The Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras organized the CIKS Talk Series featuring eminent scholar Dr. Deepak Paramashivan on 26 October 2023 at the Department on Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. The abstract of the talk and the speaker’s profile are shared below:

Abstract:
Music of India encompasses a vastly diverse genres and forms such as classical music, semi-classical /light forms of music, folk music, popular and fusion music. There are two distinct schools of classical music that are well known namely, Karnatak and Hindustani. The Karnatak system prevails mostly in the southern part of the country consisting of the states, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The Hindustani system prevails in the rest of India. Besides these two classical systems of music, there are also a number of regional musical forms that vary from one region to the other reflecting the vast cultural diversity of India. For ex. Bhavageethe,Janapadageethe, and Rangageethe in Karnataka, Nattu padal in Tamil Nadu, Natyageeth and Abhangs in Maharashtra, Soratha and Panihari in Rajasthan, Yenki paatalu and oggu kathaalu of Andhra Pradesh, Bhatiyali Geeth and Rabindra Sangeeth in West Bengal, Lok Geeth in Assam and Pahadi dhun in Himachal Pradesh to name a few. Music being an indispensable component of the Indian life, there is no region of India that does not have a very well developed system of music representing its socio-cultural identity. In this talk, I will give a very brief and elementary introduction to music of India with live demonstration on vocal and Sarangi. I will make some general observations about the influences and interactions between Indian music and musics of other parts of the world.

Profile:
Dr. Deepak Paramashivan is a Sarangi player, composer, actor and ethnomusicologist and currently an assistant professor in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences. He has toured Europe, USA, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea both as a soloist and collaborating with Ustad Aashish Khan, Pandit Swapan Chaudhary, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, Pandit Yogesh Samsi, Pandit Birju Maharaj, A R Rehman and the Hollywood music director Rick Boston. He has acted and composed music in Indian films such as the Sanskrit/Kannada bilingual film Ekachakram, Kannada film Maavu-Bevu. Deepak has a PhD in energy and climate engineering, with a gold medal, from the Indian Institute of Science. He received his second doctorate in Music from the University of Alberta, Canada.