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Rafe Esquith: Five Tips to Help Children Develop Their Natural Gifts

#3488. Instrument-(Guitar)

Music, level: Advanced
Posted Thu Jun 16 22:27:30 PDT 2005 by Thakur Chakrapani Singh (wsmusic@gmail.com).
Instrument
art and cultural Trust of India, India
Materials Required: Books, Traveling and Matterial expenceses
Activity Time: 25yrs
Concepts Taught: Origin Of Guitar

The Guitar is one of the most dominant instruments in the realm of instrumental music covering tunes of light music, western, Indian or classical music. Its melody and extraordinary range of variations keep the people spell bound the world over. We Indians feel our senses purified and dance mesermerisingly at the tunes of the Guitar. Most of the music exponents attribute Guitar as a western instrument but quite a few know that Guitar was played in the ancient days in India during the Vedic period; the form of music was Samgan. The Kachhapi Veena was used in this period for solo performances and also as an accompanying instrument. This instrument later on is believed to have migrated to different parts of the world and acquired different names while it vanished from India. Kachhapi Veena was one of the famous instruments of that period. The birth of the Guitar can be linked to Kachhapi Veena which was used for Samgan (Geet) thus got its name as Guitar. The mystery of the origin of the Guitar probably is hidden in its name. The western name ‘Guitar’ is derived from the syllogism. If we write Guitar as Geetar, Geet + Tar means an instrument with tar or strings that can be played for any geet or song. The word ‘Geet’ is an Indian name for song in Sanskrit.