Borrowing From Indian Harmonium Tradition?

[MatthewVanitas]

I've mentioned before that owning a good concertina keeps me from buying several other instruments I'd otherwise be drawn to, including harmonium and shruti box. I like droney and swelling music, and Duet concertina is right at home there.

 

But I still dig the harmonium, and have been watching clips of Indian harmonium players online; not the bench-sitting foot-pumping Euro harmoniums, but rather the small suitcase-sized hand-pumped harmoniums that missionaries introduced to India. Tying up one hand with pumping bellows isn't a big problem, since much Indian music is heavily melodic rather than chordal, and can be played one-handed on the keyboard. Harmonium is an imperfect fit since it can't bend notes, can't do microtones, and is (generally) in Equal temperament, but it's found a role in less rigid classical forms, Sikh and Hindu sacred music, and "film music".

 

 

Duet is great since I can do most of the melody work on the right, and use the left for drones, or a kind of basso continuo. Some Indian harmoniums have stops to turn on drones, so my left hand can play that role.

 

 

I've just been watching a few tutorial videos on YouTube, and there are many since India has a lot of people and a goodly amount of internet access, and evidently a ton of harmonium players. I don't listen to much Indian music, so the "musical vocabulary" doesn't come naturally to me. I'm tentatively trying to learn some Carnatic (Southern Indian, vice Hindustani in the North) riffs, but still at a very early stage. I'm not expecting I'll ever play Indian concertina in any skilled context, but it is fun trying out a new musical idiom, and one that suits the concertina well.

 

 

Here are a few examples of playing

• Medeley of Punjabi music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayZclC4uhJ4
• Carnatic concert with percussion backing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMyIKQEHBLs
• Here's a Hindustani tune that's 52 minutes long, maybe want to put this on in the background as you do the dishes to let it soak into your musical mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPC9ymB2990

Edited February 10, 2014 by MatthewVanitas

[Jack Campin]

There are harmoniums that let you adjust the scale to whatever you want within the 22-shruti system.

 

And Muslim religious music using the harmonium is probably a lot more familiar to a global audience than Sikh or Hindu stuff - qawwali Sufi chanting the way Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan does it.

[MatthewVanitas]

While there are enharmonic harmoniums, my understanding is that's a very recent and niche thing. Similar maybe to how there are note-bending melodeons, but that's mostly one guy's experimental development.

 

I looked at the website for the guy who designed and commissioned the 22-shruti harmonium, and I'll admit I was tempted. It's $600 for the instrument, but another $400 for shipping though, so a bit more than I can really justify.

 

 

You're right, I really should've mentioned Nursrat Fateh Ali Khan in the original post, I guess I didn't becaues I think of him more as a singer, but his use of harmonium probably is one of the most visible in the West.

 

 

Harmonium actually played quite a role in my taking up the concertina seriously. The 2010 movie Howl, a biopic of Allen Ginsberg, had some old footage of him playing a very small travel harmonium while singing, and I was really struck by the voice-backing potential of small free reeds.

[Jack Campin]

Ginsberg singing Father Death Blues to the harmonium:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afAAltAmIzA

 

I've never seen one that small.

[SteveS]

Ginsberg singing Father Death Blues to the harmonium:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afAAltAmIzA

 

I've never seen one that small.

Here's one

[Jack Campin]

Ugly ugly ugly. And while the keyboard goes from A to D the blurb says it goes from C to F. Looks like JAS didn't test it.

 

I'd rather have Ginsberg's.

[ceemonster]

[Harmonium actually played quite a role in my taking up the concertina seriously. The 2010 movie Howl, a biopic of Allen Ginsberg, had some old footage of him playing a very small travel harmonium while singing, and I was really struck by the voice-backing potential of small free reeds.]

 

it was my good fortune to be present at two consecutive nights with allen ginsberg in san francisco in the early 1990s, the first night devoted to the initial decades of his work, the second night devoted to the later decades. he played harmonium some, and the whole thing closed on the last night with a group sing of william blake's "Nurse's Song (Innocence)," with mr. g. on harmonium..."...and all the hills echo-ed....," sang all of us, over and over....

 

indian harmonium and harmonium clips on youtube have been a focus for me as well, specifically with concertina in mind...wishing to attempt different world genres including indian as inspired by harmonium, was a big reason for my decision to launch exploratory missions in unisonoric concertina (EC and duet)...

 

i found this solo indian harmonium cd on amazon a couple of years ago and love it, hope one day to attempt a piece on EC...

 

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Milestones-Harmonium-Rare-Collection/dp/B003LN1JRG/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1392528943&sr=1-5&keywords=harmonium+india

Edited February 16, 2014 by ceemonster

[JimLucas]

And while the keyboard goes from A to D the blurb says it goes from C to F. Looks like JAS didn't test it.

 

Could it be a transposing instrument? If it's an Eb instrument, like the alto saxophone, then the description of the range would be correct.

[Wolf Molkentin]

Ginsberg singing Father Death Blues to the harmonium:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afAAltAmIzA

A profound and touching statement - thanks for posting!

[MatthewVanitas]

After the film Howl came out, I wrote an email to DMS, one of the larger and more reputable harmonium dealers. I linked that same video of Ginsberg, and asked if they carried such a harmonium. Here's the extract of their reply (the DMS-2 they reference is a different kind of small harmonium that I thought could play the same role, bottom of this page: http://www.indianmusicalinstruments.com/harmoniums3.htm):

 

 

Dear Sir,

Thankyou for your mail and interest in our instruments.

DMS-2 is for US$312 with delivery by Fedex/DHL.

Currently we will be completing to models out of which three are already pre-sold. Last one is available for purchase. Next lot of these

will be ready in a months time.

This piece will be complete for shipping by the 3rd of July. One week to complete at the moment.

The one in the [Ginsberg, Father Death] video is the kind of a toy model that we used to make earlier. Though it can be fitted with Bass-Male reeds but the sustain would be too low to even hold for 3 to seconds. Therefore continuous bellow pumping would be require.

We are not making any of these at the moment.

DMS-2 is a full sounding Harmonium with Bass Male reeds and keyboard from F to C.

The sustain on this is also about maximum upto three seconds. Therefore as mentioned above, this also requires continuous bellow pumping. However

the sound being loud and full it makes it easier to play.

for DMS

visit us at www.indianmusicalinstruments.com

I had idly toyed with the idea of seeing if there could be a group-order of Ginsberg-style harmoniums, and/or if the Ginsberg Estate had any interest in licensing the name to a harmonium maker, etc. But ultimately I concluded that the number of people intensely interested in Ginsberg harmonium reenactment is rather small. And so I stuck with concertina.

As a minor aside, for anyone curious to see Indian harmonium used in a foreign context: there's a Brooklyn-based band Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers, where the titular lead comes from a conservative Sikh family and was raised playing harmonium, and now uses it to head up this grungy-indie-blues band. They have some good clips on YouTube, including one or two of just her singing solo with harmonium.

Edited February 18, 2014 by MatthewVanitas

[StuartEstell]

I'd offer a note of caution with scale-changer harmoniums - they can be a bit flimsily built, and the scale-changer mechanism can cause more trouble than it's worth. Better just to practise your ragas starting with "sa" as plenty of different pitches.

 

Incidentally, unless you've got a fully-microtonal set of reeds in there, and the keys on the keyboard to go with them, the usual scale-changer setup will only have the 12 chromatic notes of the usual Western scale. They're not particularly sophisticated - all that happens is that the keyboard shifts bodily to the next lever.

 

The other thing to bear in mind is that many Indian musicians you speak to will think in terms of 12 steps, not 22.

Edited February 19, 2014 by StuartEstell

[MatthewVanitas]

I'm mucking around again with harmonium videos. Really basic stuff, but for kicks did this simple lesson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOZbXrdxs6I) which is just variants of scale climbing, based on a D Lydian (raised 4th) scale.

 

Now is not the best time for me to dive into things since I should be moving overseas soon, but either once I get settled there and get into my Crane, or either move my Beamont overseas or return to the US where it is, I have some inclination to set a daily goal for myself of spending 20m or whatever doing "harmonium lessons" on YouTube with my concertina.

 

Odd suggestion, but wondering if a few Cnet members would be interested, in the indefinite future, of setting up a "study buddies group" here to figure out harmonium on unisonoric concertina together. Maybe have a thread where we can share our plans/progress, recommend video tutorials, album tracks, sheet music etc to each other, look into different regional genres, discuss utter basics of Indian music theory for ET instruments, maybe even set up a few Skype jams together. Heck, if we get crazy maybe even see if we can chip in and buy some Skype lessons with an indulgent pro harmonium teacher.

 

A tentative suggestion, but if anyone wants to be pinged if we do decide to start doing such a course of study, post here or PM me, and I can start poking folks whenever we're all at a good point to kick into some study.

[DaveM]

Matthew

I've worked through only a small part of _The Harmonic Experience_ (W.A. Mathieu), but it starts with ideas from Indian music, and it seems like it will end up connecting this to more western ideas of harmony; it might be worth looking at in this endeavour. I'm curious to see what comes of this, so keep me in the loop. Good luck in Columbia.

[MatthewVanitas]

Been looking for good series of tutorials; this guy appears to have a lot of good easy walk-through tutorials for shabad (Sikh hymns). The narration is in Punjabi, but I don't think it matters too much. Though I am starting to think I need to put in the basic effort to learn the absolute basics of swara, the Indian equivalent of solflage (do-re-mi) since in some tutorials they recite the names of the notes as they play, so that might be handy.

 

Here's a good one I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc8p2tClpnA

 

Here's a recording of a full band/orchestra/ensemble/? performing the same hymn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE0LhgiDKzc

 

Personally I'd rather do tutorials of Carnatic classical music vice Punjabi hymns, but the latter seem to have a lot more tutorials. Which makes sense, since Carnatic classical players probably study under masters, go to conservatories, etc. while there's probably wide demand for adherents who can play really basic hymn music, and a religious motivation to help beginners by creating tutorials.