[sravfeyn]

By the very nature of Indian Classical music and its traditional style of performance, be it Carnatic or Hindustani, it is hard to create studio-grade records. There is heavy improvisation and musicians have opportunity to create quite unique performances each time they perform, even if the Raga is same. This is what makes it hard to re-create an Indian Classical music piece in a studio setting. And so, only well recorded live performances can offer the most authentic experience of Indian music. Here are some high quality recordings of live performances from some of the best artists of Carnatic music.

- From the NCPA Archives - M.S. Subbulakshmi - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/from-the-ncpa-archives/id9...

- From the NCPA Archives - Balamuralikrishna - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/masterworks-from-ncpa-arch...

Apart from the Ragas and Nuances in the music, the poetry in the music is scintillatingly beautiful too, exposing Indian Conception of God and philosophy. Saint Thyagaraja from 16th century is one of famous Carnatic music composers. Celebrating his compositions is one of the oldest and largest musical festival in the world called Thyagaraja Aradhana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyagaraja_Aradhana that happens once every year in Southern part of India, and its sister festival all across world including in Cleveland. If you are visiting India to experience its culture, then its music should be an essential experience you should be taking home. All major cities in South India will have Carnatic music events all year long. Delhi and other north Indian metros too have quite vibrant Carnatic music scene, though you have to really search to find events. Delhi on the other hand has year-long Hindustani music scene.

For the more curious, here is a course on Carnatic Music from IIT Madras - Appreciating Carnatic Music - https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/noc15_hs03/preview - it assumes no prerequisites and starts from very basics of sound. It exposes some of the young contemporary Carnatic musicians and their performances.

[kbenson]

I'm not following, how does a piece being somewhat unique each time it's performed lead to a) harder to record in a studio setting and b) live performances provide authentic experiences? Are you saying that the audience of a live performance adds feedback that the artist can't replicate in isolation, or that the audiences own audio affects the performance, or both, or something else?

[sthatipamala]

Perhaps that a recorded version of the song is the same each time you listen to it, whereas listening to multiple live performances of the same song will capture the improvisation/variance that is so important.

[logicfiction]

If that's true, then much of jazz music should have never translated on recordings. It also was not uncommon for multiple takes of the same song be recorded for jazz as well. I feel like that should apply here, unless there's another distinguishing factor.

[bbgm]

Jazz (which I am more familiar with) is a reasonable analogy. And I agree. You should be able to capture a good studio performance just the way Ornette Coleman and Coltrane could.

One thing to note is that jazz has more structure. There is improvisation around that structure. Indian classical music is structured around rhythms and scales (and Carnatic music is microtonal) so it gets pretty out there.

[kbenson]

recorded live performances were mentioned, but I could see how hearing multiple recordings of a particular song in a style that is known to change performance to performance could give you more appreciation, I'm just not sure how multiple recorded live performances differ from multiple studio recordings. Maybe the implication was that there are multiple recorded live performances for most popular artists compared to a single or very few studio recordings from that artist for a song, and so it's worth listening to the good live recordings to hear the variation?

[shas3]

Nitpicking - Thyagaraja was born in the 18th century and lived well into the 19th century. To put it in perspective, this is at least 100 years after the Johann Sebastian Bach.