Universalism in Music and the Politics of sound
November 16, 12:00 PM
There are various universalist approaches to music, and one such is the so-called Metaraga system; a path to universalism through meditation of structures of the particular. Inspired by the ideas of the mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, Purna Bangere shown that regions of the soundscape in fact have mathematical structures. These form the building blocks of the “Metaraga system”. This enables us to compose music that moves across regions of the soundscape without particular references to east or west. The following take from the multi-Grammy award winning director of the Turtle Island String quartet David Balakrishnan gives a context from the western musical perspective: “The study of the overtone series is well-known as a foundational point of origin among western musicians who are drawn to explore the cross-civilizational integration of Indian classical music. Based on the work of Herman Helmholtz in the 1850s and further elucidated for the modern era with specific application for musicians by W.A. Mathieu’s book, Harmonic Experience, this fundamental theoretical basis led to the creation of the Turtle Island String Quartet in 1985. When Prof. Purnaprajna approached me with the idea of working together on his Metaraga system, I immediately realized its potential. I further perceived clear congruities in his theoretical framework to not only the approach taken in W.A. Mathieu’s book, but also the work of western music giants such as Arnold Schoenberg and John Coltrane. The collaboration has yielded three compositions, as well as others in progress.”
About the Speaker
Purnaprajna Bangere is a mathematician and a musician at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He obtained his PhD in mathematics from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, under the supervision of the well-known mathematician David Eisenbud. After an early instruction in vocal music under T. R. Srinivasan, Purna started rigorous training in violin under the eminent south Indian violinist and a teacher of great repute, HKN Murthy. HKN Murthy is a disciple of the legendary Indian musicians Parur Sundaram Iyer, M.S. Anantharaman and M. S. Gopakrishnan. Purna has been invited to give solo recitals in prestigious music festivals such as the Learnquest music festival in Boston, the Cleveland Music festival, and the Toronto Music festival, among other well-regarded venues. In recent years, he has come up with a meta-geometric framework, inspired by mathematician Alexander Grothendieck’s work in algebraic geometry, as a foundational base for the so-called “Metaraga system”. Together with the multi-Grammy winning director of the Turtle Island string quartet David Balakrishnan, he has formed the Purna Lokha ensemble. This ensemble was featured in concerts at the MSRI Berkeley, the Asian Museum of Art at San Francisco, the Lied Center of Kansas, and the 1900 Building in Kansas City, among other places. The ensemble’s first CD “Metaraga” was released last year by Origin Records in January 2020. He is a professor of Mathematics and a courtesy professor of Music at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.