India's Early Electronic Music From the '70s Is Finally Being Released (nytimes.com) 38
Hugh Morris writes via the New York Times: When the musician and artist Paul Purgas was invited in 2017 by the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, to play some of the music he'd found in its archives that year, he was initially very keen. These were tapes that had been hidden from the public for decades; they proved the existence of a fertile avenue for electronic music in 1960s and '70s India, and he was determined for people to hear them. But as he went to use the institute's aging reel-to-reel machine, he got a nasty surprise: an electric shock. "I think that sobered me up," he said in an interview. The project, he realized, was about to become "a bit of a lifetime journey."
Purgas, 43, is a London-based sound artist and curator, and half of the electronic music duo Emptyset. Initially, he had been on the trail of the lost Moog synthesizer that the American experimentalist David Tudor used while in India, which led him to the library of the NID. In "a victory for good record keeping," Purgas found details of some unknown Tudor recordings noted in a handwritten logbook by a diligent archivist in the 1960s. He requested them from the archives, and was presented with box after box of carefully annotated tapes, all taken from a neglected cupboard. Purgas returned to England to undertake training in tape restoration to properly conserve what he'd found: music from a group of Indian composers who, aided initially by Tudor, had used the Moog and some accompanying homemade modular devices between 1969 and 1972 to create some of India's earliest electronic music.
Following a 2020 BBC radio documentary, "Electronic India," in which Purgas situated the music in its cultural context, a new compilation -- "The NID Tapes: Electronic Music from India 1969-1972," out Friday -- presents the restored pieces in their full variety. There are manipulated field recordings, pieces linked to birds and nature, compositions inspired by Indian classical music, imagined voyages to outer space, and tracks reminiscent of bleep techno or Aphex Twin. What the recordings demonstrate, Purgas said, is "electronic sound and music existing free from any baggage," away from "any vestiges of what could be conceived as a kind of Western continuum."
Purgas, 43, is a London-based sound artist and curator, and half of the electronic music duo Emptyset. Initially, he had been on the trail of the lost Moog synthesizer that the American experimentalist David Tudor used while in India, which led him to the library of the NID. In "a victory for good record keeping," Purgas found details of some unknown Tudor recordings noted in a handwritten logbook by a diligent archivist in the 1960s. He requested them from the archives, and was presented with box after box of carefully annotated tapes, all taken from a neglected cupboard. Purgas returned to England to undertake training in tape restoration to properly conserve what he'd found: music from a group of Indian composers who, aided initially by Tudor, had used the Moog and some accompanying homemade modular devices between 1969 and 1972 to create some of India's earliest electronic music.
Following a 2020 BBC radio documentary, "Electronic India," in which Purgas situated the music in its cultural context, a new compilation -- "The NID Tapes: Electronic Music from India 1969-1972," out Friday -- presents the restored pieces in their full variety. There are manipulated field recordings, pieces linked to birds and nature, compositions inspired by Indian classical music, imagined voyages to outer space, and tracks reminiscent of bleep techno or Aphex Twin. What the recordings demonstrate, Purgas said, is "electronic sound and music existing free from any baggage," away from "any vestiges of what could be conceived as a kind of Western continuum."
Identitarian nonsense (Score:1)
Maybe somebody with more sense than The New York Times can identify "any vestiges of what could be conceived as a kind of Western continuum" in "music from a group of Indian composers who, aided initially by Tudor, had used the Moog" to make that music.
In this world, that training and use of that tool are both at least vestiges of the Western musical tradition.
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You should try it sometimes, just touch the live wire. It's very energizing.
Re:Identitarian nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
The same can be said of using say a piano, or anything else that is using the classic twelve-tone equal temperament. There are vestiges of a Western continuum since they use a very much western tuning system and are often just missing notes that would be used in pieces written for other tuning systems.
Yes there was also a Chinese mathematician who came up with the system about a year before it was independently invented in the Netherlands. But it caught on in the West during the Baroque, while it did not do so in China.
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Or a Tanpura just playing the same 4 notes over and over.
Re: Identitarian nonsense (Score:2)
Sitars are awesome. Although to be fair, my favorite sitar music is Blancmange's "Living on the Ceiling"
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It's kind of the hipster trap of searching for pure cultural authenticity: culture by its nature is syncretic. It's like those white supremacists who take gene tests to prove to themselves that they're pure Aryan; possibly a few of them got what they were looking for, but not many. People just don't behave that way; they just aren't picky about where they spread their genes or memes to, or where they get them from.
If authenticity is cultural purity, you're chasing a will-o-the-wisp.
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Guitars are lute-family instruments and therefor originate from West Asia. And bagpipes aren't even Scottish, they're likely from Asia Minor. No popular music is purely "Western" if you look at instruments alone. Techniques, repertoire, tradition and training of the musicians themselves carry more weight in musical origins than the nationality of the instrument maker.
No mention of Charanjit Singh? (Score:3, Informative)
Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:No mention of Charanjit Singh? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had this album in my collection for at least a decade, it's an absolutely phenomenal piece of work. When I initially got it and the Wub Machine was online I ran the entire album through it and it sits in a subfolder of the album folder and occasionally on shuffle I get either an original or a dubstep version coming out of my phone.
Re: No mention of Charanjit Singh? (Score:2)
Thanks for sharing this... I never heard of him before and its actually really good
Oh wow what a savior, India had no music released? (Score:2)
According to the condescending article Indians release no music in the 70s, a scientist proved the existence of electronic music.... from what I understand through repeated experiment that validated the theory
I am really not liking the sensationalistic trend . Especially that tape archives exist all over the world of artists and yeah, they are deteriorating
What is it with the new too buzzword/sensationalistic tone of articles posts lately, it has generated at a lot of libraries of congress of nonsense
I feel
nonsensical fellations (Score:4, Insightful)
"electronic sound and music existing free from any baggage,"
This doesn't exist. Not only does the article explicitly mention 'baggage' in the form of classical indian music, it's also just a stupid idea. Electronic music always comes with baggage, unless you, in total isolation, develop electricity, electronics, electroacoustical and electromechanical devices. None of this has happened anywhere on earth. There is always a bigger context that you are depending on and hence there is always baggage.
In defense (Score:2)
Re: nonsensical fellations (Score:3)
All fellations make sense.
If you dont feel like dealing with a paywall (Score:1)
https://state51.bandcamp.com/a... [bandcamp.com]
whoops (Score:1)
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Relatively few people speak Hindi as a second language outside of India.
I was surprised to learn that there are only ~609 million Hindi speakers in the world (as a 1st or 2nd language) compared with 1.4+ billion English speakers.
List of numbers of language speakers [wikipedia.org]
How many people speak English in various countries [wikipedia.org]
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The India government killed a Canadian Sikh on Canadian soil, and they've turned on the taps as far as "social media propaganda" is concerned. It's been very noticeable over on Reddit.
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1. India is a pretty big place. Seems likely they'd have something going on almost every day.
2. If the subs were in Hindi would you read them, or pass over them unnoticed? It's kind of hard to build an international following on Reddit if you aren't using an international language.
Re: India in the news (Score:2)
Do you ever examine yourself and wonder why something like this bothers you so much when it doesnt bother others? Let us know what you discover.
It's electronic music, it's from India (Score:2)
and funnily enough, it's not goa :)
Finally (Score:3)
I can finally out obscure my musichead friends. "Well I've really gotten into early 70's Indian electronica. If you were a true music fan you'd know about it."
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Only posers call it "electronica".
Electric shock? (Score:1)
An early form of copy-protection???
Great! (Score:2)
An even greater selection of stuff I will never listen to or care about.
Lost Forever (Score:3)
The minute or two I spent listing to the sample track at that site :-( Sheesh. Who can call that music? Several wavering hums, with rotor blade whopping in the background.
Bollywood dance music is bad enough :-(
Re: Lost Forever (Score:2)
Thats early synth for you. Most of it sounds like it was made for aliens. Once in a while you hear (part of) a piece that actually sounds good. I dont think synth got enjoyable to hear really until Kraftwerk came along. Even Neu! is sometimes hard to listen to.
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40 years from now they'll laugh at our synth tunes. "That's Orange Era synths for ya".
Dilchasp and interesting too (Score:2)
I have Wendy Carlos' "Switched on Bach" on 4 track tape and always kind of marvel at this super early and experimental use of synthesizers. The artists are trying out sounds that humanity literally never heard before, but are influenced by the music that they did grow up with and were familiar with. Carlos was inspired by classical Bach. John Mills-Cockell was inspired by... I dont really know what.
So to hear such early synthesizer work done by someone familiar with Indian music is fascinating. In my experi
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I have Wendy Carlos' "Switched on Bach" on 4 track tape and always kind of marvel at this super early and experimental use of synthesizers.
Wendy Carlos was neither super early nor experimental, tho.
Now I can do the (Score:2)
Needful Dance!