This is a topic for the flutes of India. These include bansuri (or bansi as it is usually called in spoken Hindi) of North India and the venu of South India which are simple system bamboo flutes with large tone holes.
The history of these flutes stretches back to the pre Christian era and there are Buddhist cave paintings at Ajanta-Ellora in Western India (circa 3rd Century BC to 500 AD) showing nubile maidens and others playing simple system transverse flutes of various lengths. The info I provide here does not claim to be exhaustive and it may not do full justice to the complex history of this instrument in India.
Up to about the mid 1900’s the bansuri of North India was predominantly a pastoral folk flute with six tone holes until the instrument was classicised by the grand master of classical bansuri, Pannalal Ghosh.
Pannalal Ghosh experimented with the longer instruments and also added a seventh tone hole (for the lower pinky). (Thus for example a D flute would now have a 7th or C# below the lowest D).
I went to India in 72, traveling overland from England.
I picked up flutes and whistles in a wholly untutored way,
unfortunately. Nonetheless there is music everywhere on
the streets in India. I hitchhiked about the country, often
sleeping on the streets, going barefoot with only a jolla bag.
Always I had a flute or a whistle.
Often, when I passed people
playing religious tunes and chants on the street or at a shrine,
I sat down on the pavement and joined in. I spent
many hours happily playing tunes with people with whom
I had no language at all in common.
I stayed two years. Every six months my visa would expire and I would
go to Nepal to wait for a new one.
I lived in a three story house near the river on the
outskirts of Katmandu. Spent lots of time on the roof
(in Asia roofs are made for living on). During the monsoon
there were magnificent sunsets as the sun set over the
Himmalayas. Kids on neighboring rooftops flew paper
kites; a multi-leveled kaleidescope. I would play whistle,
usually. The people in the
neighborhood were lower caste, butchers, often,
and they loved music, all music, even the most
dreadful Western pop music. They could hear
what I played on the roof and they liked it.
They would have loved ITM.
I have a continuing fantasy. I’m back there again
on the roof of that house. The sun is setting, the kids
are flying kites. Now I am twenty times the musician
I was then. I sit down crosslegged, pick up my
blackwood flute with a silver lined headjoint.
As I posted a few weeks ago, I recently saw Hariprasad Chaurasia here in Houston. My fiance is from Calcutta and has always wanted to seem him live. Ironic that she had to fly 1/2 across the world to see him.
Wonderful performance, closer to jazz than ITM in a sense because of the improvisation around a base melody. The first 1/2 of the show was one raga, about 50 minutes long.
We’ll be spending January in India, I hope to find music to listen to and maybe pick up a few flutes.
Great concert bamboo flutes in Calcutta.
You can find a (low) D and virtually every other
key. Some are solidly made, too. And very cheap.
Also there are metal simple system flutes,
though these are perhaps less good, in my
experience, anyhow.
Memory is so thankful
Refreshed by the smallest morsels
from the past
Circa 1972 - they must have been the walkabout years. I too was rolling about then.
But for me it was the East Coast of Australia with a tambourine, a blanket and a whistle. In the spring I would go bush and sleep under the stars. I was haunted by a flute in my soul and I sought to realise it in solitary rapture. Later, I realised the flute’s greatest flight was in forgiveness and love, in the company of lonely friends.
It is an old old recording. Basant is in a scale not easily notated in Western musical score (at leat not without accidentals). For instance, with C tonic, its scale would be
C Db E F# G Ab B C+
That is to say, 2nd and 6th are minor and the fourth is augmented.
(In the meantime I am netsurfing for an audio clip of someone playing Irish Music on a bansuri. Lot of non Indian stuff being played on bansuri but they don’t seem to provide any audio samples.)
It is a short 7 minute piece which may be more accessible to ITM lovers.
Notes for Players:-
It seems to be in Raag Piloo and the tonic seems to be F (so he is probably employing a C flute). Raag Piloo allows an almost chromatic range of notes at the choice of the musician although its stem places it under the Dorian Mode.
I found a short version (5 min) of Raag Basant with soundtrack (Real audio track) here: http://www.ragawave.com/basant.html. It seems to be played on an e flute (tonic e)
I am having fun trying to learn to play this on my eight key flute, lacking the proper bansuri in this key. I always had great pleasure listening to classic Indian flute music, this is the first time I actually try to get into it with my flute. Thank you for the thread which encouraged me to play with this music!
The tradition is a “vocal” one. Hence you are not bound by the key. Just like in classical European pieces for the voice, the piece can be transposed to suit the singer, you are not bound to play the raag in the key that you first heard it or in the key that it was originally conceived. You can transpose it to suit your voice (instrument).
(The analyses that I gave with C tonic are just for convenience)
Thank you for your appreciation. I am still searching for someone playing Irish music with a bansuri.
Dear Swan,
If the tonic is E it is likely he or she is playing a B flute.
Classical bansi players like the 3 finger tonic.
In this case for Raag Basant he or she would need to half hole the two minor
notes. As you would be aware the augmented 4th is “ready made” from a 3 finger tonic (ie the all fingers off 7th relative to the 6 finger tonic).
You are totally right, the piece being played on a B flute. I was trying to transpose the music, and now I can just practise on my own B-bansuri, I am so pleased! This is so much fun! I have not had much practise on this flute, it being so big and with a huge embouchure hole.
Here is a pic of the flute. You can see that the stopper end is formed by the natural node of the bamboo cane, which makes for a natural taper towards the embouchure, the external diameter there is 1mm smaller than at L1 position. I have no idea who made this flute. I was lucky to buy it from a guy in Aberdeen, who came back from India with a bunch of flutes, in order to help finance his travels.
Overall length 72cm. Oval bore 26x24mm.
Hole sizes: embouchure hole 14x11.5mm.
L1+L2: 11.5x10.5mm; L3: 11x10.5mm; R1: 9.5x9mm; R2+R3: 12x11mm.
All holes are oval rather than circular. I wonder if this is another characteristic of bansuri flutes?
Do all bansuris have this long stretch between R2 and R3? In simple system flutes build for ITM R3 is often small, bringing it higher up towards R2, and R2 sometimes very big, bringing it lower down towards R3.
I could be wrong about this but it appears it is necessary with large tone hole instruments with cylindrical bore. Even the Chinese tsi-tsay flutes have this stretch. A western flute maker explained the technical reason for this to me once. I am not a flute maker so perhaps someone who is can explain this succinctly and with confidence.
If I were ordering a B bansuri I would request the E vent (the one covered by the right index finger) to be a thumb hole at 6 o’clock. This would assist reach. I would also have the topmost vent as a thumbhole also.
I don’t think it is strictly necessary for R3 (tone-hole six) to be that big. As I said a smaller hole will bring it closer to R2, making for an easier reach. The reason for the large R3 is I believe to facilitate half-holing it in order to play the semi-tone up (Eb on a D-flute). I think it is the reason for the big size of all the holes on the bansuri. The small R3 hole of flutes from the European tradition made it necessary to introduce the first key (for Eb) for the barock flutes, if I am right.
Are semitones traditionally played by half covering the holes, or are cross fingerings also used in the Indian tradition?
There are numerous pictures with Lord Krishna and His flute, just image-google with “krishna flute”.
It must have ben about 1972 too, the time of my own Wander Jahre, when I picked up the picture below: Lord Krishna with His flute and the cowgirl Radha with her cow, a symbol for salvation and divine bliss.
The Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan wrote about the symbolism of Krishna’s flute:
“Krishna is pictured in Hindu symbology with a crown of peacock’s feathers, playing the flute. Krishna is the ideal of divine love, the God of love. And the divine love expresses itself by entering into man and filling his whole being. Therefore the flute is the human heart, and a heart which is made hollow will become a flute for the God of love to play upon. When the heart is not empty, in other words, when there is not scope in the heart, there is no place for love.”
A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.
Since then, it’s been wailing a tender agony
of parting, never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute.
and Mevlâna wrote:
Hearken to this Reed forlorn,
breathing even since ‘twas torn
from its rushy bed, a strain
of impassioned love and pain.
The secret of my song, though near,
none can see and none can hear.
Oh, for a friend to know the sign
and mingle all his soul with mine!
‘Tis the flame of love that fired me,
‘tis the wine of love inspired me.
Wouldst thou learn how lovers bleed,
hearken, hearken to the Reed!
Yes, thats right. Its for half holing. As I said earlier someone told me that large tone holes with cylindrical bores need a greater spread between what you call “R3” and “R2”.
Yes the tradition is disposed to half holing. Even a raag in the Lydian scale and played with a 3 finger tonic will involve significant glissandi
(glissando?) even though all the notes of that scale are obtainable without half holing.
However you will note that the cross fingering on the 7th works as well on a good bansi as it does on any good European flute.
here is another good link.
It contains audio samples of three generations of bansuri virtuosi. The oldest, Pannalal Ghosh, necessarily involves recording on what is now scratchy vinyl but the magic comes through.
Just a note that, in the spiel on the bansuri, when they refer refer to a D sharp tube they mean from here:
XXX OOO
That is D# (Eb) is what we would call a Bb tube
XXX XXX.
I notice that Hariprasad Chaurasia’s principal flutemaker is making flutes in both just intonation and equal tempered intonation now. See Harsh Wardhan website.
