Track 3 Jugalbandi
Anthony Malatesta, sitar, banjo, djembe and shaker
Although this is an original composition by Anthony Malatesta, who plays all the instruments in a multi-tracked recording, Jugalbandi is a style of Indian classical music which involves two equal lead instrumentalists or vocalists playing and singing together. Alongside these, there will be percussion and possibly additional instrumental accompaniment, but the two lead musicians will at all times share the spotlight. The structure of the piece is A-A-B-A, and the meter is 4/4. The ‘A’ section is in a relatively Western style song form with fixed melodies allowing minimal improvisation on the sitar, set in a mixolydian scale centred on the pitch g. The ‘B’ section is based on the South Indian Raga Pantuvarali, from the fifty-first mela of the Mela Karta matrix scale formulae. A jazz interpretation would classify the scale as Lydian b9 and b13. In this section both the sitar and banjo share the glory, both improvising; they exchange short phrases and then improvise together, still maintaining a responsive dialogue. This section comes to a close with a very simple tihai North Indian rhythmic cadence consisting of the repetition of a phrase three times that resolves onto the first beat of the cycle. This is played on banjo.
Anthony Malatesta entered the MMus (Performance) course at SOAS in Autumn 2006.
