Chiff and Fipple Forums

tala baba , i appreciate the expsoure to the bansuri that you provide here. keep up the good work. bansuri music is very cool!

Thank you Rama for your encouragement.
It befits your name that you should be enjoying this.

talasiga posted the following link on the Pub forum, which I think deserves attention for flute players:
http://www.itcsra.org/aom/artist_ofthe_ ... p?aomid=58
about the great bansuri player Rajendra Prasanna, master of the flute and shehnai. The page has a link to a 50 min performance of the raag Marwa, which I find exquisite. Very smooth playing, wonderful glissandi, and a lot of rather jazz like passages. Amazing expression. I recommend it, even though it needs Real Player for listening.

Sadly, searching the web, I could not find any CDs for sale from Rajendra Prasanna. Well, I found one Japanese site with one CD, but I can't read the site. It seems that nearly all classical Indian flute music for sale on CD is by Hariprasad Chaurasia.

Rajendra Prasanna is doing a UK (England) tour this month. See tour dates.

Wish I could go to the concert in Gateshead, but it is a six hour drive from the North of Scotland, more than I am willing to do for one concert.

here's a good link on bansuri maintenance

WARNING
this post REVIVES the topic
(although, if I must say so, this topic tends to have a perennial salience, and something more than a year old needn't really cause offence in a forum predominated by an interest in age old traditional musics)

Check out this flautist, Pandit Keshav Ginde. Credited as devising a 3.5 octave bansuri which is in a book of records as the flute with the greatest range.

Here he is performing an alap (slow air type improvisation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJbzFZd ... re=related

Is it available on the web a recording of this guy that reaches the top of the 3.5 octave?

Dear Talasiga:

Thank you for your post, it's very useful !!
Wonderful to know more about Bansis hehe..



D.

This thread appeared just as I was toying with the idea of purchasing a bansuri, so thanks for the invaluable guidance and information. Mine just arrived today, and it is all that I hoped for - its a b (e tonic) from Jeff Whittier. I was guessing at the size of what I could comfortably finger and relievedly, was spot on (I can palm a basketball, btw, so have large hands). No surprise, but the difference in tone and responsiveness from my ITM flute is incredible. Now maybe need to find a source that I can learn some bansuri techniques from. GS Sachdev has an instructional DVD that I might try out.

Not sure how I'm going to deal with having YET another instrument to keep up with, but this is a good problem to have, I suppose.

Yes the responsiveness of a well made baansuri is something quite inspiring
and particularly its responsiveness to half holing.
However I don't think it fair to compare a low B key baansuri
with the higher D key Irish flute for to reckon the former more impressive
in its tone.
One reallly needs to play an "irish style" B key flute (Terry McGee makes them for
pipe accompaniment etc).
I SPECULATE that a more parable assessment will result in a recognition
that each has its own distinct impressionable quality.

Thank you for expressing your appreciation of this topic.
I have enjoyed threading it.

talasiga: Agreed - its a bit like comparing apples to oranges - D ITM flute to E tonic bansuri. Now that I've been playing both flutes, I can appreciate how the design of the instruments facilitates the traditional ornamentation and playing styles. I'm almost hopeless trying to half-hole my D ITM flute, but I'm seeing the possibilities on the bansuri.

I started fluting on an inexpensive D bamboo irish flute, which is quite a bit thicker than the bansuri - it was great for learning, but now I can really appreciate the difference. The tactile sensation of the thin bamboo flute vibrating in one's hand as it is played is otherworldly. For ITM playing, I still hold my Copely in high esteem.

FLUTEinVT wrote: ...... Now that I've been playing both flutes, I can appreciate how the design of the instruments facilitates the traditional ornamentation and playing styles.
.......

Yes, of course, but not such that each type of flute is seen as being limited to a particular tradition.

Here is someone playing good bansuri while accompanying Jewish music:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXtQdswX ... re=related

Whilst the opening and closing riffs and a few in the middle are strongly reflective of indian flute style, most of the accompanaiment is just what I would call "mainstream" or "standard" flute accompaniment.

I'm interested in the shorter, smaller flutes, as I have shorter, smaller hands and fingers.

Does this sort of flute have an identifying name? Or is it simply a folk Bansuri (or something else, perhaps)?
The film, Silent Waters, is set in 1979 Pakistan. It is about the cultural/religious contention following partition.

I'd like to purchase something similar within the UK, but it is difficult to find detailed information about instruments, let alone sourcing them. If anyone has had any success in the UK, or through contacting the Indian community, I'd be most grateful for any assistance.

A couple of Bansi links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Y0JB0vFiY (LQ)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfm7A41uupU (still)

---

Here's something extra: I watched the documentary "The World According to John Coltrane" recently, and there was an excellent section on Indian music. I doubt it's legal for me to upload, so I'll do a transcript.

In the documentary The World According to John Coltrane, narrator Ed Wheeler remarks:

"In 1960, Coltrane left Miles [Davis] and formed his own quartet to further explore modal playing, freer directions, and a growing Indian influence. They transformed "My Favorite Things", the cheerful populist song from 'The Sound of Music,' into a hypnotic eastern dervish dance. The recording was a hit and became Coltrane's most requested tune—and a bridge to broad public acceptance."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_n-gRS_wdI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NllPZ5_Tw40

(La Monte Young)
"[JC] was using what were like elements of minimalism in his playing, when he would take a fixed constellation of tones and do these very interesting mathematical permutations on them. It's not unlike what you would hear Lester Young doing in Blues. But, he had refined the process because of his exposure to Indian classical music and other Eastern traditions of modalism. You can hear it tied into his Blues legacy and brought into a new level of refinement and understanding."

(Narrator)
"In the Eastern and African cultures Coltrane turned to for inspiration, music is a means to enlightenment, not an end in itself.
His drive to expand his musical horizons increasingly became a process of spiritual development. His playing and composing - a probing of soul and spirit with his audience as active participants rather than passive witnesses.
A friendship with Ravi Shankar that began in the late 1950s--with informal discussions and jam sessions--became an education in an ancient Science of sound; in which musical structures map specific states of consciousness."

(La Monte Young)
"One of the really important things about modal music is that you have a set of frequency relationships that are repeated over and over. Because of the emphasis on intonation in Indian classical music, this set of frequency relationships is very much in exactly the same place, so that each frequency comes right back at the same place. This sets up a series of patterns in the mechanism of the nervous system of the listener, so that a psychological state is created.
If you believe the Universe is composed of vibrations, then you can understand how a study of sound--which is the most concrete form of vibrations that the human mechanism can immediately assimilate--can be an introduction to the understanding of universal structure."

Just some anecdotal data: although an interest in Jagjit Singh preceded this, I really got into Indian music after watching Satyajit Ray films. They helped me get in touch with the (Bengali) culture - historic/mystic, as well as progress and modernity. There are a couple of tastes on YouTube. Very nutritious. The most hypnotic, I've found, is Devi (Goddess), which I think is available on Veoh. His most famous, The Apu trilogy, will be out there, too.

Great post. Thanks for these links. I lived in Calcutta for awhile and the movie links
bring it all back. I was very happy there. I was teaching but what I really did was
walk around Calcutta. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the
night and walk for hours. Also I bought and played flutes, without
much knowing what I was doing.

Thanks again.

Looks like a bansuri in the film.
Just googeling found these 2 online UK shops selling bansuris (I have no idea about these shops though, you are on your own to find out how trustworthy they are and what quality the instruments they offer are):

http://www.jas-musicals.com/sectrad/43/indian-flute.asp
http://www.gurusoundz.com/productdetail ... nstruments

Are any bansuris made which have a thumb hole for a better vented natural fourth (Ma)?
(Tonic 'Sa' being L1, L2, L3 closed [and thumb hole closed if there is one])

Are there any master players using a thumb hole?