Indian music icons Kishori Amonkar, AR Rahman featured in UK school curriculum

London - British-Palestinian musician Reem Kelani's Sprinting Gazelle is part of curriculum's diverse musical genres.

School children in Britain will soon be able to listen and learn about music from the work of Indian legends like the late Kishori Amonkar and A R Rahman, besides Western exponents such as Mozart, The Beatles, Whitney Houston and historically-important composers such as Vivaldi, as part of a new Model Music Curriculum.

The diversity of music genres to be taught includes those identified with the Middle East, such as Reem Kelani’s Sprinting Gazelle and Ilgar Moradof’s Sari Galin from the Grammy-nominated Endless Vision album in 2005.

The Department of Education (DoE) said pupils at Key Stages 1, 2, and 3 would learn about the great composers of the world and develop their knowledge and skills in reading and writing music. They will be taught about a range of genres and styles and be introduced to instruments and singing from Year 1, it announced last week.

The Indian music traditions in the curriculum include Amonkar’s Sahela Re, several artistes performing Rag Desh, Rahman’s Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire, Anoushka Shankar’s Indian Summer and Bollywood number Munni Badnam Hui composed by Lalit Pandit.

The curriculum document says that the inclusion of Rag Desh is due to a large number of learning resources already in place in many schools. The different recordings enable pupils to learn the nature of how a ‘rag’ relates to Western conceptions of melody as well as how performance can be exploratory instead of cleaving to a fixed original, it adds.

Also included is Bhangra Bhabiye Akh Larr Gayee, by the United Kingdom (UK)-based Bhujhangy bhangra group. The document states: “This track marks a momentous step in the development of Bhangra – a style which originated as a folk dance celebrated during the time of the harvest. The current style and form of Bhangra formed together in the 1940s, although historical records of it can be seen from the late 1800s”.

“Bhangra Bhabiye Akh Larr Gayee combines traditional Asian sounds with modern Western musical instruments and influences. It was created by the world’s longest-running Bhangra band, the Bhujhangy Group, which had always been interested in Western music as well as traditional Punjabi music, learning to play the guitar, banjo, and accordion as well as the dhol, tumbi, and dholak”.

The document notes that Moradof’s Sari Galin is a Middle Eastern folk song of unrequited love with contested origins, reflected in the use of Azeri, Armenian and Persian lyrics in the recording.