7.1 Examples of Tamil music
In this section you will have the opportunity to listen to some of the instruments used in Tamil music. In Video 2 a musical trio can be seen playing the mirdangam, electric violin, and morsing. The video is a recording from the national sadhana for the 95th Advent of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. You should watch the video from 45:07 to 47:17 to hear the music.
Did you notice the bond between the musicians? For example at 47:08, when the violin player is pleasantly surprised by a note that the morsing player generates!
The vocabulary box below lets you hear how to pronounce these three instruments being played. Listen and practise the pronuniciation yourself and then continue on to hear the harmonium and morsing being played.
Vocabulary
The morsing is a type of ‘jaw harp’, seen in many cultures, and known by various names, such as the Jew’s harp, mouth harp, gewgaw, guimbard, khomus, trump, Ozark harp, Galician harp, or murchunga.
Now watch Video 3, which gives a detailed explanation of the morsing, as well as a demonstration of how it is used.
Finally, before having a go at the last activity in the course, watch Video 4.
Activity 8
Match the images of the musical instruments with the correct word.
Thavil
Nadaswaram
Harmonium
Ghatam
Drag each answer (above) into the correct slot (below).
Two lists follow, match one item from the first with one item from the second. Each item can only be matched once. There are 4 items in each list.
-
Nadaswaram
-
Ghatam
-
Harmonium
-
Thavil
Match each of the previous list items with an item from the following list:
a.
b.
c.
d.
- 1 = d,
- 2 = c,
- 3 = b,
- 4 = a
Name three stringed instruments used in Tamil music.
Discussion
From Figure 7, you could have said the veena, thambura, and violin.