In today’s class, we’ll move out of the world we’re used to–the Western music world, that is–and move to South India, around the region of Karnāṭaka. We’ll have to learn much of their musical vocabulary, although we’ll try to draw parallels with European classical music as much as possible, since I assume we are all more familiar with it. But, even when parallels are drawn, the two terms are never going to mean exactly the same thing, so it’s important to keep in mind the worlds that separate Western music from Karnatic music.

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