Cool Stuff! Indian and Arabic

 I remember when I was young, I used to love watching the show Cake Boss. I distinctly remember an episode where he made a cake for an Indian couple. I remember the whole cake was very large, extravagant, and was of an elephant. Interesting to make a wedding cake look like an elephant, you know? I hardly remember too much of this, but I remember the bit of the wedding we saw, looked very over the top. This is what spiked my interest to look into this and also find how they use music in these ceremonies. 

Different from our American weddings, this culture's focus is the marriage ceremony. Usually in American tradition, the reception gets the most attention. Indian wedding ceremonies tend to be more spiritual focused. A fun tradition they do is called the Sangeet. Sangeet is 24 hours before a wedding and is a huge party that is carnival like. It used to be the females tradition but over time it has become filled with both genders to kick off the whole event.

There are many more traditions they do before and after the ceremony. Examples are the Haldi, Choora, and the Baraat. You should really see what the Baraats about! Overall this cultures wedding's make American wedding's look plain boring! Here is the video linked below that is very great to watch to see a traditional Indian wedding. Side note, no kiss after they are pronounced husband and wife! 

Now into cool music of the Indian culture! The Pungi is probably the most recognizable instrument to us. It is used to attempt to hypnotize a snake by playing this. This instrument is played like it is a reed instrument. The part that is blown into is actually long for what we think as a normal reed size. Then the bottom that would change the pitches is very thin. Very neat instrument, but I will pass on the hypnotizing snakes :)

Lastly, the Indian santoor is probably one of my favorites. This instrument reminds me of a dobro. The way it is played is it sits in the player's lap while the strings are bowed with a hand held pick. This stringed instrument has 72 strings. I really love the peaceful timbre this instrument creates.

In this video, I learned about all these instruments. This video also gives detail of what all the instruments are used for! All of these instruments are also from various places in India.  I highly recommend watching and checking out the bamboo flute and the dungchen!