Famous music for the bansuri
The bansuri has played in fields and villages, in temples and on concert stages, and in a great many Indian films. Here is a short walk through its music.
Ragas: music that grows slowly
In Hindustani classical music, a bansuri player performs a raga: a set of notes with its own mood, often linked to a time of day or a season. A performance usually begins with the alap, slow and without a beat, where the flute explores the raga note by note. Then a drum, most often the tabla, joins, and the music grows livelier.
There is no written score to read from. Players learn ragas by listening to a teacher and playing back, again and again. That is how this music has passed from person to person for generations.
Players who made it famous
Pannalal Ghosh (1911–1960) was the first to bring the bansuri fully into classical concerts. Hariprasad Chaurasia, born in 1938, became one of its best-known players around the world, playing classical ragas, music for films and collaborations with musicians from other traditions. Many players today learned in their lines of teaching.
In the south, the venu, a close cousin of the bansuri, plays Carnatic classical music, with its own great players.
Folk songs and films
Long before the concert hall, the bansuri was a folk flute, played by herders with their animals and at village festivals. You can still hear it in folk music across India and Nepal.
Indian film music has used it for decades, often for scenes of nature, longing or calm. If you've heard a soft flute in a Bollywood song, there's a good chance it was a bansuri.
Your first tunes
You don't need to know a raga to start. The same flute plays simple songs from everywhere: our lessons begin with tunes like Hot Cross Buns, Au Clair de la Lune and Ode to Joy (Ode an die Freude), one note at a time.
And listen to a great bansuri player now and then. Hearing what a piece of bamboo can say is a lovely reason to keep breathing into yours.