Alain Daniélou: Into the Labyrinth dir. by Riccardo Biadene (review)

• Published in: Asian music 2019-07, Vol.50 (2), p.170-175
• Main Author: D'Amico, Leonardo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Authorial voice; Collaboration; Creativity; Documentary films; Educational activities; Motion picture directors & producers; Music; Musicians & conductors; Musicology; Scholars; Semantics; Singers
• ISSN: 0044-9202; 1553-5630; 1553-5630
• DOI: 10.1353/amu.2019.0019

In 1967, Daniélou, with Stefan Kudelski and his son André, invented the Semantic Daniélou (S52), a new electronic instrument modeled exactly on the modal system presented in Daniélou's book Sémantique musicale (1967), in which he theorizes the existence of a supposed "natural" scale of 52 microtones (shrutis) per octave in opposition to the "artificial" tempered musical scale used in the West. The Venetian institute contains a huge archive with hundreds of books and manuscripts donated by Daniélou and presents many educational activities, such as workshops with well-known pandits and ustads (Hindu and Muslim musicians, respectively) such as Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha. [...]preservationist attitude, Daniélou's integralist approach to Indian classical music caused him to detest every kind of hybridization—"hybrid civilizations are rarely creative" (58)—even criticizing the musical encounters between great masters of Indian classical music and Western classical music (such as the artistic collaboration between Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin). In speaking of the changes that Indian music was experiencing as a result of Western influences, Daniélou (1971a) referred to harmonization and polyphony as the most obvious manifestations of hybridization in a type of music whose essence is monodic and homophonic. [...]in Daniélou's books, articles, and the liner notes of his records can be found numerous misstatements and inaccuracies, even concerning contemporaneous ethnomusicological viewpoints.