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DHIM, KAM, CAPPU, POTTU: Timbral Discourses and Performances Among Temple Drummers in Kerala, India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Rolf Groesbeck
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Extract

Not too long ago I sent my primary research associate in Kerala, a state in southwest coastal India, a copy of my article on improvisation in tayampaka (Groesbeck 1999), a drumming genre performed in this region. One of his comments surprised me; he implied that I had focused too exclusively on improvisation and not enough on what I would call “timbre”, that is, in this case the sound qualities produced by the various hand and stick strokes on the drum. This caused me to reread some of my field materials, and in doing so I recognised that timbre, in performers’ discourse and in performance, often seemed to help create a codified emotional state among spectators, define a theatrical character, contribute to the negotiation of authenticity, or index cultural/religious and regional identity (along with other parameters). Musical meaning and affect, I realised, were partially constituted through discourse on timbre and through the timbral aspects of performance itself. So how could I have initially overlooked it? Perhaps because this parameter, so affective yet difficult to discuss analytically, has often been short-changed in musical scholarship (on South Asia and other areas), although recently ethnomusicologists have begun to take it more seriously.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 35 , 2003 , pp. 39 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 By The International Council for Traditional Music

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