Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 301; Roderic Knight interview, part 3 of 4

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Hasu G plays a style called Gi-a-kee Ong (SP?), it means singing style. And, I was just mentioning (CAR SOUND)

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She plays a style called... RESTART

Hasu G plays a style called Gi-a-kee Ong (SP?), that means playing... that means singing style and I was just talking about how the pieces played on an instrument are very often, uh, based on a song, so the idea is you have a song or you compose a song, she composed many pieces during her teaching that she used to start off a student. You... you... you introduce that song by (BACKSGROUND TALKING)

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Hasu G plays in a style called Gi-a-kee Ong (SP?), it means singing style. I was just mentioning that, uh, instrumental pieces often have a song at their, um, behind them, um, and, uh, instrumental musicians compose songs, they call them compositions, um, they serve as the basis for improvisations, so you... you start with a song, you play that song, uh, instrumentally and then you begin to improvise to vary it to, to ornament it and, uh, it’s done in a very... there’s, there’s a style of performance called, Raga, Raga Sung Geet, it means, Raga music, where the... uh, all the melodic details of a song are explored for their... their uh, uh, for their nuances. Um, and musicians (NOISE) (PAUSE)... musicians (CAR HORN) in India...

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Musicians in India, uh, focus a lot, never mind the genre whether it’s North Indian or South Indian, on improvisation. So, given this composition or song what you do with it is to improvise, uh, with that as a basis and, uh, the Gi-a-kee Ong style, singing style carries that improvisation to things that you could do with your voice. There are, um, vocal styles in India too. And, so she’s playing a style that could be done vocally. Um, it’s... it’s, um, it’s a style that, uh, uh, that doesn’t move to the, uh, very frantic, uh, uh, (BEEPING) uh, let’s see...

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Gi-a-kee Ong is a style that, uh, focuses on the lyric aspect of the music. Um, people of undoubtedly many people have been to (NOISE)