Gesture in Indian Vocal Music
Further information: Music of IndiaIndian vocalists move their hands while improvising melody. Although every vocalist has an idiosyncratic gestural style, the motion of the hand and voice are connected through various logics, and many students gesturally resemble their teachers. Nikki Moran, at the University of London, has done research on this topic, and it is one of the subjects of Martin Clayton and Laura Leante's Musical Experience Project at the Open University.
Clayton has published a paper on gestural interaction in Indian music performance: "Time, Gesture and Attention in a Khyal Performance." Asian Music, 38 (2), 71–96.
Matt Rahaim, a vocalist and ethnomusicologist, has published an article on the relationship between vocalization and gesture in Indian vocal music: “Gesture and Melody in Indian Vocal Music” Gesture 8(3): 325–347. Rahaim's work approaches gesture and vocalization as parallel expressions of melody, investigates isomorphisms between gesture space and raga space, and studies the inheritance of "paramparic bodies"--melodic/gestural dispositions handed down through teaching lineages.
Read more about this topic: Musical Gesture
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