The Music of Hindostan c11.204

c11.204

In fact, at first it is a little confusing, even irritating; but one gets to discount it as readily as one does the hammering of the pianoforte keys or the scraping of the violin bow. It is there not only because without it, especially with quarter-tone scales, the singer would feel, as a Benares musician said, ‘like a ship without a rudder,’ but in order to consolidate the melody. Not that a song cannot be sung without it; a ryot returning from his work, or a mother nursing her baby, does not have first to go and fetch a tambura; but, as the boy said when asked why he had godfathers and godmother at his baptism—‘because, I suppose, it makes it a sweller thing’. The drone may be a drum, carefully tuned, or two drums, in unison or at the octave, or the drone strings of the *vīṇā*; but is as a rule, and with the best singers, a *tambura*, a large *vīṇā*-shaped instrument, with one gourd (sound-board) instead of two, and with open strings—two or three Sa's and one Pa. The drone strings of the *vīṇā* and *satār* or of the *surbahar*, a large *satār* common in Bengal, often have amongst them one tuned to Ma, and there is, curiously, no objection to the Pa and the Ma sounding together. The effect of this may be heard in the ‘wilderness’ part of Granville Bantock’s *Omar Khayyám*.