Date: 19.12.2024 – Thursday – 9.05 – 9.50 a.m.
Speaker : Professor Naresh Keerthi
Title : Between Page and Stage: Raga and Raga Music in Classical Literary Sources
Abstract :
The habitus of song saw great ferment in Early Modern South India. In this period (15-17th centuries), the performing arts and the literary arts came into close and fruitful interactions: interactions that left both domains transformed. Portrayals of music in belles lettres (kāvya-nāṭaka) become more expansive, detailed and contemporary. At the same time, there are innovations in the sung genres (prabandham, gītam, padam, kṛti) that mirror embellishments and devices seen in
literature. We also see changes in the literary status of the song, and the social status of the composer and musicologist (vāggēyakāra). In this paper I will muster examples from songs and literary texts to track some of those changes.
About the Speaker :
Naresh Keerthi is Assistant Professor, Department of Sanskrit Studies, at Ashoka University, India. His research is in the overlapping literary cultures of Sanskrit, Prakrit Telugu and classical Kannada. Naresh studies the Sanskrit poetry and plays (kāvya-nāṭaka texts), their commentaries and the texts of literary and dramaturgical theory (kāvyaśāstra and nāṭyaśāstra); to historicize the distinct trajectories of theory and practice (lakṣya and lakṣana) in these domains.
(Long ago,) Naresh studied Carnatic vocal music from several teachers – first his grandmother Indirammal – a grand-disciple of Mysore Chowdiah, then Dr Rallapalli Harini, Vid Shingarammal – a student of T.K.Rangachari, and Dr. Sakuntala Narasimhan.
Naresh is also interested in musicology and the cultural history of the song in early Modern South India. He has an article interpreting the musical elements in the Hariścandracāritra of the 13th c Kannada poet Rāghavāṅka in light of a contemporary text of musicology – the Saṅgītasamayasāra of Pārśvadēva. In an article “The Polysemy of the Prabandha”, Naresh has examined the Śrīraṅgaprabandha – a genre for which we find both lakṣya and lakṣana composed by Vēṅkaṭamakhin.