Archival Dialogue in Hindustani Music: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Hindustani classical music has undergone tremendous transformations due to the advent of recording technology since the early 20th century. Recorded music has become an integral part of musical discourse today and we owe it to the early musicians, especially women musicians from the courtesan community who embraced modernity and new technology for the first time in the history of Hindustani music and made it possible for this music to be heard outside of the physical presence and private performance spaces of musicians. Hence, this became the first step in the notion of archiving and preservation of music for future generations of practitioners, musicians, researchers and connoisseurs. The conversation with new technology impacted the performance aesthetics including the method of presentation and also the duration of live and recorded music. In the context of improvisation based genres like khyal, which is the predominant form of Hindustani music today, engaging with archival music as a reference, becomes an important source for developing an individual expression in performance practice. This paper discusses the understanding about the nuances of archival material as both physical and digital sources that includes books, treatises, anthologies, biographies, journals, texts of notated compositions, interviews of practitioners, audio recordings, video recordings in different formats and the role of various archival spaces in the dissemination process of Hindustani music performance practice and pedagogy. Also shared are my engagements with the archival material in a few inter-disciplinary projects: a sound project in a visual art exhibition as a vocal dialogue with western classical music; collaboration with ethnomusicologists in a project bringing together musicians, musicologists and visual artists; using music as a tool for climate change activism and being a participant in a global music archival digital project.