Bansuri
is about as simple as it gets.
A piece of bamboo with just a few holes...
Wind flows in as breath of life
Lo and behold!
Breath of life becomes sound celestial.
Warming and melting the hearts of one and all.
This is John Wubbenhorst playing 'True Water' on C bass Anubodh Bansuri.
History of Bansuri is said
to be as old as humanity itself. Perhaps first discovered
by our ancestors .... wind blowing across some termite chewed
bamboos...wow! What is that? Who is whistling? God?? And
then God residing as intelligence in man came forth ....man
took a hint and used his breath on the bamboo...and was
born Bansuri magic! At least, I guess that's how.
If there is a single ancient
bansuri player to be named who else could it be but
Krishna. Krishna is said to have walked the streets
of Vrindavan in India some five thousand years ago.
Mention of Krishna's name, an avatar of Vishnu, brings
to mind two words::Bansuri and Bhagwat Geeta. Bhagwat
Geeta being the great sermon delivered in the battlefield
of Kurukshetra by Krishna later in his life. And, of
course, Bansuri being the ancient and deceptively simple
side blown bamboo flute that produced mesmerizing melodies
on Krishna's lips. Hearing his bansuri lost cows would
find their way home and damsels of the village would
forget all and run to see him! This how the legend goes.
The word Bansuri is actually
the conjunction of two words - Baans (bamboo) + Sur (musical
note). Bamboo used in making Bansuri's is of a very special
variety found mostly in the north eastern and southern regions
of India. This bamboo is special in the sense that it fulfills
the requirement by having sufficiently long sections between
the nodes. Also the wall thickness of this variety is quite
low as compared to the bamboos used in making flutes in
other cultures e.g. Shakuhachi in Japan.
So inherently organic is Bansuri
in design that it is easy to mistake it for something archaic,
of value to just folk music perhaps. In the hands of a maestro
like Hariprasad Chaurasia it attains an astounding range
of three octaves and 22 microtones (Shruti's),
not to speak of the nuances which are prior to words!
Bansuri: Mechanics and Techniques
Bamboo, being a naturally shaped material, has variations in bore size, bore geometry, bore roughness, density etc., from piece to piece and often within the same culm. This precludes standardization and during bansuri making each of these natural variations must be tackled individually and very fine adjustments must be made in the tuning process to establish balance between acoustical parameters of each of the notes. As a consequence, mass production techniques cannot produce a quality bansuri. With my ongoing theoretical studies and practical research, I am working toward developing a better understanding of how various variables and dynamics affect color, balance, and minute harmonic variations in the sound produced by this magnificent instrument.
Simple and yet full of intricacies. That is Bansuri. For a beginner even to make a sound on it can be challenging. But a little bit of perseverance and it starts singing. To make the whole process of learning how to play bansuri easy, understanding of right fingering technique and holding technique is essential.
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