Forum Pakistan

Hindustani
Musical tradition along with Karnataka it is one of the most important players in the musical culture of South Asia. It is a classical tradition in the music of north India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Its separation from the south Indian (Karnataka) tradition in the twelfththirteenth centuries was largely prepared by development and links with the musical traditions of the Near and Middle East, and later also by the Hindu-Muslim cultural synthesis. The early period in the development of classical Hindustani art was linked with the name of the outstanding poet and musician Amir Khusro *Dehlawi (thirteenth century). A new type of soundmusical expression evolved in his work, the main musical genres developed, and the functions of the musical instruments in the Hindustani tradition became established. A great contribution to the process of the formation of Hindustani music was made by the remarkable musicians Baiju Bawra, Subhan Khan, Swami Haridas, and Mian Tan Sen (sixteenth century). These musicians actually gave birth to the genre system in the Hindustani tradition.

Until the eighteenth century, the classical Hindustani tradition was primarily represented by vocal music (the dhrupad and *khiyal genres); in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, instrumental music began to develop. In this period, a new, semi-classical or lightclassical type of Hindustani music evolved; it generated a great many styles and genre varieties: *thumri, dadra, tappa, *ghazal, etc., which spread in various parts of South Asia, and some of them beyond its boundaries-in Southeast Asia, in the Near and Middle East, and in central Asia. In the twentieth century, after a long period of isolated development of the Hindustani and Kamataka traditions as two largely different directions in the musical culture of South Asia, a tendency became apparent towards increasing mutual interest, intersection, and interaction. This was expressed, in the first place, in the fairly active exchange of information between the two schools and forms of concert practice, partly conditioned by their involvement in the system of world musical art.