li
SKETCH OF THE HIMALAYAN PEOPLE AND THEIR MUSIC
By Lily Strickland
for it.” There is no printed music for these orchestras, but each musician sits before his instrument, on the floor, and seems absolutely lost in introspection and totally oblivious of the fellow members of the orchestra. Each absorbed player gives free expression to his own interpretation, indifferent to ensemble and ignorant of harmony. And yet, strange to say, they get the effect of consonance in the more or less vague manner of their music.
Your sturdy hillman is the king of pedestrians_ and as he tramps many miles over the precipitous mountain paths marketward or homeward, he sings. And singing, he lessens his loneliness out on the trail. With his head thrown back and his mouth wide open, he lets sound come forth in no uncertain manner. On many adventurings along winding hill trails, wc have met various tribesmen lost in rhapsodical song. It may have been a Tibetan vendor of turquoise, a Nepalese ricksha coolie, a little road maker, or a donkey coolie. They all swing blithely along the way, with free stride, and sing contentedly to themselves. Or, further below the more narrow paths that cling to the side of the hill where is the old Tonga or cart road, the drivers of the bullock carts creep along marketward with their produce. Their voices come up to us on the thin air, gay or plaintive according to their mood, the minor cadences rising and falling as the curves in the trail emphasize or soften the music. He sings as the spirit moves, be he prosperous farmer or wandering vagabond clad in dingy rags and burdened only with the weight of his inseparable knife stuck in his belt. Perhaps it is the shrill treble of a little coolie girl bending beneath a basket of heavy rocks strapped to her forehead, or a Nepalese woman with a baby bound papoose-fashion to her back.
They all sing. Particularly fascinating are the songs of the road coqlies, who work for hours to the strongly marked rhythm of their music. The leader intones a phrase in solo, the rest take it up and repeat it after the manner of the old time country preacher who lines a hvmn tune. Thus as they toil, pulling the great rock crusher, and smoothing the trails, their high voices may be heard, far or near, all through the working hours of the day. The road makers and coal coolies, in fact most of the beasts of burden here, are little girls and women, of amazing physical endurance. Taught from early childhood to bear the heavy burdens of their destined callings, they seem content to accept their (to us) hard lot with cheerfulness and even satisfaction. To carry a great basket of coal on their backs or a trunk that would take four Bengali coolies to handle, up the steep paths, and, mark you, sing at the same time, is to the western observer a marvelous feat. In fact, few singers could stand such a test on their straining lungs. The hillmen’s vocal chords, like their bodies, are extraordinarily strong, and their voices, although not sweet, are penetrating with a not unpleasant quality that seems to belong to the open spaces of the hills. In case a mixed company of workers sing together, the men simply carry the theme an octave lower, in unison, or what corresponds to it. All Indian music is melodic only, whether it be solo or part song. Harmony, as we know' it, is absolutely unknown to them.
These Himalayan folk are a singing race. At all times their weird cadences in crescendo or diminuendo, rise and fall, the theme embellished by spontaneous improvisation, as the mood demands. Their minor tones, coming to us muffled in heavy mists, or clear in this rarefied atmosphere when the sun bursts through the clouds, seem to be an essential part of the magic and beauty of these high hills. We are enthralled, for the music is an articulate expression of these wild, deep ravines, stony precipices, winding trails and tangled forests. Primitive, and untutored are both singer and song. Born of these wilder hills, their song is a desire for self-expression, or merely animal exhilaration of life, or a spontaneous effort to express heights of joy or the depths of sorrow; their song is natural, primitive, unforced, and for that reason all the more fascinating and real to us. It' matters little that we do not understand the words, as they are frequently lost in unbridled cadenzas. We get the sense of the song, and feel its general character and are satisfied. One does not bother to criticize the singer’s diction or enunciation, but lends himself simply to the effect on the senses, and the tonal expression of the music. That we feel the essence of the song and its content is more than we can always say even when hearing one of our own singers interpret our language to us.
The Indian Musical Trinity.
Here the natural Indian musical trinity is the drum, the flute and the lute. In the hills, as on the plains, the drums take precedence over all the lesser instruments. The street crier, issuing his proclamation in the market place, uses a tom-tom which he beats with two sticks. The temple denizens employ a variety of instruments of peculiar sacred significance. The Niagara, or kettledrum, is used in religious ceremonies, and also played With two sticks. The Tabla pair, two drums played simultaneously witli right and left hand, and the double-headed drum, and Mrydanga, are popular. The gruesome thigh bone trumpet is a great favorite with the priests, just as a skull beggar bowl is favored of the “holy mendicants.” When the latter shakes that cranial reminder of mortality under the nose of the bazaar vendors of fruit, vegetable, or grain, they dare not refuse him a suitable offering.
In some of the temples the musicians hold hereditary offices and sing devotional songs or play the various instruments employed in the sacred offices of their profession. The Buddhist monks embellish their daily services very freely with much ringing of bells, clanging of gongs, and clashing of cymbals. The gongs and cymbals are made of brass, copper or bronze; the tambourines and castanets of brass and wood; the trumpets of buffalo horns, human thigh bone, and the bells of every sort of metal. The oft-mentioned “temple bell” is not, however, always the thing of beauty that it is supposed to be. Oftimes it is a discordant bell, producing a harsh, clanging
Copyrighted, 1922, by The Musical Courier Company.
cadences almost impossible to reproduce. Their rakish, three-cornered hats, full sleeved smocks, queer mocassins like home-made shoes, long pigtails and great ear-rings of gold and turquoise, give them a striking appearance even here in this land of unusual looking people and things.
Just as the flowers draw their color front the sun, so do these folk draw the color of their music from their surroundings. They find their sources of inspiration in nature and her manifold manifestations, in religion, a reflex natural instinct, so deeply woven into the fibre of their being; in tradition and legend and all the unwritten history of their ancient stronghold in the rugged heart of the highest mountains of the. world. They have evolved a peculiar style of their own from their environment and heredity, and' by all counts arc distinctly a musical people. The origin of hill music is lost in the mists of antiquity, but whatever the original nucleus of their creative instinct, their music has developed through legend and history and the interpretations of the human emotions, musically speaking, have been kept alive by minstrel and poet bard, by the singer and his Ragas.
To hear and feel the real unadorned beauty of any people’s music, one should go to the fountain head, namely folk song, the hereditary musical expression of the people.
Calling Is Foreordained.
In the hills as in the plains, the offices of a musician, like the mantle of royalty, are hereditary. All question of a calling is settled before one is born. One is foreordained a sweeper, a dhobi, a khansamen, or a barber, and a musician. India's caste system has one point in its favor. It settles all question of a calling, relieves one’s mind of all indecision as to a choice. As long as he wishes to keep his caste, he must follow the caste-law and woe to the independent spirit who attempts to do otherwise. To be outcasted in India is to court Nemesis with a vengeance. Here, a man’s calling, like the sins of the fathers, is visited upon the third and fourth generation, and “then some.” And. considering some of the things one can be born here, one is very lucky to pick a musician for a father.
The hill people have depended largely on tradition, literally by word of mouth, for the perpetuation of ancient Ragas. There is apparently no general or written system of notation of value here, although the more progressive moderns and scholarly musicians are beginning to attempt a scientific systematizing and recording.
In this country the singer comes first, the instrument last, unless, of course, instrumental music is being given. But to western ears, unfortunately the singer and the instrument are not always in accord. Consequently painful discrepancies are often too evident. Correlation is evidently an unknown word in their musical lexicon. One who has not heard a vocal performance here has a most unique treat in store. Each musician proceeds blandly on his way, happily absorbed in his own personal interpretation, and the resultant dissonances produce a strange effect to us trained to a “concord of sweet sounds.” On several occasions, however, we have seen a temperamental vocalist frown his displeasure and wave down a rising crescendo of accompaniment which threatened his soloistic supremacy. When a singer is accompanied by several instruments—or, to be literal, I should say followed by instruments, a bar or two behind some times—the musicians are expected to have a sort of musical sixth sense, or intuition, which prepares them in advance for the vagaries of the singer.
Singers Need a Tonic.
As the song of the Bard is largely improvisational, the instruments are supposed to trail along in his musical footsteps, even if a pace or two behind, and for the reason that the Indian singer is given to the elaboration and embroidering of his theme, a drone, or tonic note, is used in constant reiteration to keep him from wandering too far from his theme. Considering this fact, however, the players of drums, lutes, or flutes, do wonderfully well in their attempt at co-ordination, for, after all, one is lost in the musical maze of tonal flights and one wonders how any of them can ever get' back to the tonic note again. As a matter of fact, they do not, unless the drone is used to hold them to the key.
When one first hears a native orchestra, he learns something new about music. It produces a most weird effect until the strangeness wears off, if it ever does. The most essential step towards understanding is to have a “feeling
[This article was especially written for the Musical Courier by the well known American song composer, Lily Strickland (Anderson), who, with her husband, has lived in India for several years.—The Editor.]
music and 1 will tell you what they are,” would ־“־ have had his ability as a character reader severely tested by the music of the Himalayan people. If music is the universal language, it certainly has some strange dialects, among which all Indian music, and especially that of the Indian hill people, is strikingly unique and diihcult to understand. But in attempting to come by an intelligent appreciation of Himalayan music, as in the case of any Oriental art. one must have an attitude of sympathy and throw aside all tendency to compare and judge it by
western and modern standards.
The basic quality of all Indian music is the same, whether of plains or hills. It varies in expression and character, however, according to sections of the country, and to the same extent as the people vary in physical, mental, and social characteristics.
These variations have led to two general classifications, viz • the Carnatic school in the south, and the Hindustani school in the north of India. It is to the latter division that the music of the Himalayan people belongs.
The Nepalese Dominate.
The people of the hills of India differ vastly from their brothers of the plains, both in physiological and psychological characteristics. To begin with, they are volatile, gay. light-hearted, responsive and irresponsible by nature, in striking contrast to more melancholy and apathetic Bengali of the plains. One can trace these temperamental differences to contrasting climate and topographical conditions. High altitudes and cold, exhilarating air have produced a widely different native than has the enervating, devitalizing heat of the plains. The dominating population of the Darjeeling district, which we are taking as representative of Indian hill people, is Nepalese.
With their divisions and sub-divisions, they form about half the native population here. They speak a form of Hindi, and are followers of Buddha. They are a happy-go-luckj׳ people of light complexion and strong Mongolian cast of feature, sturdy and muscular of body, with long, straight, black hair, which the men wear in ragged pigtails "after the fashion of the Celestial. They are healthy, hardy, ruddy and good tempered and their music is equally spontaneous and infectious.	~
Then there are the Bhutias, from Sikkim, the native state, called in Tibetan parlance the “Rice Country. Sikkim lies to the north of Darjeeling and covers an area of 2 818 square miles, but thinly populated. These folk are largelv Brahmanic Hindus and Buddhists, and are div ided into the main classes of Sikkim-Bhutias and Tibetan-Bhutias They dwell, en masse, in a Bhutia Busty, or native villaee/dominated by a Buddhist monastery and are particularly famous in these parts for their grotesque ceremonial dances at Pooja time, or festal occasions, when they wear hideous head masques representing distorted local or imaginary animals and to the wild beat of drum and shrill of drone flute, or blast of horn, leap and whirl in an ecstasy of rhythmic contortions. One of these fantastic processions is as good as a circus and is followed by the usual hypnotized satellites in the form of small boys and girls as well as grown men and women.
These peoole partake of all the general characteristics ot the average hillman, being by nature cheerful and amiable, though given to temperamental outbursts on occasions. They are said to be a cross-breed between the Tibetans
and Lepchas.	.	, T ,	,
The aborigines of this region are the Lepchas, and are in the minority here as they do not take so kindly even to the slenderest trammellings of civilization, as expressed in the more ordered habitation of the town-dwelling native. Thev come down from their fastnesses in the hills on market day, and are a wild looking lot, with their ragged locks and ׳with murderous kukhris stuck in their belts.
The Tibetan is the most strongly marked of these tribesmen. He carries about with him the glamor of the forbidden land of mysterious Tibet within whose little explored borders the white man is seldom seen and never wanted. Both their physiognomies and their costumes have a strong Mongolian cast. Even their speaking and singing voices are full of strange gutturals and abrupt
TRAVELING IN THE HILLS OF INDIA
Thu author ol thin article, Mrs. Lily Strickland Anderson, with her husband (right) and some
natives at Darjeeling.