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References: Music

  1. Baul songs - UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage - The official listing for the Baul songs of Bangladesh, inscribed on the Representative List in 2008 after being proclaimed in 2005. It describes the Bauls' way of life, their music and their influence on Bengali culture, including Rabindranath Tagore.

  2. Art of crafting and playing rubab/rabab - UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage - The 2024 listing shared by Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, explaining how the rubab is made from mulberry wood and where it is played.

  3. UNESCO-listed musical instrument stifled in Afghanistan - Nukta, reporting by AFP (2024) - Follows rubab makers in Herat and Kabul who keep working under the Taliban authorities' ban on music. A humane look at what happens to a tradition when it is restricted.

  4. Royal Carpet: Introduction to Carnatic Tala - karnATik - A short, clear explanation of how Carnatic musicians keep tala with palm beats, finger counts and hand flips, with Adi tala as the main example. The source for the Adi tala gestures in the Tala Clapper.

  5. Rupak Tal - DigiTabla - A tabla reference page explaining Rupak's 3 + 2 + 2 structure and why it is the only popular tala that begins on khali. The site also has pages on Teentaal, Dadra and Jhaptaal.

  6. Indian Music and the Sitar - Smithsonian Folkways (lesson plan, Kevin Williams, University of Washington) - A free classroom lesson for grades 4-12 on feeling the pulse of Indian music and hearing a raga on the sitar, with links to Folkways recordings. Useful for teachers and club leaders.

  7. Music of India (21M.291) - MIT OpenCourseWare - Materials from a university course on Hindustani and Carnatic music, for readers who want to go much deeper into raga, tala and performance.

  8. Tala (music) - Wikipedia - An overview of tala in both classical systems, including sam, khali, the clap-and-wave notation and the Carnatic angas. Follow its citations to scholarly books on rhythm.

  9. Raga - Wikipedia - Explains why a raga is more than a scale, its history in Sanskrit music theory, and how ragas are linked to times of day in the north.

  10. Qawwali - Wikipedia - Traces qawwali from Amir Khusrau and the Chishti Sufis of Delhi to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the Sabri Brothers, with notes on how a qawwali performance is structured.