World music course brings celebrated sarod performer to campus

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The first time Rajeev Taranath performed in public, he was 9 years old and the United States was entering World War II.

He was a vocalist then; indeed, by 20, he had established a career as such.

But then something happened that changed Taranath’s life. He attended a concert that featured sitar player Ravi Shankar performing a duet with Ali Akbar Khan, who was playing the sarod, the richly textured relative of the lute. Taranath was so mesmerized by the sarod that he decided to devote his life to it.

Today, more than half a century later, Taranath is an internationally acclaimed performer and one of India’s leading exponents of the sarod.

On Wednesday, Sept. 17, Taranath will perform a free concert hosted by the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Music at 7 p.m. at the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts. That morning, he will conduct a lecture and demonstration on the sarod.

According to the Department of Music’s website, “Taranath’s performances masterfully combine the depth and rigor of the tradition of North Indian classical music with an inspired imagination and emotional intensity.”

Tabatha Easley, assistant professor of the flute at VCU, whose research interests include Native American music, organized Taranath’s appearance under the auspices of the World Musical Styles (MHIS 120) course. Each semester, the department tries to schedule at least one “big name” artist in world music.

“That’s definitely a departmental priority in terms of our budget since it does reach at lot of students and it appeals to a lot of students outside the music department,” Easley said.

While the musical styles course has existed for years, Easley restructured both the size and the content of the course three years ago. Instead of one large class, the course today consists of three small sections limited to 22 music majors and minors. And instead of spending only half the semester on non-European music cultures and the rest on Western styles, the course now devotes the entire semester to the former.

Although it is not officially a writing-intensive course, MHIS 120 is the first class that music students have in which they write about music, because Easley wanted to make sure they obtained experience and guidance in that area. The small sections are intended to facilitate this curricular objective.

This semester, MHIS 120 begins with an introduction to ethnomusicology, followed by five units focused on the musical cultures of India, Indonesia, Latin America, Native Americans and Africa.

Easley hopes that the experiences students gain from the course “are enriching in a way that isn’t just a surface presentation,” which is why they will spend a couple of weeks on each unit rather than “just glossing over as many music cultures as we can cram in.” She and her colleagues also want to include a live component in each unit. The first of these took place earlier in September when Paul Yoon, a Focused Inquiry instructor with a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology, gave a presentation on his specialty, Japanese taiko drumming.

Other scheduled events are an evening of Balinese (gamelan) music at the University of Richmond, hosted by associate professor Andrew McGraw; the Richmond Folk Festival; a local pow-wow; and several breakout drumming sessions.

As a local complement to Taranath’s sarod, Mauli Dalal, a VCU engineering graduate student who has studied the sitar for 13 years, has been granted permission by her guru, Vidushi Manjuben Mehta, to give a presentation to the students in MHIS 120 before Taranath’s appearance.

 

Feature photo credit of Anthony Peres.

 

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