Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs

Subject: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Shalini
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 01:04 PM

Listen to the short clips of these Bengali songs written by Rabindranath Tagore, on emusic. Can you guess what Scottish folk song their melodies are based on?

Phule Phule Dhole

Purano Sei

Shalini

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Shalini
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 01:09 PM

Scottish songS that should be. They are based on different songs.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Darowyn
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 02:15 PM

The first one is quite easy, it's "The Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon", and the second is "Coming Through the Rye".
I was expecting them to be more different from the Scottish tunes than that actually, more quarter tone melismas and complex tals.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: GUEST,Auldtimer
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 02:33 PM

Coming Through the Rye ???? I don't think so. Try again.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: GUEST,Auldtimer
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 02:38 PM

Th correct title for - The Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon - is that well known announcer's nightmare - The Caladonian Hunt's Delight.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Shalini
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 02:54 PM

Hey Dave. Yes, the first one's quite simple, eh? The second isn't 'Coming Through the Rye'.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 03:15 PM

A few years ago I came across an article in a musicological journal which listed about 20 Scottish tunes that had gone into South Indian tradition, thanks to the army of the Raj. Stupidly I forgot to make an exact reference. It was in the Edinburgh University Music Library, which doesn't exist any more. New on the shelves at the time, mid-to-late 1990s.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: BobKnight
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 03:16 PM

No, but it is "Auld Lang Syne."

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 03:18 PM

I heard an axtraordinary brass band recording from Ethiopia a while ago. Unmistakably the Skye Boat Song, but wild and fast and strange and very very modified.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: BobKnight
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 03:21 PM

I have a cousin who spent a couple of years in Libya tutoring Colonel Gaddafi's pipe band. :)

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Shalini
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 11:25 PM

Yes, Auld Lang Syne.

A small number of the compositions of Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel prize laureate) were deeply influenced by English, Irish and Scottish folk music. Other songs he's used are The Vicar of Bray, The British Grenadiers, Go Where Glory Awaits Thee, and Robin Adair. He had a great many other influences, of course, among them various forms of music in India -- classical, baul and other folk forms.

I think he was quite travelled, as was his family, so he got these either directly from the West or through members of his family. I don't think it was the result of the British Raj in India.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Shalini
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 11:47 PM

And Darowyn, the verses of the song (Phule phule) are very changed. I don't think this clip had them.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Shalini
Date: 23 Apr 09 - 11:49 PM

In case anybody is interested, I found a video from a Bengali movie that has Phule Phule in it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1uVblb7-j0

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Darowyn
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 04:00 AM

Thanks Shalini,
The clip above is old and scratchy, but very moving. Sung unaccompanied, it is easier to hear the Indian inflections which have been added.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: GUEST,Pramanick
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 02:20 AM

Tagore travelled greatly and was influenced by folk tunes in various parts of the world. In these specific songs he has acknowledged the influence of the bagpiper tunes of Scotland (it actually appears as a footnote in 'Geetobitan' - the collection of his songs).

The song was used very aptly by Satyajit Ray in his adaptation of another of Tagore's novel 'Nashta Neer' - the story is about this lady who comes close to her husband's brother due to the husband's aloofness - humming this song which talks of the mind in a melancholy state flowing with the river ...

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Jim McLean
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 05:45 AM

The popular melody for Auld Lang Syne and Comin' Through the Rye are derived from the same melody, the Miller's Wedding so Darwyn is not wrong. According to William Stenhouse " .. the Strathspey itself is modelled from the Lowland melody of I fee'd a Lad at Michaelmass .."

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 07:34 AM

In fact the Auld Lang Syne tune itself is a kind of "world music" adaptation. The reason Thomson picked it (perhaps at Burns's suggestion) was that it was a current popular hit, thanks to its use in William Shield's ballad opera "Rosina" - it features in a scene of peasant life, played on two bassoons in imitation of a bagpipe (not necessarily a Scottish pipe, as far as I know). The tune hadn't achieved any great popularity before that. Shield was from Newcastle and was interested in music from all over the place - he even went on a song collecting trip round Europe, despite having practically no money. So when he picked up the "Miller's Wedding" tune he was using something from another culture (albeit one not far away).

Thomson and Burns knew where Shield got it and what it had been used for in Scotland before, but their main motivation must have been that here was a terrific tune to be had for the asking, with no widely known song already using it, and with all the promo work already done thanks to Shield. It came via an English source, but so what - Burns had set words to English tunes before.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: meself
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 10:33 AM

I notice that those two recordings come with a "parental advisory" - one wonders what manner of filth has been set to those venerable old melodies!

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: GUEST,Jim McLean
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 06:49 PM

Again, according to William Stenhouse regarding the popular melody which Thomson put to Auld Lang Syne, Mr Shield borrowed the air almost note for note from the third and fourth strains of the Scottish strathspey in Cumming's Collection, under the title of The Miller's Wedding. In Gow's collection it is called the Miller's Daughter and is modelled on the Lowland melody called I fee'd a Lad at Michaelmas which Burns knew as O Can You Labour lea, Young Man and had long been known among the inhabitants of Nithsdale and is in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. So I don't think one can say it came via an English source.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 07:20 PM

Pipe bands were developed everywhere the British stationed troops. I have heard a couple of excellent Pakistani pipe bands in news clips on the BBC. Under the Raj, orchestras and bands with Indian players were formed.
I think there is a video of a Gurkha Pipe Band on youtube.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: GUEST,Gail
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 04:44 AM

Battlefield Band have performed in India as there's lots of interest in bagpipe music.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: GUEST,Jim McLean
Date: 08 Jul 11 - 07:04 PM

I was reading a letter sent to George Thomson from Robert Burns where he writes 'I enclose you a Musical curiosity - an East Indian air, which you would swear was a Scottish one .... I intend putting it into The Musical Museum. - Here follow the lines I intend for it'

Burns called the song The Auld Man's Winter Thought and it is in Johnson's Museum, #486. titled The Winter of Life. The tempo shifts from 3/4 to 2/4 and back again and is quite peculiar.

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Ana
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 06:49 PM

It shouldn't be assumed that Indian tunes being heard are British in origin.

I recently spent time in Rajasthan - a north east region of India. This is the area from where the Romany began their traipse across Europe many centuries ago. It makes absolute sense that traditions including dance and music will have travelled to and imbeded themselves within new music traditions.

Here's a wee film promo that describes it well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2FXe2vdzfg&feature=related

While there, I was particularly interested to hear tribal music, where the original sounds/dance continue Music and dance was a part of everyday life - women, men and children all had their part. The tribal people often conformed to all the stereotype images of 'gypsies' that I grew up with - the women often wearing layered sumptuous fabrics and dripping with jewellery. Here is an interesting article

http://www.redflag.org.uk/frontline/july09/buskbusk.html

Just as in the west, there are many styles of Indian music depending on the community, ethnic group, religion, region etc. I was very touched by the style of some Rajasthani folk (desert tribal) songs, especially that sung by children. At times it felt familiar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NvcfGA2bKM

But this last 'diddly' clip is fantastic - note the circular breathing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2FXe2vdzfg&feature=related

(sorry I haven't done the blue clicky thing)

Subject: RE: Scottish melodies in Indian folk songs
From: Ana
Date: 09 Jul 11 - 06:56 PM

Sorry - that third clip was (somehow) a repeat of the first - try this one instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NvcfGA2bKM