Dr Nicolas Magriel, London
Nicolas Magriel has been learning and practising the North Indian sarangi and Hindustani vocal music since 1970. He has performed widely in the UK and Europe, both solo sarangi and accompaniment for vocal music and Kathak dance, and his sarangi can be heard on many film soundtracks and pop records. In the early 90s he decided to underpin his practical knowledge academically with a Masters degree in Ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies and went on to complete his PhD at the University of London, writing on sarangi style and how it mirrors Hindustani vocal music. He is the author of The Songs of Khayal (Manohar Books 2013) an exhaustive two-volume publication on khayal bandishes, comprising detailed transcription, translation and analysis of 492 classical songs, with linguistic help from the Hindi scholar, Lalita du Perron. Other publications include 'The Barhat Tree' (Asian Music 1997), ‘Paltas: Maps of Tonal Space’ (Proceedings of the XV European Seminar in Ethnomusicology 1999), ‘Computers and Indian Music Research’ (Music Research: Focus on Musical Forms, 2004), ‘Representing Khyal Songs’ (The World of Music 2005), ‘Shellac, bakelite, vinyl and paper: Artifacts and representations of North Indian art music’ (with Lalita du Perron in Oral Tradition: Performance Literature 2005), ‘Nevara Baju, Issues in the Transcription and Analysis of Multiple Versions of a Single Khyal Song’ (Journal of the Indian Musicological Society 2008), and ‘Eros and Shame in North Indian Music’ (Music and The Art of Seduction, ed. Frank Kouwenhoven and James Kippen, University of Amsterdam press 2013—in press).
Sarangi Style in Hindustani Music, an extensive beautifully illustrated monograph covering everything you could possibly want to know about the sarangi, was published in 2021 and is available on Amazon.
Nicolas is also a practising body-oriented psychotherapist, and this has in many ways informed his socio-musical perspective. He first became interested in the study of children growing into music in musical families when doing fieldwork for his doctoral thesis during the 1990s. Some of the children whom he filmed at that time are now grown up and can be seen teaching their children in his current films. In January 2011 Nicolas received the Music Circle award for outstanding contribution to the cause of Indian music at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai.
Nicolas has been responsible for designing and maintaining this website. His work Growing into Music took place in Delhi, Varanasi, Bhopal, Kolkate and Mumbai during 2009, 2010 and 2011(North Indian classical music and dance and qawali), in 2009, 2010 and 2011 inHamira, Barnava, Bisu, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer (music of the Rajasthani manganiyar and langacommunitied, and in 2009 in Azerbaijan (music of Ashiq bards and mugam art musicians.