On thursday, April 26th, 2018, the sala Aranyó in Universitat Pompeu Fabra was full to receive the lecture and concert offered by the bansuri master Nitin Amin.

Fundamental Elements of North Indian Classical Music

Besides a great bansuri performer, Nitin Amin has a long experience as educator on Hindustani classcial music. From his master studies on music, his interest about educating in this music tradition made him organize a series of lectures and workshops along all India and abroad, and even to found the webportal RagaSphere. In this session in Barcelona, Nitin Amin was able to condense his vast knowledge about this matter and his extensive pedagogical experience into a 45 minutes presentation in which he presented key concepts of Hindustani classical music, such as swara and laya, which are in the basis of raga and tala, and how these interact with each other in the development of the khayal form, by means mostly of the cyclic principle of avartan.

You can watch the whole presentation by Nitin Amin here. 

North Indian Classical Bansuri Concert

After the theoretical presentation of the fundamental elements of Hindustani classical music, Nitin Amin illustrate them in practical manner through a concert of the instrument he masters, the bansuri flute, accomanied on the tabla by the percussionist Ramon Rodríguez. However, even in this practical part, Nitin Amin didn’t loose his educational spirit, and guided his performance with explanatory introductions to each of the sections he was about to perform. After introducing the tanpura tuning, and consequently his basic swara or sa, Nitin presented with Ramon’s help the tala that would use for the two pieces that formed his recital, tintal. Then, Nitin performed a first khayal in raga yaman, introducing each of its sections with a brief explanation, thus guiding the audience’s attention towards main elements to appreciate. Then, Nitin performed a shorter second khayal in raga jhinjhoti. In this second piece, there was less need of explanations, and so we could enjoy Nitin’s performing sensitivity, including a remarkably beautiful alap.

You can watch the whole concert here. 

This activity has been organized with the support from RecerCaixa, a program of l’Obra Social ”la Caixa” in collaboration with ACUP, as well as Ajuntament de Barcelona, Generalitat de Catalunya, and Casa Asia, and in collaboration with the TECSOME Project and Fundació Phonos.

To learn more about this music tradition, you can take the program "North Indian Classical Music" offered by Nitin Amin on the platform Kadenze. This program includes the technology for automatic assessment MusicCritic, developed at the Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.