Los dos viajes: música, identidad y aprendizaje intercultural

Alfonso Corral

doi:10.5565/rev/indialogs.370

The two journeys: music, identity, and intercultural learning

Authors

Alfonso Corral Investigador no adscrito https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3463-9130

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Abstract

This article examines the relationship between travel, musical learning and identity based on two decisive experiences with Indian classical music. The first journey, local, took place in Valladolid, where a casual discovery of a Carnatic music anthology at the San Nicolás Library initiated a process of aesthetic exploration. The second one, a transcontinental journey to Delhi represented a deliberate immersion in the tradition, supported by the musicologist Ignacio Corral Bermejo and guided by the violinist Sharat Chandra Srivastava and his disciple Sachin Rohilla. The study analyzes essential features of Indian musical practice, such as the drone of the tampura, the progressive logic of the alap, and the virtuosity of performers like L. Subramaniam, as well as the methodological contrast between Indian and Western pedagogical systems. It concludes that these two journeys—one accidental, the other intentional—form a dialectic between discovery and conscious research, situating the author’s experience within broader dynamics of cultural circulation and identity transformation through music.

Keywords

Carnatic music, Hindustani music, travel, intercultural learning, violin, identity

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Author Biography

Alfonso Corral, Investigador no adscrito

A computer engineer and violinist with a professional degree and diploma from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, his artistic career combines Western classical music with Indian tradition, following a period of study in Delhi under the tutelage of Sharat Chandra Srivastava. He has received a grant from the SGAE (Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers) to compose a jazz quartet, was selected for the INJUVE (Spanish Youth Institute) composition courses, and won the Break’21 festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with original music.