Madal, A Percussion Of Central India (Non Carnatic)

Maddal

Maddal is a class of barrel shaped hand drums of the mridang class.  Where other members of the mridang class tend to be used in classical music, the maddal tends to be used in folk music.

The construction of the maddal tends to be similar of the pakhawaj.  As in the pakhawaj and mridangam, it invariably has a permanent application on the right hand side.  However, it is really difficult to generalise about the left side application.  Among the folk maddals, one may find permanent applications, dholka massala type applications, or even temporary applications such as flour and water.

One interesting characteristic of the maddal is the variety of sizes and shapes that one may find for the drum shell.  Although they tend to be fairly consistent within certain geographical areas and small ethnic groups, when viewed across the breadth of South Asia one finds a very great variation.

It should be stressed that the maddal is not a single instrument but a class of related folk drums.  Specific examples include the jaspura(Northeast India), madar (central India), maddale (Southwest India), mandar (Central and Northeast India), and the tumdah (Northeast India).  One could even argue that the pung and the khol could also be include in this classification.

Violin in South Indian Music

Violin, The Popular String Instrument in South Indian Music

What is Violin?

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. The violin is sometimes informally called a fiddle, regardless of the type of music played on it. The word violin comes from the Medieval Latin word vitula, meaning stringed instrument this word is also believed to be the source of the Germanic "fiddle". The violin, while it has ancient origins, acquired most of its modern characteristics in 16th-century Italy, with some further modifications occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries. Violinists and collectors particularly prize the instruments made by the Gasparo da Salò, Giovanni Paolo Maggini, Stradivari,Guarneri and Amati families from the 16th to the 18th century in Brescia and Cremona and by Jacob Stainer in Austria. Great numbers of instruments have come from the hands of "lesser" makers, as well as still greater numbers of mass-produced commercial "trade violins" coming from cottage industries in places such as Saxony, Bohemia, and Mirecourt. Many of these trade instruments were formerly sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and other mass merchandisers.

A person who makes or repairs violins is called a luthier, or simply a violin maker. The parts of a violin are usually made from different types of wood  (although electric violins may not be made of wood at all, since their sound may not be dependent on specific acoustic characteristics of the instrument's construction), and it is usually strung with gut, nylon or other synthetic, or steel strings.

Someone who plays the violin is called a violinist or a fiddler. The violinist produces sound by drawing a bow across one or more strings (which may be stopped by the fingers of the other hand to produce a full range of pitches), by plucking the strings (with either hand), or by avariety of other techniques. The violin is played by musicians in a wide variety of musical genres, including Baroque music, classical, jazz, folk music, and rock and roll. The violin has come to be played in many non-western music cultures all over the world.

Origin and History of Violin

Turkic and Mongolian horsemen from Inner Asia were probably the world’s earliest fiddlers. Their two-stringed upright fiddles were strung with horsehair strings, played with horsehair bows, and often feature a carved horse’s head at the end of the neck. The violins, violas, and cellos we play today, and whose bows are still strung with horsehair, are a legacy of the nomads.

It is believed that these instruments eventually spread to China, India, the Byzantine Empire and the Middle East, where they developed into instruments such as the erhu in China, the rebab in the Middle East, the lyra in the Byzantine Empire and the esraj in India. The violin in its present form emerged in early 16th-Century Northern Italy, where the port towns of Venice and Genoa maintained extensive ties to central Asia through the trade routes of the silk road.

The oldest documented violin to have four strings, like the modern violin, is supposed to have been constructed in 1555 by Andrea Amati, but the date is very doubtful. The violin immediately became very popular, both among street musicians and the nobility, illustrated by the fact that the French king Charles IX ordered Amati to construct 24 violins for him in 1560. One of these instruments, now called the Charles IX, is the oldest surviving violin. The finest Renaissance carved and decorated violin in the world is the Gasparo da Salò (1574 c.) owned by Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria and later, from 1841, by the Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull, who used it for forty years and thousands of concerts, for his very powerful and beautiful tone, similar to those of a Guarneri. It is now in the Vestlandske Kustindustrimuseum in Bergen (Norway). "The Messiah" or "Le Messie" made by Antonio Stradivari in 1716 remains pristine. It is now located in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford.