Musical Instruments of Tribal India

by Dilip Bhattacharya

Contents:

Tuning to the key-notes
Prelude
Interlude:
            1. Myths, legends and taboos
            2. Environment and occasion
Classification of instruments: 
            1. Membranophone
            2. Chordophone
            3. Ideophone
            4. Aerophone
Glossary
Bibliography
Index.

One of the serious gaps in tribal material culture has been in the field of music and musical instruments. To fill the vacuum, this comprehensive volume, elucidates the subject and gives a balanced overview of a vast musical treasure resounding tribal India. The subtleties and intricacies of the layout, the overall design of the book resonate with technical brilliance and aesthetic grandeur.

The objective of Dilip Bhattacharya is to reveal the innermost message of Indian tribal music in its diverse form. Entrenched musicological concepts evoked Dilip's homing instinct; took him to acquiring the organological details of music and musical instruments from remote pockets of tribal India. Each one of his invaluable visits became his homecoming to study the living tribal culture.

Deserving a particular empathetic treatment to the various ethno musicological expressions, he observed tribal music as an incredible expression of the supreme spirit, gyrated in its material form. He considered music as more cohesive, being the ultimate goal of all expressions/speech; it permeats through many barriers of communication and finally resulting in an everlasting sensation.