Dhrupad is believed to be the oldest style of classical vocal music performed today in North India. This detailed study of the genre considers the relationship between the oral tradition, its transmission from generation to generation, and its re-creation in performance. There is an overview of the historical development of the dhrupad tradition and its performance style from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and of the musical lineages that carried it forward into the twentieth century, followed by analyses of performance techniques, processes and styles. The authors examine the relationship between the structures provided by tradition and their realization by the performer to throw light on the nature of tradition and creativity in Indian music; and the book ends with an account of the ‘revival’ movement of the late twentieth century that re-established the genre in new contexts. Augmented with an analytical transcription of a complete dhrupad performance, this is the first book-length study of an Indian vocal genre to be co-authored by an Indian practitioner and a Western musicologist.

About the Author

Ritwik Sanyal is a retired professor of the Department of Vocal Music, Banaras Hindu University. He also a recipient of one of India's highest civilian honours, the Padma Shri. A disciple of the late Zia Mohiuddin and Zia Fariduddin Dagar, and a leading exponent of the Dagar dhrupad tradition, he performs and teaches dhrupad internationally, and is a composer of new dhrupad compositions, with many CD recordings to his credit. He holds a PhD in musicology and is the author of Philosophy of Music (1987) and Dhrupad Panchashika (2015). In 2013 he received the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi National Award (New Delhi) for Hindustani Classical Vocal Music.

Richard Widdess is Emeritus Professor of Musicology in the Department of Music, School of Arts, SOAS University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He specialises in the musicology of South Asia, with reference to the history, theory and analysis of vocal music traditions in North India and Nepal. He is the author of The Rāgas of Early Indian Music (1995) and Dāphā: Sacred Singing in a South Asian City (2013).

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