Skip to main content

Sax in Carnatic




The title at first glance might seem suggestive of something lurid perhaps if you have a fertile mind like mine.  Phonetically rhyming ideas like a nubile Kate Winslet on a big ship on open ocean come to mind but it is much more intriguing than that.  I recently in my early morning navigation of the WWW stumbled on this.  A dude make that a famous maestro of classical music from India playing Carnatic music on the Saxophone.  Hence the title.

To put all this in context - a brief primer on the Saxophone.  Invented by a Belgian fella called Adolphe Sax it is a wind instrument made popular in the early 20th century by the birth of jazz music.  While the Sax as the saxophone came to be referred in shorthand is largely associated with big brass bands and the music of the south it has found several artistic interpretations and use in other genres such as Carnatic.

A quick primer on Carnatic - it is the classical music of south India (result of a vague boundary) as opposed to Hindustani music of the north that includes influence from the arabian peninsula and Islamic cultures.

A lot of the compositions in Carnatic tend to be designed to provide an interpretation of prayer to the powerful lords and lordesses and sung in temples and religious venues or events.  Modern day manifestation can include any form of poetry or expression of emotion.  The south of India has many a master performer but I know of none in particular except this video that I came across.  The artist's name is Kadri Gopalnath.

Lucky for him he had a maestro father who himself played a different wind instrument in his day and the young Kadri learned at his feet.  Literally.  No sofas or couches back then.

Kadri is from the Indian state of Karnataka and recipient of India's fourth highest civilian honorary award the Padma Shri..

If the readership is inclined they can find an amazing collection of music at the below link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKkcbGM0pg0



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New England is gleaming in the fall

 This autumn the weather gods cooperated as we took a family trip in the northeast to see six states that qualify or makeup what is known colloquially in America as New England. Mass, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island (tiniest state in the union). The outing helped tally up the states we either lived in, visited or have worked in to 47. Guess which three have eluded this intrepid traveling family. Any rate the drive was all in about 1,800 miles and included some memorable geographic wonders or points of interest.  Easternmost part of state of Massachusetts being one.  Furthest drivable road east in Mass being another. Visit to all Ivy League schools (term harkens to a collegiate athletics conference and generally regarded as elite academic institutes of some repute worldwide) is another random bucket list item of which this trip afforded the chance to knock two more of the list.  Dartmouth in Hanover, NH and Brown (and its sister institute the RISD  - school f

Searching for a lavish 'fill in the blank with other adjectives and gender' in bed

 Many of the readers of this blog have experienced this. Strange sounding messages popping up in your text or WA or emails all day long from some exotic sounding locale with an out of this world individual looking for love, sex, money or other paraphernalia to get a high. I mean granted that electronic spamming is a low cost enterprise and all but the sheer volumes and the variety in these exhortations is beyond imagination. Having a desire to engage you in some sort of sexual payola or invest in some arcane crypto scheme must be a profound algorithm that someone from Oklahoma to Odessa is cranking on through the night and watching one in a few million fall for. Otherwise this nonsense would not exist I suspect. It would be funny to watch the lifecycle of some such persona that creates said content and that of a prospect for this invite becoming an unwilling or willing participant. Then that whole thing could go on some social channel and earn likes and subscriptions for someone else a

Lakeside frivolities

 We moved to the Charlotte area not knowing where exactly our new home would be. Turns out it was by a popular lake formed by the damming of the Catawba river which flows north to south in the Carolinas. Local electricity generation utility built a series of dams along the waterway for hydro and couple nuclear plants as well to supply the state grid.  The lake our house butts into is Lake Wylie. While tract home build has picked up in the Carolinas the developer often carves out parcels that they can get their hands on leaving behind privately owned lots that the individual owner may not want to sell. Our house is part of a subdivision but backs into actual lake front yardage that has always been part of legacy family owned properties who chose to build a cabin or getaway and did not sell to a corporation wanting to build in the hundreds. As such we can see the water through the year but it does not afford actual water access.  That privilege is to our neighbors who still maintain thei