Acht Brücken: Trio Swaralayaaamaaya

Traditionelle Musik aus Bangalore

Indian classical music also features much finer pitch differences than are common in the Western tradition.

In the scales of Indian music, the octave is not divided into 12 semitones, but into 22 shrutis or micro-intervals. Singing is at the heart of Carnatic, or South Indian music, and Varijashree Venugopal is currently regarded as one of the best singers in this main branch. She has a breathtakingly virtuoso command of the melodic finesse of the raga system and the equally complex rhythmic structures of the tala with its cyclically repeated beat sequences. She also has a practice she calls "Carnatic scat singing": the imitation of instrumental jazz solos using South Indian tonal syllables. Venugopal is accompanied by two master percussionists, B. C. Manjunath plays the most important Carnatic rhythm instrument, the double-sided drum mridangam, Guru Prasanna plays the tambourine-like frame drum kanjira.