Listening to the makeshift abandon of DV Paluskar’s Raag Shree

All musical traditions are unique, and all also evolve constantly. But, whatever culture we may belong to, our experience of music has a point of convergence from the early twentieth century onwards, brought about by the technology of recording, and the creation of the 78 rpm, then the 45 rpm “extended play@, and finally the 33 and 1/3 rpm long playing records. A record is, literally, a “record” of an event, as a chapter in a history is, or an entry in a diary.

Among other things, putting a piece of music or a performance “on record” makes retrieval possible – even if it was unheard in its day, we can celebrate it anew, because it irrefutably happened. Retrieval was possible once with compositions but not performances, which vanished with the performer. We don’t know what Tansen’s voice sounded like.

A record is also a commodity. In its capacity of being a product, it was always perishable, as products are. It contained within it the possibility of being replaced by another kind of commodification – though the recording, as a way of communicating and disseminating music, is here to stay, despite the fact that its nature, with digitisation, has altered radically.

Vocabulary of value

Finally, from the early...

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