Carpe Diem #1495 Kashmiri music, the music of Kashmir India

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at our Haiku Kai. This month we are on a journey around the world searching for all kinds of folkmusic. Last Friday we were in the southern region of Japan on the island Okinawa and today we will stay in Asia, but we will go further on our journey around the world and we are going to visit Kashmir, India. We are exploring the folkmusic of Kashmir ... Kashmiri music.

Kashmiri music reflects the rich musical heritage and cultural legacy of Kashmir. Traditionally the music composed by ethnic Kashmiris has a wide range of musical influences in composition. Due to Kashmir's close proximity to Central Asia, Eastern Asia and Southern Asia, a unique blend of music has evolved encompassing the music of the three regions. But, overall, Kashmiri Valley music is closer to Central Asian music, using traditional Central Asian instruments and musical scales, while music from Jammu is similar to that of North India and Ladakhi music is similar to the music of Tibet.

Kashmir Valley (Northern India)

Especially the music genre known as Sufiana Kalam. Sufiana Kalam is the classical music of Kashmir, which uses its own ragas (known as maqam), and is accompanied by a hundred-stringed instrument called the santoor, along with the Kashmiri saz, the setar, the wasool and the dokra. The dance based on the sofiyiana kalam is the hafiz nagma.

Sufiana Kalam has its roots in Sufism, the mystic branch of Islam.

I hope you enjoyed the music ... I certainly did. It's amazing how beautiful this kind of music is. I love the Indian ragas ... so this was a treat for my ears and I hope you have that same experience.

one hundred strings
create heavenly music
a birds choir

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 19th at noon (CEST). I hope to publish our new episode later on. For now .... have fun!