De-mystifying Carnatic Music - Podcast Launch

Ashok Subramaniam, an immensely talented composer, singer and musicologist and more importantly a good friend and I have been planning for some time now to get a podcast going. Ashok and I felt that there is a need for de-mystifying Carnatic music - we encounter a whole lot of enthusiastic listeners, who would love to know more about Carnatic music. On the other hand, we find most writing on Carnatic music written for "experts" in often a rather inaccessible manner. This podcast is an attempt to bridge the two. You can be certain we will cover a wide variety of things Carnatic, given our own interests. Your active participation through feedback, comments or even brickbats would help make this a whole lot more fun for us and you as listeners. So drop us a note, comment on the blog, you know the drill. The fact that Ashok is based in San Jose and I am in Bangalore and our insane schedules (not to mention my difficulty with this audio editing stuff) did not help matters. Nevertheless, we finally got down to it and in this post I present the first episode of our podcast - Gamakas. Gamaka as the classical definition goes is grace - however calling it grace does not explain much. In ordinary terms gamakas are oscillatory patterns traveling from one note to another in successive repetitive pattern within a confined space. This episode explores when to use gamakas or not, with short demonstrations of appropriate gamakas.