2025/10/02 by Stella Paschalidou · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Diverse Music Education Insights #Diverse Musicological Studies #South Asian Cinema and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/07494467.2025.2580747
openalex publication_date 2025/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/12/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/30
Musicking is fundamentally rooted in embodiment. A bold assertion, that serves as the foundation of this paper. Embodied approaches are particularly evident in oral music genres, like Hindustani (North Indian Classical) Dhrupad vocal music, where the transmission of music knowledge relies exclusively on direct interaction between teacher and disciple through live demonstration and imitation. In this paper, I investigate the embodied aspects of conventional in-person Dhrupad music pedagogy through the lens of the 4E cognition framework, which highlights the close interplay between body, mind, and surrounding environment. I adopt an empirical, ethnomusicological approach and present a qualitative analysis of originally collected interview material from prominent representatives of Dhrupad music. The primary objective of this paper is to enhance our comprehension of how body movements are related to the voice and implicated in the communication and transmission of music-related knowledge in face-to-face teaching sessions. By gaining a better insight into these mechanisms, I aim to raise concerns on the suitability of prevailing network-mediated platforms commonly employed for synchronous online Dhrupad music education, and to explore how they might be reimagined to better support the embodied and gestural modes of communication central to Dhrupad vocal music.