Nageswaram Duo at Thaipusam Festival

We went to see the closing procession of this year's Thaipusam Festival along Waterfall Road in Penang and were lucky enough to catch a duo of temple musicians playing nageswaram as they led the main chariot through the street accompanied by two thavil drummers. Here is a video clip I put up on YouTube:

The sound of the nageswaram always reminds me of Trane on soprano (listen to India with Eric Dolphy from the 1961 Village Vanguard sessions); Trane must have listened to South Indian music, the sound of which is much closer to his than the North Indian ragas he is reputed to have studied with Ravi Shankar.

Nageswaram music is associated with Hindu temple rituals and it is a living music. It is not studied in school so it can be reproduced in a concert hall for formally-dressed patrons who sit silently in attention; as you can see from the video, in this case the music was played on the move on a hot night for a thronging crowd of thousands. It was an integral part of the event. The musicians were surrounded by the crowd and it was difficult to get close enough to film this clip.

As the world's culture becomes more and more homogeneous (built, I am afraid, around having some dorky device stuck in your face regardless of where you are and what you are otherwise doing), it is encouraging to see the vitality of nageswaram music and an ages-old festival (Thaipusam is a Tamil festival celebrating the full moon). One of the rituals associated with Thaipusam, the kavadi, involves body piercing, pain, fasting, and sacrifice and I wonder how long that will last.

Nageswaram itself is a double-reed instrument made from ebony wood. It is difficult to play as it is not tempered and pitch must be mastered by a combination of embouchure and fingering. I had the fortune to study nageswaram with master Thilagar from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, a few years back when he was assigned to Penang as a musician in the Sri Mariamman Temple on Queen Street, Penang's oldest Hindu temple dating back to 1833. We would sit on the temple floor or he would come over to my house and teach me all by ear, as he didn't speak English nor I Tamil.