The Great family of String Instruments

When they said Music is like an ocean, I used to think its one of those over ornamental metaphors but when we get the ‘chaska’ of REAL music, the feeling is out of this world.

The magnitude of Music definitely goes much beyond human comprehension. Mind you I said the magnitude, not the experience. In this journey of ‘Self’, today I am gonna try to explore as much as I can about the family of String Instruments.

The most popular instruments in the strings category are Guitar, Mandolin, Violin, Viola Cello, double bass and Harp. There are quite a few more which we would try to include and talk about later. Lets fork down this family and see who all belong here. We can majorly categorize them on the basis of types of playing such as Plucking, Bowing and Striking. The plucking style includes instruments such as Guitar, Sitar, Mandolin, Banjo and Harp. They are either played by fingers/thumb or plectrum. Also don’t forget our desi Iktara and Tanpura. The sound in this group is created by plucking the string. In the bowing category there are Violins, Violas and Cellos. On the Indian continent, we are familiar with Sarangi. In the music of Middle East, one instrument that is dominant in this category is Kamanche. (…imagine a violin-like sound in raga kalingda and for the visual appeal, those beautiful ‘Raqs Sharqi’ dancers popularly known as Belly dancers)

The third common method of sound production in stringed instruments is to strike the string with a hammer. By far the most well-known instrument to use this method is the Piano. Till quite late I didn’t know that Piano belongs to the string instruments family.

Since it is not possible to discuss all the instruments in detail, here is a list of several other instruments used worldwide.

Fiddle (colloquial term for violin), Kemenche (Turkey), Kokyu (Japan), Rebab (Nepal, Pakistan and India), Banjo (American), Electric Bass, Oud (Middle East), Pipa (China) and quite a few more…

Some of famous Indian String instruments are as follows

Sarod, Sarangi, Sitar, Veena, Saraswati Veena, Rudra Veena, Vichitra Veena, Gottuvadhyam Veena, Mohan Veena, Mahakanta Veena, Santoor, Ektara and Tanpura

Just imagine, there must be so many stories behind all these beautiful melodious music. Man’s imagination to express himself through these instruments is truly magical. There are proverbs like ‘Music is a universal language’ but we never pay much attention to it. We just appreciate it by acknowledging the fact that it is one art understood and enjoyed by all civilizations, times and ages. If we try to revive Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness, is Music the collective unconsciousness of mankind? Perhaps yes. Rather I am very much positive it IS. Music is meditative. The initial stage could be entertainment but later it gets transcendental. It doesn’t ask our permission while getting injected in our consciousness. It just strikes the right chord, evokes the emotion and vanishes within us.

Superiority Complex

Human mind is so fascinating! Every time, everyday we come across different shades of our personality; some we admit and some we don’t. One such interesting piece of information I happened to read online about Superiority Complex. We often have heard about Inferiority complex. But if there is Yin, there has to be Yang as well!

It is said that Ego is something we humans protect the most. We go to any extent to cushion it. As Freud puts in his Defense Mechanism Theory, we try to protect our Ego by every possible way. The following are the kinds of different Defense mechanisms.

DEFENSE	DESCRIPTION	EXAMPLE
denial	arguing against an anxiety provoking stimuli by stating it doesn’t exist	denying that your physician’s diagnosis of cancer is correct and seeking a second opinion
displacement	taking out impulses on a less threatening target	slamming a door instead of hitting as person, yelling at your spouse after an argument with your boss
intellectualization	avoiding unacceptable emotions by focusing on the intellectual aspects	focusing on the details of a funeral as opposed to the sadness and grief
projection	placing unacceptable impulses in yourself onto someone else	when losing an argument, you state “You’re just Stupid;” homophobia
rationalization	supplying a logical or rational reason as opposed to the real reason	stating that you were fired because you didn’t kiss up the boss, when the real reason was your poor performance
reaction formation	taking the opposite belief because the true belief causes anxiety	having a bias against a particular race or culture and then embracing that race or culture to the extreme
regression	returning to a previous stage of development	sitting in a corner and crying after hearing bad news; throwing a temper tantrum when you don’t get your way
repression	pulling into the unconscious	forgetting sexual abuse from your childhood due to the trauma and anxiety
sublimation	acting out unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable way	sublimating your aggressive impulses toward a career as a boxer; becoming a surgeon because of your desire to cut; lifting weights to release ‘pent up’ energy
suppression	pushing into the unconscious	trying to forget something that causes you anxiety

…quite interesting eh..! .. and when these mechanisms go overboard, our mind starts to disorder. And out of these innumerable layers of our mind, we are gonna talk about Superiority Complex today.

The feeling of superiority or inferiority comes when we compare our performance with others. There are people who are better than you and there are people who are worse. Both these people cause a reaction in our mind. If I find a singer who is less knowledgeable and less talented than me, it is possible that he can make me feel superior (which is bad for me and my artistic growth). If I find a singer who is much better than me in all aspects, I may feel inferior to him (which is bad too).. so what should we do! Everybody would have different remedies… maybe strike a balance between both the feelings. It is better to know our worth and be assured about it and not let it get affected by external factors. As if handling our own mind wasn’t that hard, there are certain ill-minded people who have a nerve of sadism in them, sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional.

We acknowledge, praise things and people that doesn’t put us (rather our mind) in any discomfort and threat. Be completely true to yourself and think, it is true. Don’t oppose for the heck of it or rationalize because that’s a way of defense mechanism too. You will be trapped in your own web. Just think calmly and most probably you will agree.

“We acknowledge, agree to and praise things and people that doesn’t put us (rather our mind) in any discomfort and threat.”

The moment my ego is threatened I will use my defense mechanism to protect myself.

Superiority complex is a state of mind that comes out of Inferiority (…somewhere deep down there). E.g. Mr. X is not good in academics and not very social too. But he is very goodlooking. So he concentrates on his looks and looks down upon people who are average looking. That surely satisfies his ego and makes him appear “above others”. When this disorder gets more serious, it is called Narcissism.

Another e.g: Ms. Y is not very goodlooking and people make fun of her looks and body. So she suppresses that anxiety and displaces it through something she is good at. She channelizes her energy in Sports or Sciences and when she excels in it, her ego is satisfied and protected. But this may not be the end. She may go one step further to “look down” upon those who made fun of her and convey that she is good enough in the right way (as rationalized by her) and that their (her peers’) thinking about her doesn’t matter to her and that it is silly of them to judge by outer beauty.

On the other hand, as we saw in the first example there are people who believe in ‘if you got it, then flaunt it’. The bottomline is that everybody wants to stay happy but we have many shortcomings (sometimes we are aware of them and rest of the times people make you aware of them). So we simply concentrate on our best abilities and flaunt it. People flaunt everything – Body, Knowledge, Looks, Style, Talent, Art! Because at the end of the day that makes “us” happy (which matters). But when it crosses the line, it enters the shades of arrogance (now again this term arrogance is debatable, some prefer to call it attitude). Maybe all of us belong to either the inferior side or superior side.. or is it possible to be exactly at the center?

Sagar Sawarkar’s Performances

Hey folks… I have uploaded some of my performances here. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Regards