The Inventory Before the Annual Function
The music cupboard of a government high school contains two tablas, one dholak, one sitar with a broken string, one tanpura, one harmonium, two flutes, one ektara, a set of manjira, a pair of ghungroo, and an electronic keyboard. The school has a 15-minute folk medley and a khayal item in the same programme. Constraints: the sitar string cannot be replaced before the programme; the dholak player is absent; only one student can tune the tanpura; the harmonium is already needed for the bhajan; and the keyboard player insists that the keyboard belongs to the sushir group because it has keys and an air-like sound. The teacher asks the group to sort the instruments, choose a workable ensemble for each item, and settle the classification argument before the rehearsal ends.
1. Classify the instruments in the cupboard into tata, sushir, avanaddha, and ghan; note the keyboard separately.
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Tata: sitar, tanpura, ektara. Sushir: flute, harmonium. Avanaddha: tabla, dholak. Ghan: manjira, ghungroo. The keyboard does not fit the fourfold classification because its sound is produced electronically; it is an electrophone, not a sushir. The harmonium is sushir because sound comes from air driven through reeds, even though it has keys; keys are a mechanism of control, not the sound source. The ektara is tata because a string is plucked, even though it is a folk instrument. Classification follows the sound-producing material, not the instrument's prestige or volume.
2. Choose a workable ensemble for the khayal and for the folk medley under the constraints.
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Khayal: tanpura for drone, tabla for tal, and harmonium for melodic support if a sarangi is unavailable. The sitar is out because of the broken string. Folk medley: ektara, manjira, ghungroo, flute, and harmonium; with the dholak player absent, use tabla for the rhythmic frame or a dholak played by a student who can keep a steady Keherwa. Do not draft the tanpura player into the folk item if the tanpura must stay tuned for the khayal; retuning between items is a practical risk. The keyboard can double the melody but should not replace the tanpura drone, because the drone's continuous texture is part of what the examiner listens for.
3. How do you answer the keyboard player's claim that the keyboard is sushir?
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A sushir instrument produces sound by a vibrating column of air, as in a flute or a reed harmonium. A keyboard produces sound from an electronic circuit and speakers; the keys only trigger the sound. It may imitate a flute or a harmonium, but imitation is not classification. In the traditional fourfold scheme it is best treated as outside the scheme, or as an electrophone. Calling it sushir confuses the mechanism of control with the mechanism of sound production, which is exactly the distinction the classification question tests.