Abstract:

The gestures of Hindustani classical vocalists range from occasional, subtle waves of the hand to movements of the whole upper body. This thesis, drawing on video analyses and interviews, approaches physical gesture as an integral part of musical performance and transmission. The gestures used in Hindustani music are both melodic expression and embodied cognition: a way of thinking in space. Like speech, vocal improvisation is closely and meaningfully co-timed with gesture. Also like speech, the phrasing of both gesture and vocalization is organized hierarchically, so that different levels of gestural rest correspond to different levels of logical import. Gesture offers a view of melody as motion in space that complements the conventional view of melody as a sequence of discrete notes produced by a singer.

One important context for this motion is the space in which melody moves. Both gesture and vocalization navigate through the specialized topographies of raga-s. As melodic motives are developed over time, they solidify into features of a raga landscape, both in gesture and vocalization, and can also take on the status of virtual objects and materials, which are manipulated gesturally. Gripping, turning, pulling, and releasing these virtual objects are important modes of engagement with melodic ideas. A phenomenology of melodic performance emerges from these observations that includes motion, participation in flow, and manipulation of objects as an extension of the musicking body. This body includes the mechanics of vocal production and gesture as well as the virtual world of melody: both flesh and form.

The dissertation concludes with an investigation of the transmission of musicking bodies through teaching lineages. Seen from the point of view of its construction and inhabitation through pedagogy, the musicking body is here called the paramparic body . While students often resemble their teachers when singing, the musicking body of any individual singer is idiosyncratic and personal, and embodies a musical ethos through both conscious choice and unconscious inheritance. Thus, gesture is seen both as an expression of spontaneous melody and of melodic disciplines passed through teaching lineages.