than it is about ownership of

musical and religious practice as “ownership has passed to the consumer of music

with the transformation of religious music to spiritual music”’ (1997, as cited in

Keister, 2005, p. 38). Bruno Nettl (2005) discusses this issue around the question

“who owns this music, and what may someone who does not own it do with it”

(Nettl, 2005, p. 198). Nettl points out that the idea of ownership is a culture-specific

issue and it is in the researcher’s responsibility to behave according to the specific

culture’s values. In the age of Internet, the ownership becomes a more complex issue

and additional regulations are needed to adapt to the mechanisms of the virtual

world. In my case, Dr. Balaji, being himself a professor of violin in Banaras Hindu

University, was involved in the research idea. For instance, he willingly agreed that I

made recordings of him playing certain ragas aimed especially for the project.

Third, as an individual coming to the field, loaded with past experiences of Sufism in

Turkey and my familiarity with its practices, such as; respecting the masters and the

enactment of various rituals, I had the experience that I enacted them not only to

adapt to the situation but also along with an internalization of their implied

meanings. This situation brought up the discussion of emic/etic approaches and the

insider/outsider interface. I had to be aware about my classifications and

interpretations of Dr. Balaji’s enactment of Hinduism as a religion, so that they

should be analyzed in the right context and not according to my previous experiences

in Sufism. Moreover, I had to pay more attention to preserve my critical stance and

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to step back at times for a broader understanding of the issues. On the other side of

the coin was that I could become aware of the commonalities and general tendencies

in the rituals of both traditions, which helped me not to confine Dr. Balaji’s presence

in the ‘other’ness. Alaghband-Zadeh (2013) points out that the innate connection

between religious devotion and Indian classical music was present also before the

twentieth century. Though to understand the up-to-date situation, we need to take

into account “the transformation, inflected by the Hindu nationalist rhetoric of the

music reformers as well as the New Age spirituality that came into prominence in

Indian music’s encounter with Western audiences in the 1960s” (Alaghband-Zadeh,

2013, p. 145). Analyzing the thumri style of music in India “in relation to issues of

transmission, prestige, respectability, connoisseurship, spirituality and gender”

(Alaghband-Zadeh, 2013, p. 3), she argues that the devotional aspect is advocated as

inherent and emphasized as a survival strategy by the performers and teachers in the

music scene of India. Finally, the issues of religious devotion and spirituality

certainly have socio-political implications, which had also effects in my ‘being in the

space of the guru’.

Which connotations have the title of spiritual/religious setting and why did I prefer to

use both of them? First, to mark the difference between Dr. Balaji’s stance and mine,

as a person from the Brahman caste, belonging to Hindu religion, he was inclined to

act various rituals as religious, which echoed as spiritual elements in my universe of

meaning. He enacted the rituals not devoid from their meanings but also as

prerequisites of Hinduism. Opposed to that, I was choosing to enact them with

various motivations, such as; the respect I felt for him, the research process, and/or

because they suited my preferences. Second, in our numerous conversations, Dr.

Balaji mentioned his idea of unity of beliefs. For him, it was a given that we were

Muslim. In one of these conversations, he sang us one of his compositions and

translated its lyrics, which were about the unity of gods and religions. Another

incident was when he recited an Islamic prayer in Arabic with melody, said that he

was curious about cultures and learned that prayer from his Muslim friends. When

we were talking about politics, he commented on the division of Muslims and

Hindus in India, said that the Muslims fought for independence along the Hindus and

that he didn’t agree with the idea of division. Finally, although Dr. Balaji’s belief in

divinity was expressed in Hindu elements in his life, he underlined the idea of the

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unity of beliefs, not necessarily bound to a specific religion. In this context, where

Dr. Balaji himself built explicit connections with other traditions of belief, the usage

of both concepts, spiritual/religious setting becomes meaningful.

I find it valuable to mention Keister’s (2005) approach to the discussion of

appropriation in linking the discussion to embodiment. He argues it is important to

ask “what is the motivation behind the desire of spiritual ownership by the

consumers”, referring to Bohlman’s (1997) concept of “spiritual commodity”

(Keister, 2005, p. 48). Keister quotes David Hay (2001), who links this phenomenon

to “the drive for “relational consciousness”’ (as cited in Keister, 2005, p. 38). Hay’s

approach corresponds to the relational stance I acquired in experiencing spirituality,

“in which human beings can feel a connectedness to God, other human beings, and

nature” and uses the spiritual practice as a means “to overcome the alienation

brought on by modern life” (as cited in Keister, 2005, p. 38). The pre-acceptance of

the ‘alienation under the conditions of modern life’ is an issue to be investigated

further, along with the phenomenon of the growing demand for non-Western

spiritual practices by the Westerners, though far out of the focus in this thesis. Still,

the one dealing with the issue of spirituality in the Western world has to take into

account when and how the beliefs and practices of ancient civilizations and traditions

are taken out of their contexts, how are the implications of this process, the possible

harms to the traditions themselves, and the changes in the perception of the particular

traditions and beliefs, both by the interpreters in the West and the native

practitioners. Korpela (2010) in her article about the “Westerners searching for

authenticity” (Korpela, 2010) in Varanasi warns us about the implications of this

quest. Based on her fieldwork conducted for her PhD, she observed that the

Westerners in Varanasi tend to live in local neighborhoods without socializing with

the local people, imposing a “postcolonial imagination” (Korpela, 2010, p. 1299).

She argues that the quest for authenticity by the Westerners confines itself to a frozen

past understanding of India; a process which devoid the Indians the voice of their

own in the contemporary context and have a strong influence on the ongoing process

of their definition of identity. Having stayed in Varanasi for one-and-a-half months, I

argue that this was merely one of the relationship types I observed. I encountered and

participated in various other types of relationships as well, where the contemporary

context was integrated within the traditional one. There were many Westerners who

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were coming to Varanasi since long years and adapted into long-time friendships

with the Indians.

Moreover, when we look at various applications of the values that come through the

spread of spiritual ideas and beliefs, there is another important point that needs to be

mentioned. According to King (1996), as a rejection of the authoritarian side of the

religion as an institution, the spiritual approach’s “use is about “creativity and

engagement within and outside religious traditions” and is often applied in

psychotherapy, movements for social justice and peace, and the arts” (1996, as cited

in Keister, 2005, p. 37). Bearing in mind the possibility of appropriation in the

application process, this perspective shows that the spiritual approach has also the

potential and inherent quality of creating bonds, paving the way for collectivity, and

engagement. It is valuable not to distance oneself to this issue just because it’s

problematic with possible problematic outcomes at times but instead to find ways in

dialogue and respect to reveal these issues along with the inherent possibilities to

enrich the societies’ understanding in socio-cultural milieu.

I will investigate in the following paragraphs below, how the relational aspect I had

acquired through my past experiences acting together with the spiritual/religious

setting in Dr. Balaji’s space paved the way for embodiment processes in the

transmission of musical knowledge. I analyze an excerpt from our sixth lesson,

regarding the spiritual/religious practices integrated into transmission.

On 27th of December it was our sixth lesson. Ertuğrul was not able to join because of

his knee problem so that we had a one-by-one lesson time. As we were nearing the

end, I expressed my concern about if I will succeed to learn what Dr. Balaji was

teaching me.

A.B.: So much information. I really hope to be able to learn to play the Indian violin.

V. B.: Don't take the negative energy. You can do it, that's why you have come all this way to

India. One thing I'll ask you [to do] today and we will finish the class like this. See, god has

provided you extra special energy. Try to understand.

At this point, he made a talk about the five senses in the body, declaring that in his

view there were six senses and the first sense was actually sound. He went on with

the explanation of the approach in Indian musicology that there were two types of

sound: ahata naad (the sound we can hear) and anahata naad (the sound we cannot

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hear, reserved for gods). Saying that he didn’t agree with this division, he argued that

humans could hear both types of sound. Finally, he told two stories about the Mishra

brothers and Tansen, about Mishra’s strong voice that broke the glass and Tansen’s

rendition of raga Dipak, which is believed to have the power to create fire, and the

burning of the court4.

Daniel Neuman (1990) comments on the stories told by the masters to the students

that they refer to a common past:

The remembered past which contemporary musicians evoke is not the immediate past but a

world that to the modern sensibility seems like something from the Arabian Nights. ... If all

this seems a trifle romanticized, it is nevertheless what the musician wistfully imagines and is

probably truer as an affective reality than our contemporary skeptical sensibilities would

allow us to believe. (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 21)

Dr. Balaji used the stories in a parallel fashion here, to elaborate on the power of

sound and the ragas. Then he pointed out that the power of the sound was also

present in the air.

V. B.: See the power of the raga. The power of the sound. Same power of the sound is in the

bomb. You cannot hear but feel. So many, they are dying. So the sound is the first indra,

sense. In the air also some sound is there which you can feel but not hear, because there is a

lot of energy in the air. In between these [showing his hands], you can feel it.

After this explanation he commanded me through a set of movements to show his

ideas in practice:

V. B.: Sit properly. Make your hands like this [shows me that I should hold my hands in the

shoulder level, my palms open, facing each other]. Close your eyes. Make a prayer, pray god,

say, “I want to know my energy in my body”. [I repeat after him]. Now open the eyes. This is

the fifth chakra, press it nicely, the thumb should be in the palm [shows how to press the

thumb on a particular point in the palm]. Now you should release the right hand only. This is

how to do it. This [energy] you should feel in between the two [consecutive] notes while you

are playing. First of all, you should feel it with your violin. Then, while you are playing, you

4 There are many versions of Tansen’s story of raga Dipak. In Dr. Balaji’s rendition, it depicts the moment when Tansen was forced to play the raga Dipak by the raja Akbhar as the court musician Raga Dipak is believed to cause fire, both inside the performer and in his environment when properly rendered. Tansen was worried about the consequences. Though his sister said that at the same time he would start to play in the court, she would sing raga Malhar at home, which is believed to bring rain. Tansen told her that she should start after him, giving him some time to elaborate the raga. When he started to play, the whole court went in fire but her sister’s singing was effective and brought rain after some minutes. That’s how Tansen could fulfill the mission he was appointed by the raja without the fire taking the control. Though, according to Dr. Balaji’s version of the story, Tansen’s body was burnt totally and he passed away after three – four months.

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should feel the sound around, with your fingers. The important part is the improvisation.

Think for the best to play the violin. [Think about] Music. Sound.

With this practice and its underlying meanings, we see how Dr. Balaji linked the

bodily sensations and practice explicitly to the transmission of musical knowledge in

the spiritual/religious context. He described the mechanism of music making as the

energy present in the air functioning through the body.

After he introduced me to the set of movements, he wanted me to repeat the same

row of the prayer and the moves:

V. B.: Now you remember how I showed you to do? Start. Press the thumb. Push. Let me see

how much you can push. How much you can take. You can release your left hand now. Stay

there. Now I'll ask something. You feel something in between these two palms?

A. B.: [My palms facing each other] Yes.

V. B.: That’s what I told you, this is the sound, which you will make without clapping also.

When they will get together, this energy is there. See me, and you do it, watch. You will feel

[the energy] from me [coming] to you.

He turned on the tanpura machine. My palms stayed as he instructed. He started to

sing phrases in raga Yaman.

V. B.: You are feeling the energy from me. You will feel [it] like a balloon. Press in the hand,

this is the energy from the music we can make.

He sang the phrases in sargam and wanted me to imitate him. I followed him,

singing. He warned me to sing stronger. As I tried to sing stronger and hold long

notes like he did he approved in Hindi: “Sa bash”. I was taking deep breaths and

trying to imitate how he rendered the phrases. Stopping after about three minutes, he

explained the characteristics of the phrases in raga Yaman.

V. B.: This is Yaman. In this raga, try to avoid finishing in the Sa. You end it [the phrase] in

the Ga or Ni then go back to Sa.

We continued, him singing, me repeating after him. After about three minutes again,

he switched to a-kar; singing without the note names and with the ornaments. Dr.

Balaji was controlling the flow with the exclamations in between, such as; “Don’t

shake the head!”, “Open the mouth!”, and “Powerful voice!”. He guided me to use

the uvula for the shifting gamakas, referring to it as ‘the other tongue’. I was

imitating his hand gestures as well, to be able to catch the right intonation and

accents.

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We can observe how Dr. Balaji linked the understanding of musical ideas to the

body. When he said, “Sit properly”, he referred to the right posture needed to sing,

cross-legged with an open chest. The body is directly involved with the vocal chords,

the lungs, the breath, the diaphragm, the larynx, the soft palate, and the uvula. The

hand and facial gestures are an important component of singing in India, providing

guidance through the dynamics and intonation.

When I didn’t render the phrases appropriately, he led me to the right note by giving

the note names in sargam or in Western solfege (do-re-mi). After about ten minutes,

he went up to the higher octave and instructed me to follow in the lower octave.

When I coughed in between and stopped, he encouraged me to continue: “Go, go for

it!”. We remained about five minutes in the higher octave and finished the practice.

Singing is one of the primary components in Indian classical music lessons, present

in teaching of instrumental music. Oppenheim (2012) refers to the interviews he

conducted with foreign students of Indian music about the importance of singing:

“[the teacher was] singing to illustrate that the mechanism of music is the voice and

that it is central to internalizing the material” (Oppenheim, 2012, p. 113). In addition,

it is used to show the possibilities in the particular raga at hand: “He will also

occasionally sing passages beyond her ability to reproduce. This is intended to

encourage creativity and monitor her understanding of the grammar and limitations

of the raga being sung” (Oppenheim, 2012, p. 105).

In the excerpt from our sixth lesson above, Dr. Balaji taught raga Yaman through

singing along with the practice of what we can summarize as ‘feeling the energy’,

using his words. He incorporated the element of belief in two ways; as the belief in

god, when he wanted us make a prayer before starting the practice and the belief in

the presence of chakras, an common tradition in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism,

present since ancient times. Along with the prayer and pressing the special points

corresponding the chakras, he also introduced the phenomenon of ‘feeling the energy

of the guru’, which had the implications of bodily sensations and the changes I

experienced in my singing. Although Dr. Balaji seemingly merges the physical and

metaphysical understanding in this practice, my argument is not a metaphysical one.

My focus is not on the question if the mechanisms he introduced wrapped in belief

issues existed in reality or not. My approach is rather an experience-based one,

presenting my interpretation of the experience and the mechanisms of embodiment in

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his practice, whereas the reader should take my background information into account

as well, as I presented above in the autoethnographical part.

The affective embodiment processes I experienced were: First, the prayer acted as a

tool to define our shared intention and to focus on the singing and sound intensively.

Second, Dr. Balaji’s dominating presence in the practice emphasized his

responsibility as the master to make me succeed, and his role of being the mediator

of the tradition. His bodily presence became an actor of the transmission in this

sense. Third, the implied meditative character of the practice created a space where

we could ensure a high level of concentration. Fourth, his exclamations about the

posture, the use of the uvula, and the vocal chords; about the use of the whole body,

in short, worked in a way that the possibly detached attitude of my mental processes

was by-passed by the bodily transmission. Fifth, reserving the necessity that we

should do our best that the transmission is successful; i.e., teaching effectively on the

side of the teacher and being open to learn on the side of the student, he was letting

the responsibility over to the element of divine will, establishing the trust that if it is

meant to be, it will happen. Finally, Dr. Balaji used the practice to design a space as

such where he would encourage me in rendering the phrases of raga Yaman and push

me beyond my limitations, relying on the spiritual/religious elements at hand.

As I demonstrated in the excerpt taken from our sixth lesson, the realization of

embodiment of musical ideas is possible with the contribution of the two parties,

namely, the guru and the disciple. As my socio-cultural background and approach

provided a suitable platform for internalization of the spiritual/religious elements in

guru’s space, Dr. Balaji and me, we agreed on the basic assumptions of this setting.

Finally, the necessary space for the transmission through embodiment processes was

created in the context of the spiritual/religious setting.

In this chapter, I demonstrated the role of the spiritual/religious setting in the process

of embodiment during the transmission of musical knowledge, using

autoethnographical writing and referring to our conversations with Dr. Balaji. I

discussed this issue both in Western and Indian context, based on the researches

about the encounter of both cultures and on the sources about the spiritual/religious

elements in Indian classical music nurtured by the Hindu and Islamic Sufi traditions.

Figure 5.3 shows Dr. V. Balaji, Ertuğrul and me together after our last—not least—

lesson.

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Figure 5.3: Together with Dr. Balaji in our last lesson. After we finished playing, he blessed us by painting teeka (kumkum) made out of turmeric and natural dye on our foreheads and presented us the

shawls in the picture as a gift. He recommended that we should use the shawls when we have a concert to accompany us as the reminder of our guruji.

The next chapter is about the mutual engagement of the guru and the shishya in the

course of transmission. I discuss the role of the close bond between them related to

embodiment processes.

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6. THE ENGAGEMENT – THE SOCIO-CULTURAL SETTING

“Teaching teaches me a lot. Students coming and going, it gives me good energy. My

stage days are there and I enjoy that, too. Now, when I leave the world, my music

will remain in the students.” (Dr. V. Balaji, Personal communication, 23 December

2017)

In this chapter, I explore the issue of engagement in the contexts of dedication and

submission, and the transmission of ethics. The first section is about the issues of

dedication and submission, which are prerequisites in creation of the strong bond

between the guru and the shishya. In the second section, I look at the ethical

messages transmitted during the lessons and investigate their role in the embodiment

processes.

6.1 Dedication and Submission

Our meetings with Dr. Balaji took always place in his house, in the music room that

was the central space in the house. We met on a daily basis during a one-month

period. It was an intense time, filled with music and practice, regulated usually

according to Dr. Balaji's concert arrangements and university duties. Saying that one

month is a very short period to teach the elements he had in mind, he decided himself

to quit some of his Indian students for the while and even refused a foreigner student

who called him to learn in the same period as us. These implied an intense

engagement and put us in a situation of high responsibility to continue the lessons

regularly and do riaz to be prepared for the lessons.

In the excerpt below, I described the first time, in the morning of our fourth lesson,

when I felt engagement as an issue related to dedication and submission.

When I woke up in the morning of our fourth lesson, I felt uttermost tired and sick.

That day, as Dr. Balaji had the day off, we set up to meet in the noontime. I decided

to call it off and phoned him to tell him about it:

A. B.: Guruji, I feel sick. Is it ok to call it off today?

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V. B.: You know actually I called my students off to teach you. I think it's good not to waste

my time.

A. B.: So you say even I feel sick, I should come to the lesson?

V. B.: I'm just telling you [the situation], you can decide [though he doesn't sound as it is up

to my choice]. I will leave you from 6th to 12th [of January] because I go to concerts anyway.

So we are trying to finish here the exercises and recordings. Did you take your breakfast?

A. B.: No, because my throat is hurting.

V. B.: So you can eat your breakfast now and come also at 12:30, no problem. Are you

coming?

A. B.: Yes Dr. Balaji, I'm coming. See you then.

After the conversation, I had mixed feelings of having lost the control and being

directed. As I was shocked about how different our relationship with Dr. Balaji was

from my past experiences of having a teacher, I started to realize that it was more

than 'a lesson'; the gesture of declaring ourselves as his students and he declaring

himself as our teacher meant a bundle of commitments and promises. Even though,

we didn't ask that he called his other students off and it was his decision, it affected

us, too and certainly, it was not open to discussion. Finally, I had to go to the lesson

for several reasons; such as to keep our relationship in good terms and to be able to

continue my fieldwork.

On the way to his house, I decided to surrender to the situation. In the end, I had

accepted to go to the lesson so there was no need to bring up the issue again. When

we arrived, he welcomed us energetically and immediately asked if we wanted

coffee. His wife wasn't at home so he went to kitchen to prepare and came back with

masala chai. He said:

Because you were telling me that you like masala chai, I immediately crashed ginger. It's also

good for your health.

Giving me a homemade tiger balm for the knocking sickness along with the chai, he

was behaving compassionate and caring, almost like a father.

Eventually, our lesson has lasted more than four hours and it was one of the most

effective lessons filled with technical exercises, learning raga Kalyani, its phrases

and a composition in the same raga. I had decided to come even though I felt sick so

that I had the motivation to do my best. Dr. Balaji's energy was very high and he just

gave a break for ten minutes to take his breakfast. At the end, I was surprised that my

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sickness weakened and that I came out of his house feeling energized with the effect

of the rewarding lesson time.

Returning home, I realized our relationship was explicitly different than a tutor-

student relationship, it certainly became more than a formal one. It was more like a

family bond; familiar to me from the Turkish culture I live in, in the sense that the

respect for the elders can take priority than the individual wishes. The guru acted as

the authority figure, took the lead of the situation and we submitted his decision.

Where did the borders started to remain as an individual and how far the individual

wishes were ‘right’ for the situation? In this case, my surrender resulted well for me

as I had a good lesson and felt healthy again. I was left wondering what it means

really to be a disciple and how is the essence of submission.

Another question mingling my mind was the future of my “discipular ethnography”

where “the student's submission is counterposed to scholar's entitlement to know,

which marks ethnomusicology as an inclusive cross-cultural practice” (Qureshi,

2009, p. 168).

As I depicted above, the nature of the bond between Dr. Balaji and us revealed itself

as completely distinct from my previous experiences. It was already in the first

lesson, that Dr. Balaji declared Ertuğrul and me as the son and the daughter of the

family. In his words it was: “You should call me guruji [master] and my wife mataji

[mother].” (Personal communication, 20 December 2017)

This familial bond declared, he had instructed us to bow to the statue of Lord Balaji,

the pictures of Dr. V. K. Venkataramanujam and Dr. N. Rajam. He had indicated that

we should touch his and his wife's feet to show respect. Although I had been familiar

with the concepts of bowing and touching from the concerts and daily life, practicing

them had felt like an overwhelming submission at first.

During my time with Dr. Balaji, I observed how his fellow disciples brought him

paan every time they came by, handled his various tasks, such as shopping, dealing

with the bank issues, and helping him prepare his luggage for the concert journey, …

etc. When I conversed with them about it, they smiled, said that the guruji was the

best and talked about his mastery in violin playing and teaching. They didn’t show a

glimpse of complaint about the tasks even though some seemed pretty demanding.

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On the contrary, there was an ongoing acceptance for their role, a silent and subtle

exhibition of their high respect for Dr. Balaji.

In my case that I stayed in Varanasi for one month only, I experienced the gurukul in

an adapted sense to my situation. My husband and me didn't live in Dr. Balaji's

house; he also didn't want to ask our help for the daily chores. Though when I asked

him and his wife if we can help with anything, he pointed out that if I would be

staying for a longer period, of course he would ask me to do things. Dr. Balaji also

occasionally insisted that we should live nearer to his house when we come back to

learn. He exemplified some of his former students who came and lived with him

during their stay.

As Daniel Neuman (1990) states in his book, being devoted to the guru means

primarily being devoted to the music. Furthermore, it implies obedience not only in

the matters regarding music, but also in life style. That means “the disciple considers

it is his duty to provide services for his guru and make life generally as comfortable

as possible for him” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 46).

Figure 6.1 shows a plate presented to Dr. Balaji by his students from Sri Lanka.

Figure 6.1: A plate presented to Dr. Balaji by his students from Sri Lanka. In the plate, there is a detailed description of the structures how to show respect for the guruji. In addition, his father Dr.

Venkataramanujam is also mentioned and been given credit as occupying a rank higher in the V. K. V. Parampara. (Büyükköksal, 2018)

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Perrine depicted her first meeting with Dr. Balaji and commented on the issue of

engagement:

I went to his place with papaji [a friend's father]. At that time, we fixed a certain amount. I

told him, I want to stay few weeks, he said ok, it is this amount [of money], I don't remember

exactly how much … We fixed three classes a week. He said “If I tell you to come more,

you're invited.” He asked me to play something, then gave me some South Indian exercises.

He was notating them. Next time, I came back having practiced, so we play together. After

that time, I went daily. If one day was off, it was because I said that I'm going to the family of

my friend. On Sundays, I used to go to the family. Otherwise, it would have been daily all the

time. I was going at 18:00 or 19:00 in the evening, eating there, Shanti [Dr. Balaji's wife] was

giving me meal. We were practicing in the night, daily. It was just crazy. And I stayed until

the end finally, 6 months. (Interview, 27 February 2018)

Perrine described her experience with the issue of engagement relating it to the

different understandings of distance:

[The idea of distance is] totally different. Here [in France] with the teacher, you meet him,

then you go back, that's all. If a guruji opens his heart then he can give a lot, everything. You

are supposed to give as much as they give. It's not that easy. (Interview, 27 February 2018)

She pointed out that the workload was a lot but good at the same time and that she

really liked it.

But it was total engagement from his part and from my part. It was full. (Interview, 27

February 2018)

Daniel Neuman (1990) mentions the same issue, referring to his own ustad,

Ustad Sabri Khan:

... I don't know whether we reciprocate the same way, but if I love one of them [disciples]

and he loves me the same way, I think he is good and I can give him everything if he lives

with me. I can tell him as much as I know. Why? Because I love him. (Neuman D. M., 1990,

p. 47-48)

The guru-shishya relationship has distinct characteristics than a regular teacher-

student relationship. The definition of borders may vary, especially across the

cultures. Perrine mentioned, as there was a big expectation of involvement from

guruji's side; she found it difficult to define the borders.

I feel he is sometimes showing a lot emotions, ... It was so huge what he was saying

sometimes, it was a bit incredible. I was thinking maybe it's too much. ... Sometimes I feel

really not comfortable because it's a lot. It's also difficult to receive it and to give back as

much as he expects. The involvement in music and in life. The whole life, because everything

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is linked. There is no limit like in western learning. Limits are difficult to see. It requires a lot

of involvement. (Interview, 1 March 2018)

Daniel Neuman (1990) states:

In addition to guiding his disciple in his musical training, the guru guides his disciple in

learning the role of the musician. As important as his function of teaching is his function as a

model for his disciples. And in addition to perpetuating the tradition through time, the guru

embodies in his “space” an identity, which his disciples will assume and transmit to their

disciples. (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 31)

Rahaim (2012) in his book about gesture and voice in Hindustani music, argues that

to understand the construction of the “musicking body”, we should take volition into

account as well as inheritance. He uses the word volition, to indicate the vital

necessity of the close bond between teacher and student. Rahaim refers to the

vocalist Sameer Dublay, that he “emphasizes that the full reception of Jitendra

Abhisheki's gestural knowledge was possible only within the context of a dedicated,

long-term guru-shishya relationship” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 111) Sameer Duplay said

about his guru Abhisheki: “You only know these gestures if you live with him”

(Rahaim, 2012, p. 111-2). The conscious imitation of the teacher is seen as

acceptable only in the beginners' level. The desired transmission happens when the

disciple attend the teacher's lessons on an unintentional way. The volition functions

for the guru and the disciple when they step on the path of mutual devotion.

According to Rahaim, disciple's respect, “spontaneous affection”, and commitment

to the guru, and guru's love for the disciple and his engagement in teaching play

crucial roles in the transmission. “Face-to-face learning is a capacity for

encountering music through the body and voice of a beloved teacher, rather than

merely a process of passive reception” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 112).

Daniel Neuman (1990) argues in a parallel fashion that the communication of the

tradition echoes itself in the guru-shishya relationship. He notes that without love and

devotion there is no communication, which is a fundamental requisite of the guru-

shishya institution (Neuman D. M., 1990).

6.2 The Transmission of Ethics

The whole setting of the being together with Balaji, including not only the lessons

but also the informal times where we ate together, had conversations, and when he

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was showing his workshop to build violins, implied the ethical behaviors and

manners as well, which we were constantly invited to take into consideration. The

transmission of these ethical values happened mostly through his presence and

attitude. His disciples used to join us in the lessons, mostly Sushil or Nuan Wijekoon

Bandara. I felt that Dr. Balaji especially wanted their presence, as they were

representing role models, both in music and manners. If they were to do something, it

was implied that we should follow them. All that happened usually on a nonverbal

level.

One incident happened on 1st of January, which was accepted to be a special day by

Dr. Balaji and his family; the first day of the year. Guruji had invited us for a special

summoning up of his disciples, to have lunch together with our lesson as a follow-up.

After we had eaten, all disciples including us were called to the music room. Dr.

Balaji sat on his guruji place on the rug. His wife stood beside him, holding hundred

rupee banknotes. The disciples started to go to him, one by one, bowed to his feet.

He blessed them placing his hand on their heads and said personal greetings about

the New Year and music. The disciples did the same gesture for his wife, Shanti. She

reached the banknotes over to Dr. Balaji to distribute everybody. When it was our

turn, it was already clear that we should follow the same row of the moves as the

other disciples did. He called us together as husband and wife and reached our

hundred rupees as a new year's blessing.

In this example, in addition to the disciples being role models, we see that the guru

affirms his authoritative role as a father by distributing money as a blessing. In the

old practice when the shishya lived with the guru, he was not only musically but also

economically dependent on the guru.

Though when we didn't realize the manners at hand by ourselves, we were given

explicit instructions about how to behave according to his tradition, too. One time,

when we were sitting after a lesson together with Ertuğrul, he told me that my

husband understood one rule correctly and he waited for me to understand it by

myself but because it didn't happen he needed to tell me.

It doesn't matter for me on a personal level but as you should learn the Indian manners, you

shouldn't call me by my name. Even my wife doesn't call me by the name when other people

are around. You should call me guruji, as you call my wife mataji. We don't talk about our

gurujis by their names. (Personal communication, 29 December 2017)

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Rahaim (2012) brings up the issue of ethical transmission along with the

“paramparic body”. He claims that ethics are transmitted “at the level of affective

stances” (Rahaim, 2012, p. 119), rather than the level of explicit moral reasoning or

conventional emotion. He exemplifies the effective stances as humility, calmness,

and openness. “It is in this sense that paramparic bodies are ethical: a student is

disciplines not only to perform beautifully, but also to perform virtuously” (Rahaim,

2012, p. 119). After leaving India, during one of our phone talks with Dr. Balaji, he

brought up the ethical issue of being honest. I was telling him that one friend

borrowed me a second violin as a surprise so that I can play in Indian tuning, he said:

“We should be honest to our music and to ourselves. When we are honest, then

everything what is needed comes” (Personal communication, 15 February 2018).

In this chapter, I demonstrated the characteristics of traditional guru-shishya

relationship in the sense of creating a close bond between the master and the student.

I explored this under the title of the engagement. In the first section, I discussed the

dedication of both parties and the submission of the student and investigated how

they serve to embodiment processes. In the second section, I looked at the ethical

transmission and explored how they are employed in the transmission of bodily

dispositions.

In the next chapter, I summarize the findings of my research and give

recommendations for further research as conclusion.

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7. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

7.1 A Brief Summary

In this thesis, I demonstrated how Prof Dr. V. Balaji’s teaching methodology,

pedagogical approach, the spiritual/religious setting in his space, and the

phenomenon of mutual engagement led to embodiment of the musical ideas,

consisting of the technical capabilities and performance-related material. During the

course of the research, I explored the embodiment processes in the transmission of

musical knowledge in Indian classical music, in the context of a case study about Dr.

V. Balaji, through examining his teaching along with the tools of analysis in-context,

thick description, and autoethnographical approach. As a detailed, up-to-date study, I

tried to textualize and represent the inherent mechanisms, ideational and belief

systems at work.

In the first chapter, I presented the purpose of the thesis, my motivation to conduct

the research, the methodological approach, and the discussion of the literature on

embodiment and the spiritual/religious setting.

In the second chapter, I demonstrated the basic elements of the guru-shishya

relationship through the thick description of our first lesson with Dr. V. Balaji. Along

with presenting the exercises and their transcriptions, I talked about the basic

elements; such as, imitation, continuity, Dr. V. Balaji’s overall leading and

controlling presence, and the non-verbal space.

In the third chapter, titled “Teaching Methodology”, I demonstrated the embodiment

processes in the two sections; namely, the technical transmission and immersion in

music. In the first section, I investigated the bodily transmission through the teaching

of techniques. As the technical exercises were innately linked to the performance

practice, the observation and imitation were the tools to acquire the dispositions of an

artist. The movement and the flexibility of the left hand were prioritized so that the

work was on the body, in order to acquire the desired bodily movement drawing on

the playing of the guru. The rote repetition was another platform where the student is

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exposed to the guru’s presence and playing during the long hours of repeating the

same exercises and/or phrases. The lack of standardization is another factor in the

embodiment process where the disciple establishes a life-long bond to the guru an

therefore, the transmission of his bodily dispositions were possible through the

devotion. Furthermore, I discussed the role of the explanations and stories in the

transmission process, which acted as an anchor while the body searched its way to

acquire the new dispositions. Finally, I talk about the usage of notation, which was

used mostly as a mnemonic device. The second section was about the immersion in

music. I elaborated on the concept of immersion through the issues of the cyclical

nature of Indian music—both in riaz and performance—, the emphasis on the

continuity and nonverbal space during the lessons, the focus on music, the riaz, and

the drone. The cyclicity in Indian classical music paves the way for a meditative

state, where the acquisition of the technique occurs through bodily transmission. The

continuity and nonverbality throughout the lessons is an effective tool to bypass the

detached attitude of the mind and helps to maintain the musical space. The focus on

music as implied in guru’s life prepared a suitable space for embodiment. I discussed

this issue by bringing up the concepts of sanskar and mudra related to the presence

of the guru. In riaz section, I demonstrated that the meaning of riaz encompasses

more than its English translation practice through investigating the concepts of

‘creativity beyond boredom’ and jagah (Neuman D. A., 2012). Through dedicated

practice, where the student plays endless repetitions of the same phrase, she is

immersed in music through the movement of the fingers and arms. Finally, I talked

about the drone, its peculiar characteristics of employing the overtones and

continuity. These features play an important role in the immersion, in establishing

the mood of the raga by sounding the emphasized notes in the rendition.

The fourth chapter was about the pedagogical approach of Dr. V. Balaji. First, I

talked about his shouting, which had a physical effect on my body and how it helped

to recollect the necessary concentrated state. Second, I explored how he pushed the

students beyond their limits. In this course of being pushed, the student engages with

her whole body in the process to meet the demands and it results in the embodiment

of musical ideas. Third, his attentiveness worked as feedback both on our musical

development and our general state. The continuous attention of the guru pushed the

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student to develop a heightened awareness of the self, which is an important element

of the embodiment processes.

In the fifth chapter, I explored the spiritual/religious setting through the investigation

of the Hindu and Islamic Sufi elements in Dr. Balaji’s teaching, and an

autoethnographical approach. First, I mentioned the concept of gatra veena in

relation to anthropomorphic imagery and sacredness of sound in Hinduism. Then I

commented on the use of mystic music and sama in Islamic Sufism to reach an

understanding of the divine through trance states. Furthermore, I argued that the

rituals to show respect for the late gurus initiate the disciple in the tradition of the

gharana and fosters the bond with the guru. This process results in the affective

transmission of bodily dispositions of the guru. In the second section, I investigated

the concept of spirituality and its echoes in the West through the writings of Keister

(2005) and Korpela (2010). Then, I gave information about my background in

spiritual/religious understanding to reveal my identity as a researcher. I demonstrated

the three stances I had throughout the fieldwork, namely my responsibility to the

research, the anxiety I experienced about the trap of appropriation, and my

internalization of the rituals with a background of Sufism and the resulting questions

of emic/etic approaches. In relation to my approach, I referred to Hay’s (2001)

concept of “relational consciousness” (Hay, 2001). Finally I presented a thick

description of our sixth lesson with Dr. V. Balaji as a concrete example of my

experience of embodiment of musical ideas, aided by the spiritual/religious setting.

The sixth chapter was about the high level of engagement in our relationship with Dr.

Balaji, both by the guru and shishya. I explored it through the issues of dedication,

submission, and the transmission of ethics to become an artist. I argued that the

definitions of distance and the borders are culture-specific. Furthermore, I

demonstrated how the mutual close bond between the master and disciple contributed

the embodiment process, referring to Rahaim’s (2012) concepts of unconscious

imitation and “spontaneous affection” (Rahaim, 2012). As the living guru is seen as

the embodiment of the tradition in both musical and spiritual/religious sense, the

disciple’s respect and love for the guru, and his devotion to him results in the

acquisition of the bodily dispositions to become a musician. Finally, in the second

section, I investigated the transmission of ethics, drawing on examples from my own

experience and referring to Rahaim (2012) who argued that along with the musical

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knowledge, the virtues of “humility, calmness, and openness” are transmitted as well

through the guru’s presence.

In the next subchapter, I discuss the concepts of preservation, memorialization, and

mediation, in relation to ethnomusicological approach, the context of Indian classical

music, and embodiment.

7.2 Preservation, Memorialization, and Mediation

While writing the thesis, one question kept coming to my mind: What are my

responsibilities to the research and to Dr. V. Balaji? At this point, I would like to

refer to Shelemay (1997) who brings up the three implications of the fieldwork in the

area of the transmission of tradition; namely preserving, memorializing, and

mediating tradition, saying:

Almost without an exception, these situations inevitably arise at the point of intersection of

life and scholarship –they begin at moments when the study of a tradition becomes part of the

life of the tradition itself and relationships in the field deepen to a more interactional level.

(Shelemay, 1997, p. 197)

These implications have been discussed in the history of ethnomusicology through

the question if they have an inherent hegemonic and/or imperial quality. On the

contrary, Shelemay talks about these implications in dialogue with studied cultures’

members. Dr. Balaji implied the same three aspects, declaring his expectations from

my musical development and the research. He was certainly willing to be recorded in

audio and video, having the vision of conveying his musical message through that,

while reserving some secret information inherited from his gharana.

Along with the dominating institutionalized music education in the universities and

music schools, and the survival strategies utilized by the musicians in the

contemporary setting of India, still, the way to musicianship mainly goes through the

face-to-face or body-to-body interaction in the guru-shishya parampara. The

embodiment of musical ideas depends on the interaction of bodies in this system. Dr.

V. Balaji mentioned its importance in our numerous conversations:

[Meaning the technique he previously demonstrated] This is presence of mine. This cannot be

taught. This can be learned only while you are watching and listening more. In fact, I prefer

this. It's my experience. One of my students plays really superb, I love his playing, and he’s

hardly 30 years old, an assistant professor. He would come on Saturdays at 18:30. He used to

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say: “Please sir. Play.” I would play for 4-5 hours. And I asked him: “You don't play?” He

answered: “No no, please sir.” After that, we would have night dinner together, then we

would discuss [some issues], and at 6:00 in the morning he would go. He won't record. He

won't write composition. But [he would] just copy my playing. That is concentration, brain.

He was playing less. Watching more. Hearing more. I asked him to play, he answered: “Sir,

same thing I want to play but maybe something I will do here and there, so that you will also

lose your mood, so it's better to watch. I will practice the same thing by myself, then I show it

to you after couple of classes”. (Personal communication, 1 January 2018)

Though preservation in Indian classical music context is an issue to be discussed.

Daniel Neuman (1990) talks about its adaptation capabilities to the ever-changing

world in relation to the appreciation of Indian classical music in the West:

This spread of Indian music beyond its cultural boundaries suggests that, as with biological

species, the ability to thrive in an expanded ecological niche is a positive adaptive response;

… the question here, … how such a characteristic, yet elusive and ephemeral, cultural

phenomenon continues to maintain its integrity and autonomy in a world so vastly changed

from that which gave it birth. (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 17-18)

One of the key figures in this spread is undoubtedly Ravi Shankar, the renowned

sitarist both in India and the West. According to Farrell (2010), “He has become a

symbol of the bridge between tradition and change in Indian music, no Indian

musician has ever had such a lasting impact in the West, before or since (Farrell,

2010, p. 493). Another impact was his association with George Harrison from the

Beatles, which paved the way for Westerners coming to India to learn music. In the

wake of the tradition, change and the mutual influence, my observation was although

the past represents a romanticized, idealized state of music and musicians, there are

ever-adapting survival strategies of musicians in a tradition constantly renewing

itself. Dr. Balaji talked about this issue in one of our conversations:

The change is not only in human body, also in the nature. Because music is part of the nature,

naturally it is changing, too. The purity is going away. Now others take the classical music’s

part away. Like Khyal. I also play. Now ghazal is trying to take more place for itself in the

music. Also the folk tradition is on top. I also play, according to the audience and place.

Finally, I play one piece of folk. Now you are not getting the support from the audience you

used to get before. They are divided in two. Some they go for blues, jazz. The others go for

classical. You should think about your music also. It's good also one way it is bad. (Personal

communication, 14 January 2018)

When I asked him in which way it was good he said we met because of the

technology and we wouldn’t be able to find him without it. He also listed the

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advantages of audio and video recordings in the transmission process and talked

about the young generation:

There was a time if you want to learn from Balaji, you have to come, they wouldn't allow you

to write, or to record. Normally, they don't allow. But I allow them. Because it's not only

music, they should know the personality. Behind that, the music is there. In which personality

the music flourishes. In media, some little boys are coming up, sometimes playing better than

us. I agree. But the conditions they have, we didn't have in our time. The teacher wouldn't

write down the composition for me. Now the recording is available. Also on the laptop, he

can slow down the melody and follow. Why you take the video, because you keep all your

memories in the machine, you will have all the information. (Personal communication, 14

January 2018)

Talking about the good and bad sides of the advancements in technology, he still

emphasized there is no replacement to face-to-face interaction by talking about a

secret strategy in his playing and related it to the story of a former student who

would come just to listen to and observe him:

As a researcher and student who joined this system, regardless of being a foreigner in

the culture, Dr. Balaji assigned me the roles of carrying the tradition on, both in the

sense of research and music. When I said that I feel responsible to do more riaz

because he called some of his students off to teach us, he answered:

If you feel responsibility then you should work. You should promise. You should play. You

should promise me. When you go back to your country, they should feel that India is very

rich, mentally, and in the heart also. That's what I want. If you play, the people will ask from

whom you learned. And I won't be there, but I will be there, in your fingers, in your playing.

Tomorrow I will not be alive maybe but I will be there in your playing. This is your

responsibility. (Personal communication, 26 December 2017)

Finally, to mention the issue of mediation, Shelemay (1997) refers to researchers,

such as, Alan Lomax, Frisbie and McAllester, and Hawes, defining themselves as

mediators (Shelemay, 1997, p. 199). One example for mediation is the adaptation of

the methodology and pedagogy learned in the field to the Western transmission of

musical knowledge. Peter Dunbar-Hall (2010) gives an autoethnographical account

of his experience, learning Balinese music, which led him “to refashioning of my

ideas on music as a pedagogic undertaking, subsequently influencing my

professional role as a university teacher in both ideological and practical ways”

(Dunbar-Hall, 2010, 154).

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In the following subchapter, I talk about the consent process and the approach of

dialogic editing.

7.3 The Consent Process and Dialogic Editing

To finalize the thesis, one of the most important works was to take the consent of Dr.

V. Balaji about the final outcome and to edit it in dialogue with him. Although he

was informed about the research and gave his consent about it beforehand, it was

necessary to take his consent about the finished work, too. As it was a long text in

English, containing terminology of social sciences, I was worried if it would be

asking too much from him to read it all, even though he has a good command of

English language. In the version I sent him, I marked the parts in case, which I

thought would be the most important parts of his concerns. Finally, I contacted him

through Whatsapp and let him know that I finished writing the thesis.

Simultaneously, I sent the marked text via e-mail. In fact, his daughter attends his e-

mails, receiving and answering them. After I sent the thesis, Dr. Balaji and his

daughter Bharavi Balaji contacted me in a very short time and informed me that they

will give me feedback, which happened very soon—in a day—as well. Below is an

excerpt of our talk with Dr. Balaji during this process:

V. B.: I’m reading all. Some spelling mistakes are there, kindly check for the correct word.

A. B.: This is the first draft. It will be checked many times more.

V. B.: Go for the best. I am with you. I am in you. So be with me.

A. B.: Thank you guruji.

V. B.: One day, I’ll come to Turkey. Surely, I’ll come. You have returned something [the

thesis], which is making me very emotional. [For instance] the shouting matter, you

understand me. I said to my wife: “She is not my wife. She is not my daughter. She is not my

sister. But she understands me, what I am and what these things mean.” My daughter started

crying, you know. She is very happy. She is also reading. So somehow we are all working

with you.

A. B.: Thank you so much, guruji. I’m very happy that you like what I wrote.

V. B.: I will be happy the day when I will play with you.

A. B.: Yes, me too.

V. B.: I am very happy about your work. You have selected very nicely. It made me very

emotional. I am honored. You come, I will teach you. Bless you.

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After finishing the thesis, I was speculating to myself about possible problematic

parts and expected the refusal of some of them. To my surprise, Dr. Balaji was very

happy about the work in general and even ‘touched’, saying that I developed a keen

understanding of his presence and teaching. We had the advantage of technology to

communicate aurally and visually, which made the process much easier than only

writing to each other. Regarding the edits Dr. Balaji returned, he put strong emphasis

on that explicit information should be given about his family, sustaining V. K. V.

Parampara with seven generations of musicians. He was keen about to credit them all

so that he was sending me photographs of his family. Moreover, he added a

photograph of his award of “Doyen of the Music World”, which was important for

him to be mentioned (Appendix B, figure B.9). Another emphasis was on the

Banaras Hindu University (BHU), which he described as one of the best music

colleges in the world, teaching North and South Indian classical music, vocal and

instrumental, specializing in dhrupad, mridangam, violin, sitar, bansuri, and tabla.

He also corrected some of the terms in Hindi, such as Bela (violin), and the

appropriate titles for the artists, mentioned in the text.

Although Dr. V. Balaji and I didn’t have a meeting face-to-face after finishing the

thesis, we could have a dialogic editing process together with the help of technology.

Steven Feld (2012) talks about the dialogic editing experience he had with the Kaluli

in his book Sound and sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics, and song in Kaluli

expression and mentions the values the ethnographer carries to the field:

Every ethnographer carries a cultural background that includes a set of behaviors and values

surrounding interpersonal style. These involve both conscious and out-of-awareness attitudes,

conventionalized into a subjective palette that colors the intertwined empirical and

interpretive dimensions of an ethnographic report. (Feld, 2012, p. 250-251)

Taking the ethnographer’s stance into account, it is an important part of the

publishing process to edit the final text in dialogue in order to gain a deeper

understanding of both the local and ethnographer’s interpretations. Through dialogic

editing, I became more aware of Dr. V. Balaji’s emphases, what mattered to him

most, and how was his approach to the research. Writing an ethnographic account

has been a multi-layered work as the ethnographer works to reflect the locals’

interpretation of events and the meanings they attached to them but still she is the

one who selects, interprets, and compresses the findings to turn it into the writing.

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Additionally, the abstraction and theorizing process is where the stance of the

ethnographer plays a major role. Finally, the knowledge in the writing comes refined

through the paradigms, stances, and backgrounds of the agents present in the field,

including the locals and the ethnographer. It seems that the emphasis should be put

on revealing the approaches of all the parties involved as clearly as possible so that

the reader can gain a better insight of the selection and interpretation process. Feld

(2012) refers to Clifford Geertz (1976) about the ethnographer’s role and remarks:

Clifford Geertz’s (1976) assertion “that ethnographies are supposed to be what we

ethnographers think about things as much as they are supposed to be accounts of what we

think the locals think they are doing” (Feld, 2012, p. 253).

In my own case, regarding Dr. V. Balaji’s edits, he emphasized two major points.

First, it was important how accurately the values of Indian classical music were

transmitted in the text, and second, how the identity of Dr. V. Balaji as a musician

and the identity of V. K. V. Parampara was presented. As English is a frequently

used language in India, especially in the Brahman caste, and as being a professor in

BHU, Dr. V. Balaji already carried an academic identity and was familiar with the

necessities so that I didn’t have to make en extra work for him to read the writing,

such as translating. Finally, it turned out that sending the final text was necessary and

important, both for the sake of ethnomusicological approach and the consent given

by Dr. V. Balaji.

In the next subchapter, I bring up the research question and provide answers in the

light of the findings of my research.

7.4 The Research Question and Answers

My research question was “What are the aspects of embodiment in the transmission

process of musical knowledge by Prof. Dr. V. Balaji. My sub-questions were “How

are the relations of the teaching methodology, the pedagogical tools, the

spiritual/religious, and sociocultural settings to the embodiment process?”

Referring to these questions, I demonstrated the mechanisms effective in the

embodiment of musical ideas in an interrelated, organic, and indivisible framework,

while presenting them in division of analytical categories for the sake of better

understanding and analyzing. In the light of the findings of the research, I define

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embodiment as the transmission of the musical ideas through deliberate acts of

dedication, devotion, and discipline, where the volition of the two parties, master and

disciple is at work and through undeliberate acts of imitation, repetition, acting out of

the rituals, and engaging in the daily life of the master which are the organic results

of the guru-shishya system, caused by its necessary elements of love, respect, and

dedication, happening in a setting of face-to-face interaction, long hours spent with

the guru. This paves the way to that the states, moods, postures, kinesthetic,

kinematic, and aural— which have physical effects on the body—expressions of the

master are transmitted to the student whereas the master’s presence itself is seen and

acted out as ‘the music’, the carrier of the tradition, and the bearer of the potentiality

of innovation. That the master’s musical presence is embodied in the disciple implies

the disciple’s unique musical expression and presence, resulting from a “sub-

conscious synthesis” (2008, as cited in Oppenheim, 2012, p. 61). Thus, the final

outcome of the embodiment in the transmission process is a synthesis of the master’s

musical presence transmitted to the student through oral tradition, and the disciple’s

musical presence that is formed by her/his past experiences and her/his impressions

from other artists of Indian classical music. The ideal situation seems to be to ‘have

an empty cup’ to be filled in by the new information, to absorb it, and to devote

oneself exclusively to riaz in the internalization process. Finally, the world in

practice is never an ideal space and the ‘humanistic error’ and ‘individual’s

deviation’ is inevitable. Though as I referred to Oppenheim (2012) and Raja (2005)

(as cited in Büyükköksal, 2018, p. 40), this ‘error’ quota is embraced by the guru-

shishya system as an effective element paving the way to creativity and innovation.

Therefore the disciples as the outcome of the embodiment process of the musical

tradition are more than merely clones of their masters but promising the change and

unique contribution within the continuity of the tradition. In other words, the

tradition remains to be a breathing entity, alive with new ideas, approaches, and

styles, through the embodiment process in the guru-shishya parampara.

In the final subchapter, I talk about the recommendations for future research.

Furthermore, I discuss the implied meanings and possible benefits of my own

transformation through the embodiment processes during the research, in the

academy and music education in general.

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7.5 Recommendations for Future Research

The embodiment processes in the transmission of musical knowledge is a vast

research area and a fruitful issue to be explored further. A further step would be to

make an in-depth analysis of musical examples to be audio- and video-recorded in

the lessons in guru-shishya system from an embodiment approach. Here

acoustemology (Feld, 1982) and somaesthetics can contribute to aural and visual

analysis of the transmission process. Moreover, taking neurological approach and

cognitive sciences into account, the kinesthetic transmission of musical knowledge is

an interesting topic to be investigated. Understanding the sensorimotor processes of

the body has the potential to tell us more about the biological mechanisms at work, in

relation to the socio-cultural context. In addition, a deeper exploration of the impact

of mutual affection between the master and the disciple, and the role of

spiritual/religious setting in dialogue with the researches on spirituality are issues for

further investigation. From a cross-cultural approach, another research would be to

track the ties between the transmission traditions in the world, revealing the

resemblances and differences in theory and practice.

Finally, I hope to bring up two main issues with the account of my own

transformation and the exploration of the underlying embodiment mechanisms. First,

the demonstration of how this transformation happened implies that other than the

Western transmission traditions can be cross-culturally valid in the establishment of

musicianship. This is not to undermine the validity of Western methodology in its

own socio-cultural context. On the contrary, the elaboration and multiplicity of the

researches on various traditions would enrich the transmission experiences overall

and bring a cross-cultural insight in a world where worldwide interaction of musics

became our everyday reality. At this point, I would like to refer to Regula Qureshi

(2009) where she talks about the next steps after her work of textualizing the

hereditary sarangi musicians’ tradition. First was to let the agents of the culture speak

in their own words, which was realized in her book Master musicians of India:

Hereditary sarangi players speak (2007), and second is to bring them together with

their Western disciples in the universities. She argues that by presenting different

discipleship concepts, other than the “Western intellectual/artistic concept for

teaching and learning music”, bears the potential of different ways for teaching and

learning of music. This can change the acceptance of the Western approach as the

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only tool to learn and teach and show that the Western way is not “universally valid”,

but rather culture-specific (Qureshi, 2009, p. 183).

Second, the embodiment approach emphasizes the role of the body in the

transmission, the importance of somatic understanding, and the body-mind-world

unity. As the traces of the heritage of Cartesian approach still remain behind the

scenes of the Western tradition of thought, the further exploration of embodiment is a

necessity in establishing the unity of body, mind, and the world.

In summary, the ethnomusicological work on transmission processes in various

cultures can open the way to a critical perspective on the Western notions of

transmission of musical knowledge in a constructive way. The embodiment approach

investigating the transmission processes would give us a deeper, unified insight

about the nature of teaching and learning. Although the globalization dominates the

world heavily with its postcolonial implications, ethnomusicologists can use its tools

in different means and try to create a balance with cultural dialogue and interaction

aspects in their works. I tried to highlight the embodiment processes in the

transmission of musical knowledge in India, with the guidance of Dr. V. Balaji and

ethnomusicology as a discipline. I hope future research will contribute in deepening

our understanding and expanding our borders as individuals and societies.

111

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY APPENDIX B: PHOTOGRAPHS APPENDIX C: CURRICULUM VITAE OF DR. V. BALAJI APPENDIX D: BIO DATA OF V. K. VENKATARAMANUJAM APPENDIX E: THE CONTENT OF THE CDS APPENDIX F: TWO DATA CDS WITH AUDIO & VIDEO FILES

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APPENDIX A

a-kar singing or doing solfege in Indian music with an ‘aah’ sound, without the note names. alankar ornament in Indian classical music. alap the improvisatory part in the introduction of the raga performance without meter. antara the second or third part of a vocal or instrumental composition, following the

asthai. asthai the first part of a composition, preceding the antara. bandish The general term for a composition in Hindustani music. bansuri side-blown, bamboo flute, typically used in North Indian classical music. bhajan devotional song in the context of Hinduism. bol literally, word. “Lyric-based articulations for vocalists and plucking techniques for instrumentalists” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 438). brahman member of highest caste in the caste system in India. chakra various focal points in the subtle body used in a variety of ancient meditation practices. chilla “The state of pursuing a strict regimen during a period of forty days” (Neuman D. M., 1990, p. 271). cuvai taste in South Indian classical music context. dhrupad the most ancient vocal genre in Indian classical music. gamaka ornamentation, embellishment of a note. Ganesh one of the principal deities in Hinduism, revered as the remover of obstacles. gatkari (in instrumental music) an idiomatic style in North Indian (Hindustani) music (not imitating vocal style). gayaki ang The term gāyakī an.g (literally ‘singing style’) generally refers to the elements of vocal music incorporated in instrumental practice (Arnold A, Garland Encyclopedia, 1999). gharana literally, ‘of the house’. A stylistic school in music, mostly hereditary. gnanam “Tamil– Sanskrit concept; a word musicians often use in relation to musicianship. Glossed as “wisdom” or “knowledge,” gnanam sediments in one’s body over time, acquired less by actively practicing than by making oneself receptive through listening” (Weidman, 2012, p. 221). guru master, teacher. guruji the master with the added extension of –ji to show respect. gurukul “[The] system where the student became part of the guru’s household, living in their home and helping with chores” (Unnikrishnan 2006; Pesch 2009 pp. 149-150). Hanuman one of the principal deities in Hinduism, depicted as a monkey-face human. Hinduism “A major world religion originating on the Indian subcontinent and comprising several and varied systems of philosophy, belief, and ritual. Although the name Hinduism is relatively new, having been coined by British writers in the first decades of the 19th century, it refers to a rich cumulative tradition of texts and practices, some of which date to the 2nd millennium BCE or possibly earlier. If the Indus valley civilization (3rd–2nd millennium BCE) was the earliest source of

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these traditions, as some scholars hold, then Hinduism is the oldest living religion on Earth.” (www.britannica.com, accessed on 26 June 2018) jagah “Musical places” (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 441). “The work and technique of riyaz [riaz], of physically grinding a taan or a bandish for hours, weeks and years is specifically organized to become familiar with spaces, to unravel different spaces and open new places. … Hindustani musicians emphasize an architecture of exploration for an explicitly tactile and aural march.” (Neuman D. A., 2004, p. 208) Jainism “Along with Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism is one of the three most ancient Indian religious traditions still in existence and an integral part of South Asian religious belief and practice. While often employing concepts shared with Hinduism and Buddhism, the result of a common cultural and linguistic background, the Jain tradition must be regarded as an independent phenomenon rather than as a Hindu sect or a Buddhist heresy, as some earlier Western scholars believed.” (www.britannica.com, accessed on 26 June 2018) khalifa the common word in Urdu language, both used for the leader of the Islam world and the master of the musician lineage. khandani belonging to the musical family lineage. kathak one of the eight major forms of Indian classical dance. khyal a semi-classical vocal form in North Indian (Hindustani) music. kirtan a sing-along of devotional ancient chants, popularized by the bhakti movement in India. kya bat hai! a typical exclamation of praise meaning “What a thing this is!” Musician praise each other in the concert at time with this exclamation. laya rhythm, tempo. maqam the mode in Turkish and Arabic music. Though the name is shared, the designations of modes are different. mataji mata means mother in Hindi and the extension –ji is added to show respect. mela parent scales. Mesnevi the great work of poetry by Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, originally written in Persian language in Konya, Turkey. Originating from 13th century and consisting of six books, it is seen as one of the guiding literature in the Islamic Sufi sect of Mevlevi. mridangam wooden, double-headed drum of South India. namasthe greeting in Hindu tradition. Natyasastra “The detailed treatise and handbook on dramatic art that deals with all aspects of classical Sanskrit theatre. It is believed to have been written by the mythic Brahman sage and priest Bharata (1st century BCE–3rd century CE)”. (Encyclopedia Britannica) paan a widespread chewed preparation with betel leaf, areca nut, and various other ingredients. It is used also commonly with tobacco. Varanasi is paan is especially famous with its special paan. It has a stimulant effect. palta introductory exercises focusing on a set of scalar exercises. In Hindustani music they are known as paltas and bols. Note-pattern techniques for both vocal and instrumental traditions. (Neuman D. A., 2012, p. 438) parampara lineage of teachers and their disciples. puja a prayer ritual, ceremonial worship in Hinduism. qawwali devotional song in Islamic Sufi context. raga mode in Indian classical music. raga alapana the improvisatory part in the raga performance without meter in South Indian (Carnatic) music context.

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Rajam Bela a violin of Prof. Dr. V. Balaji’s invention with added resonance strings, a double-body, and double-neck. rasa the affective state generated by an aesthetic performance. In classical theory each rag (sometimes each tone) is thought to characterize, embody, and generate particular emotional states (Neuman D. M., 1990, 275). riaz (literally) practice. Rumi known as Mevlana Jalaluddin (Celaleddin) Rumi, he was an influential leader of Sufism in 13th century and is seen as the originating saint of the Sufi sect Mevlevi. sam the first and last beat of a rhythmic cycle. sama the ritual of the whirling, practiced mainly by the dervishes (devotees) of Islamic Sufism as an act of prayer. samprayada spiritual lineage in Hinduism. sangita dance, vocal and instrumental music. sarangi the Indian bowed fiddle. Saraswati the goddess of learning and music. sargam the Hindustani equivalent of solfege; Sa-Ri-Ga-Ma-Pa-Da-Ni-(high) Sa. shagird the Urdu-Persian word for disciple. sheikh in the context of the thesis, the religious leader in the tariqat that are sects Sufism. Shiva one of the principal deities in Hinduism, who creates, protects, and transforms the universe. silsila spiritual lineage in Sufism. sitar a plucked stringed instrument in North Indian classical music with sympathetic strings. swara musical pitch. tala rhythmic cycle. tan a musical phrase. tana a type of musical pattern in Indian classical music embellishing or exposing a raga. tanbur (Turkish) a plucked stringed instrument with a very long, thin neck and a resonant sound with six strings, four of them employed as sympathetic ones. teental one of the most frequently used rhythmic cycles, comprised of sixteen beats. Thumri a semi-classical vocal genre in Norht Indian (Hindustani) music. tuk-tuk also called auto rickshaw, a motorized version of traditional pulled or cycle rickshaw. ustad master in Muslim musician context. Vedas known as the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, Vedas date to 1100 BCE. vidwan a person who has vidya (knowledge) of scholarship and performance practices in Indian classical music context.

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APPENDIX B

Figure B.1: The Saraswati statue, situated at the entrance of Faculty of Performing Arts in Banaras

Hindu university (BHU) Varanasi. [p. 70] (Büyükköksal, Varanasi, 5 January 2018)

Figure B.2: Dr. V. Balaji in his room in BHU with his students. He teaches in the same room where his father Dr. V. K. V. Venkataramanujam taught so that the father and the son taught there for thirty-

five years in total. (Büyükköksal, Varanasi, 5 January 2018)

Figure B. 3: Three generations playing together. On the left is Dr. V. Balaji, at the center is his father Dr. V. K. V. Venkataramanujam, and on the right is Dr. Balaji’s son, B. Anantha Raman. [p. 58] (Dr.

Balaji’s personal archive)

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Figure B.4: Dr. V. Balaji’s daughter, Bhairavi Balaji, an outstanding vocalist in North Indian style. [p. 16] (Dr. Balaji’s personal archive)

Figure B.5: Dr. V. Balaji’s father, Dr. V. K. Venkataramanujam playing with Dr. Balaji on the right. [p. 16] (Dr. Balaji’s personal archive)

Figure B.6: V. K. V. Venkataramanujam together with Ravi Shankar. [p. 16] (Dr. Balaji’s personal archive)

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Figure B.7: Dr. V. Balaji with some of his family members. On the far left is Dr. Balaji’s elder son B. Anantha Krishnan, an outstanding artist of South Indian (Carnatic) violin, beside him Dr. Balaji, his daughter-in-law, his wife Shanti Balaji, his younger son, B. Anantha Raman, an outstanding artist of North Indian violin and his granddaughter, Shreeya Krishnan, vocal and violin. Three generations of

violin players are together as his sons and granddaughter are performers. [p. 16] (Dr. Balaji’s personal archive)

Figure B.8: Dr. V. Balaji playing with his son B. Anantha Raman in a raga performance. [p. 16] (Dr. Balaji’s personal archive)

Figure B.9: The award of “Doyen of the Music World”, presented to Dr. V. Balaji in Sri Lanka. It is seen as one of the most important awards in India. (V. Balaji, Varanasi, 28 May 2018)

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Figure B.10: Picture of a statue of Lord Balaji, hanging on Dr. Balaji’s music room’s wall. [p. 58] (Büyükköksal, Varanasi, 15 January 2018)

Figure B.11: The statue of Lord Shiva, situated in the music room of Dr. Balaji. (Büyükköksal, Varanasi, 15 January 2018)

Figure B.12: A painting of Lord Hanuman, hanging on Dr. Balaji’s music room’s wall. [p. 58] (Büyükköksal, Varanasi, 15 January 2018)

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APPENDIX C

The Curriculum Vitae below was e-mailed to me by Dr. V. Balaji.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Dr. V. Balaji “Violin”

Mob: +919455005059, Landline: +915422275077

Mail: vbalajivln@gmail.com

Dr. V. Balaji is a well-known artist of violin & vocal, belonging to the fifth generation of a renowned family of musician. His training in Carnatic music began when he was only five years old under the watchful supervision of his grandfather Late Sri. V. N. Krishna Iyengar and his father Late Sri V. K. Venkata Ramanujam. In 1975, Balaji began to study Hindustani Music at Banaras Hindu University under the tutelage of Padma Bhushan Dr. (Smt) N. Rajam and received his doctoral degree in 1986. He is the recipient of many awards, former dean and presently professor of violin in the Instrumental Department, Faculty of Performing Arts, Banaras Hindu University Varanasi. Dr. Balaji’s technique and innovations reflect near perfection. His musical expressions have the power to transport his listeners to a realm far beyond everyday consciousness. While developing ragas on his instrument, he embellishes his deft melodic nuances with crisp rhythmic designs making a deep impression by his rich and novel variety of musical ideas. Endowed with a creative faculty, he has also developed an interesting technique of holding the bow, which gives a lift that, makes the pass as soft as pulling out a hair from a proud of butter. Besides music performances, Dr. Balaji has developed violins with sympathetic strings and named them as: Bala Bela (named by Padmavibhushan Late. Pt. Kishan Maharaj), Rajam Bela (Double Ribs), Shanti Bela (Triple Ribs), Malviya Bela, Shringara Bela, and Triveni Bela.

Dr. V. Balaji has given performances at different cities in India as well as in foreign countries. Apart from solo and duet performances, he has had the honor of accompanying almost every living legend in the field including Late. Sri. V.K.Venkata Ramanujam, Padma Bhushan, Dr. Smt. N. Rajam, Padma Vibhushan Pt. Kishan Maharaj, Padma Vibhushan, Late. Smt. Girija Devi, Late Pt. Mahadev Prasad Mishra, Padmashri Pt. Balwant Rai Bhatt and so many to pen down.

Important Awards/Honors:

His performances have been greatly appreciated and he earned many awards and applauds on various occasions. To name a few: Doyen of Music World by “The Honorable President of Srilanka”, U.P. Sangeet Natak Academy Award, Chhatrapati Shivaji Award, I.S.C.L.O. Award, City Pushpa Award and so on.

Some Important Titles:

Violin Chakravarthy (given in Sri Lanka), Kashi Kala Ratna, Kashi Ratna Alankarna, Sangeeta Sri Ratnam, Sangeeta Bhushanam, Life Time Achievement Award, Sangeeta Vibhuti, Sangeeta Sudhakara, Navarasa Vachaspati, Sangeeta Ratna.

The Documentary Films On His Music and Life:

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“Renegade Fiddler - Apap Masala”

A documentary Film on his teaching method of Indian Classical music as well as Western music to my friend cum disciple Gilles Apap; directed by Max Jourdan, produced by Ideal Audience, Paris, 2002. (language: French)

“Raga – Ranga”

Surabhi – National Tele – Cast – T.V. Serial – Mumbai.

The Book Chapters and Magazines About His Work:

* Kashi ki Sangeet- Parampara Sangeet Jagat Ko Kashi Ka Yogdaan— Pt . Kameshwarnath Mishra

* Bhartiya Saangeetik Jagat Mein Varanasi Ka Yogdaan— Dr. Renu Johari

* Pt. Omkarnath ji Thakur Evam Unki Shishya Parampara— Dr. Lavanya Kirti Singh ‘Kavya’

* Mr.James Wimmer— Strings Mazine, U.S.A. -

* Prof. Karen Schlimp– Vienna University, Austria.

* Henrik Anderson– Denmark.

* Krishna Tiwari– Switzerland.

CD’s:

Comparative Playing (Violin) of North & South Indian Classical Music – C.D. Produced Kavi Alexander, Water Lily Acoustics.

Madurai, Multan, Morrocco (Middle Eastern Music) - (Trio Vocal & Violin Recording of C.D.) Produce by Kavi Alexander, Water Lily Acoustics – California.

“Raga” – Cassettes – Violin Solo in North Indian Style of Indian Music – California.

Rereleased in CD of Raga Yaman 2010

VCD of Raga Bhimpalasi (Dedicated to Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya Ji on the occasion of 150th Malviya Jayanti 2010.

Performances:

Violin duet along with his father and guru late V.K. Venkata Ramanujam.

Violin Support to Padmabhushan Dr. (Smt). N. Rajam.

Smt. Jaya Biswas, Sri. Abba Sahib Jalgoankar, Late. Pt. Jagannath, Sri. Partho Das, Ustad Zakir Hussein, Sri. T.V. Gopala Krishnan, Late Hari Shankar & Sri. Vikku Vinayaka Ram (in the Taalvadaya Kacheri composed by Bharat Ratna Late Pt. Ravi Shankar).

Inventions:

15 Stringed Viola with Double Ribs – Rajam Bela 13 Stringed Violin with Triple Ribs – Shanti Bela 13 Stringed Violin – Malviya Bela 11 Stringed Violin – Bala Bela (Named by Padmavibhushan Late. Pt. Kishan Maharaj).

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25 Stringed Viola – Triveni Bela. 30 Stringed Viola – Shringara Bela.

Figure C.1: Rajam Bela

Figure C.2: Malviya Bela

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Figure C.3: Bala Bela

Figure C.4: Triveni Bela

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APPENDIX D

The text below is a transcription of a typed manuscript, provided by Dr. V. Balaji.

V. K. Venkataramanujam, born in the year 1931, comes from a family of musicians and had his initial training from his father Sri V. N. Krishna Iyengar and his brother-in-law Sri R. S. Gopala Krishnan, All India Radio, Madras. He had his further training from Sri P. Krishnaswamy Doss, Thennamadam Sri Varadachariyar and Veenai Sri Krishnamachariyar. Venkataramanujam had given his first performance at the age of 13. He is also a vocalist as well as a composer. In 1950 he was attached to All India Radio, Delhi, where he had great opportunity to work with Sangeetha Kalanidhi Late T. K. Jayarama Iyer and Pt. Ravi Shankar. He is also a vocalist as well as a composer. In 1952 he had the privilege to participate in the first National Programme which was featured by late Sangeetha Kalanidhi Sri T. K. Jayarama Iter with whom he played the role of supporting violinist. In the same year was arranged the first National Programme of Vocal (South Indian music) by Sangeetha Kalanidhi late G. N. Balasubrahmaniam whom he accompanied on violin. Thereafter he has given a number of accompaniments to prominent and eminent musicians like late Flute Palladam Sanjeeva Rao, late T. R. Maharajapuram Vishwanatha Iyer, late Madurai Mani Iyer, late M. M. Dandapani Dikshitar, late Chittor Subrahmani Pillai, late Madurai Srirangam Uyengar, late M. Somasundaram, late Balachandar, Semangudi Srivanasa Iyer, M. S. Subbalakshmi, D. K. Pattammal, late M. L. Vasantha Kumari, Balamurali Krishna, D. K. Jarayaman, Maharajapuram Santhanam, … etc.

He was a reader in Violin, Department of Instrumental Music, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He is also founder of Sri Tyaga-Brahma Gurukulam, Varanasi. In the year 1947 he was awarded Sangeetha Sudhakar by the Bangalore Mahajan Sabha, Bangalore. In 1984 the Music Academy, Madras gave a “Senior Violinist” award to Mr. Venkataramanujam.

He has published a booklet on Sri Tyagaraja in Hindi in the year 1969 and written an article in Aj Daily Newspaper of Varanasi on Sri Muthuswamy Dikhsithar in 1970. On the suggestion of Maharaja of Benares, he tuned and demonstrated Tulsidasa’s compositions into Carnatic (South Indian) ragas and the Banaras Hindu University published this in the year 1974. The book is entitled Tulsi Sangita Manimala.

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APPENDIX E

CD 1

1. Tanpura machine in D sharp, Sa-Pa-Sa-Pa. Audio file. (p. 30, 62) [00:49]

2. Excerpt of the Vedic chant played back from the kitchen of Dr. Balaji’s house. Audio file. Recorded by Dr. V. Balaji, sent to me on 7 May 2018. (p. 67, 73) [01:01]

3. Exercise – Table 2.2. Audio file. Recorded on 20 December 2017. (p. 29) [09:09]

4. Dr. Balaji teaching Ertuğrul in Turkish tanbur. Video file. Recorded on 1 January 2018. (p. 29) [01:35]

5. Dr. Balaji, teaching raga Bhairavi to Sushil, Ertuğrul and me. Video file. Recorded on 13 January 2018. (p. 33) [25:32]

CD 2

1. Teaching Ertuğrul and me along a tabla player-live. Video file. Recorded on 14 January 2018. (p. 69) [07:44]

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CURRICULUM VITAE

Name, Surname: Aslı Büyükköksal

Place and Date of Birth: Istanbul, 12.10.1980

E-mail: abuyukkoksal@gmail.com

Education

M. Sc. İstanbul Technical University, Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM) –Ethnomusicology Program

B. Sc. Middle East Technical University – Sociology - 1999-2005

High school Istanbul Alman Lisesi 1991-1999

Music Projects

2017-... Baciyan (Ethnic music band)

2016- ... Seyir (Ethnic music band)

2014 MIAM Improvisation Ensemble (free improvisation)

2014-2015 Fezaya Firar (live electronics)

2013-2015 Vassiliki Papageorgiou (1920-1950s Istanbul and Izmir repertoire)

2013- 2016 SFK Women's Collective

2013-2015 Üniversite Korosu _chief: Elif Ahıs (Ottoman maqam music)

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2012-2015 Burgaz'dan Sonra Heybeli ( traditional music from Rumelia, Aegean, and Mediterranean )

2012-2017 Ümmi Sinan Meşk (Sufi Music)

2011-2013 Dehr-i Guş (ethnic fusion)

Music & Performance Art & Installation

2014, Istanbul Divan Project _by Josef Trattner

2014-2015 International Istanbul Silent Cinema Days

2011, Istanbul Su Boşa Akar mı (Exhibition & Performance)

2009, Berlin International Performer Festival DIVERSE UNIVERSE

2009, Rumania Sinti Festival, joint act with circus De Splittergale

2009, Hungary International Roma Festival

2006 & 2009, Berlin Go Go Thrash performance group (Exhibition Openings)

2007, Berlin Clown A.R.T. -Street Performance

2006, Vevey HYPOCRITE

2005, Berlin Nisi Masa Script Contest Short Film Competition Jury

Workshops & Seminars

2015, Agios Lavrentios, Greece Music Village

2015, Ikaria, Greece Musical Yards

2012- … Music Therapy Seminars by Tümata

2010, 2016, Crete, Greece Musical Workshop Labyrinth

2003 & 2004 & 2005, Ecotopia

Ukraine & Holland & Moldavia

2003, Paris II. European Social Forum

(member & videoactivist)

2003- 2005 ODTÜ GİSAM

(Editing & film history & video-art education under guidance of Ulus Baker)

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