Indian Classical Music Residency

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to have an Indian Classical Music Residency with parent, musician and doctor, Janani Ragaswami. Janani studied Indian Classical music for many years extensively in her native India. She sang and performed for numerous years while living in India and returned to India regularly after moving the the United States to perform in one of the largest Indian music festivals in Chennai. She has studied under some of the most renown teachers in India.

Janani visited this week with all classes in the Lower School to give them an introduction to Indian Classical music through a slide show of traditional instruments and videos of some of the most famous Indian musicians. 

Our focus is singing and Janani started off our study by teaching us a Raaga or series of notes (called swaras) known in South Indian Classical music as Mohanam. Mohanam is akin to the Western pentatonic scale (five note scale):

Do  Re   Mi  Sol  La  Do

You will notice that in order to make the scale, there are several notes that are skipped (fa and ti). This scale is very common in the Orff music education process in which our music program is heavily steeped, so our young musicians were already familiar with this scale. However, they learned to sing it using the Indian syllables:

Sa  Ri  Ga   Pa  Dha  Sa

Using a drawn stair case, Janani taught students how to move up and down the scale. She then taught us how we can play with the scale singing it in an infinite number of ways. Indian musicians do this when they improvise during performances. All performances are based in the moment, improvisations. Therefore, it takes many, many years to train to a professional level where one can improvise freely and in many and varied Raagas. 

During the course of our study, students will learn to improvise using the Mohanam as the basis of their improvisations. We will also learn a song called the Murali Adhara and will perform some of it along with Janani and her son, Rudy in first grade, for our culminating assembly on Friday, March 18th at 8:30 a.m. Stay tuned for more details!

Ask your young musician  about the Mohanam and what they learned from Janani this week!