Pune: June 2007-May 2008

I'll be living in Pune, India until Spring 2008. I'm here on an AIIS grant, working on my dissertation about gestural lineages in Hindustani vocal music. I'll be making video recordings, conducting interviews, and visiting video archives and singers all over the country.

My project also depends on my continued study and practice of Gwalior gayaki in Vikas Kashalkar's gurukul. So I'm also keeping up my riyaz and sitting with patient teachers and friends who are guiding my awkward steps along a path easy and familiar to them. Namaskar to Kashalkarji, Pavan Naik, Mukul Kulkarni, Mohan Darekar, and everyone else who has helped me so much. Pune is a great place to be for vocal music.

Recordings

Here are a few short Pune sound samples (more to come.)

Prabhat Road, 31 July 2007 6:15-6:17 AM

Prabhat Road, 31 July 2007 10:33-10:35 PM

Prabhat Road, 3 August 2007 6:48-6:50 PM

And here is a special treat, with a tip of the hat to Rachel "They Sing" Mundy. It's an excerpt of the 6:15 morning birdsong sample, slowed down to 1/4 speed. It's the beginning of the part where Croonin Jim is chased away by Full-Throatle Ricky (1:15-1:34.) (I'm grateful to Mukul Kulkarni, incidentally, for the pun, and for teaching me what singing full-throatle is all about.)

If any hard-core functionalist would like to try and convince me that every curvaceous svara in Jim's alap increases his reproductive fitness, I'm all ears. If any ornithologist can identify these birdsongs I would be very grateful.

Prabhat Road, 31 July 2007 6:16 AM (1/4 speed)

Here's a video of a man walking with his family and playing the harmonium and singing--beautifully--on my street. I'm not sure where they are from because I was shooting the video from the third floor. But other singers on the street have said that they're from Gujarat. Does anybody recognize the song?

Prabhat Road Singer 20 August 2007 1:10 PM

Here's a different kind of highly disciplined vocalizing that I hear every day on my street: the vegetable seller calling out the names of all the vegetables he's got today. If you want to hear what lack of discipline sounds like, you can also discern in the background the anguished howling of an untrained, lonely, half-domesticated dog that is locked in the courtyard outside my window. Attention ecoromantics: dogs have to be trained to live happily among people.

Prabhat Road Vegetable Seller, 23 December 2007 10:30 AM

Maps

Here are a few satellite maps of Pune: one of the surrounding region, one zoomed in a bit to include most of the city, and one of the part of town in which I live.

Photos

flickr photo galleries (in which you may witness the spread of glasnost like a cooling balm across the land.)

Where's An Egg?

Glasnost buffs won't want to miss this party-approved, KGB-themed detective game: Where's an Egg?.

Get in Touch

Friends and strangers alike can skype me at mrahaim or you can always...