hindustani-music

The pulse of India throbs in the music and the dance-drama. It is in the realm of living that India exposes herself, without consciousness. The poetry, the stoicism in the face of aching tragedy...the languishing air of over-rich beauty, the heaviness of joss-stick perfume...all these are India. The plaintive shepherd's flute surging across forbidding Himalayan valleys; a wandering Rajasthani minstrel intoning an hour-long ballad, carrying with him the breath of middle ages...