Field

AAWM JOURNAL VOL. 6 NO. 2 (2018)

Improvising Rhythmic-Melodic Designs in South Indian Karnatak Music

Garrett Field

---

Abstract:

One lacuna in the scholarship on modal improvisation concerns a type of modal improvisation that could be considered “hybrid” because of its dual emphasis on rhythm and melody. The purpose of this article is to begin to fill this lacuna through a detailed examination of a rhythmic-melodic form of improvisation in South Indian Karnatak music known as svara kalpana. This article explains what svara kalpana is, describes three rhythmic-melodic designs commonly found in svara kalpana, and investigates how U. Shrinivas (1969–2014) used these designs during a concert in 1995.

Read full article in PDF version

Contributor Information:

Garrett Field is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology/Musicology in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the School of Music at Ohio University.

© 2018 by the author. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of this article without requesting permission. When distributing, (1) the author of the article and the name, volume, issue, and year of the journal must be identified clearly; (2) no portion of the article, including audio, video, or other accompanying media, may be used for commercial purposes; and (3) no portion of the article or any of its accompanying media may be modified, transformed, built upon, sampled, remixed, or separated from the rest of the article.

---