Art & Culture GK Questions with Answers – Page 34

Teentaal runs over sixteen matras divided into four equal vibhags of four beats each. The first beat of the cycle is the sam and carries the stress, the third vibhag opens on a khali, and the cycle returns to the sam at the end.

The melakarta ragas are the parent scales of Carnatic music, each of them using all seven notes in both ascent and descent.

Sarangadeva wrote the Sangeeta Ratnakara in the thirteenth century while attached to the Yadava court at Devagiri in the Deccan.

The Samaveda is the Veda of melody. Most of its verses are taken from the Rigveda, but they are arranged for singing rather than for recitation, and that singing is known as Samagana.

The Sun temple at Konark in Odisha was built in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga dynasty.

Ustad Bismillah Khan was the shehnai player who lifted that instrument from wedding processions to the concert stage.

Gol Gumbaz, the tomb of Muhammad Adil Shah, carries the dome long described as the second largest in the world after St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

The Ramappa temple is dedicated to Shiva, worshipped there as Ramalingeswara. It stands at Palampet in the Mulugu district of Telangana and was built in the thirteenth century under the Kakatiya ruler Ganapati Deva by his general Recharla Rudra.

Ustad Ilyas Khan was a sitar player. He was born in Lucknow in 1924 into a family of musicians and belonged to the Etawah or Imdadkhani gharana, the school built up by Imdad Khan and carried forward by Enayat Khan and Vilayat Khan.

The khuang is a hollow wooden drum of the Mizo people, made from a single log with animal hide stretched over both ends and slung from the shoulder while being played with the hands.

Matki is a women's folk dance of the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, performed at weddings and other happy occasions.

Pandit Ram Narayan was the musician who lifted the sarangi from an accompanying instrument to a solo concert instrument in Hindustani music.

Kelucharan Mohapatra was the guru who brought Odissi, the classical dance of Odisha, back to the stage in the twentieth century.

European sailors called the Konark Sun temple the Black Pagoda because its dark stone tower stood out on the Odisha coast and served them as a landmark, in contrast to the whitewashed Jagannath temple at Puri, which they called the White Pagoda.

Pattachitra is the old cloth-scroll painting of Odisha, and the name itself explains it: patta means cloth and chitra means picture.

Nongkrem is the harvest thanksgiving dance of the Khasi people, held over several days at Smit, the seat of the Khyrim chiefdom near Shillong, where unmarried women dance in the centre in heavy silver and gold ornaments while men dance around them with swords and whisks.

Bhangra is the men's dance of the Punjab harvest, danced at Baisakhi in April to the beat of the dhol, with leaps, shoulder work and the raised arms that everyone recognises.

Kalbeliya is the song and dance tradition of the Kalbeliya community of Rajasthan, who were traditionally snake charmers, and the dancer in a black swirling skirt imitates the movement of a serpent to the been and the khanjari.

In Dollu Kunitha the dancers hang a large drum, the dollu, from the neck and beat it while moving in fast formations, and the dance belongs to the Kuruba shepherd community, who perform it in the service of their deity Beereshwara.

Hojagiri is danced by women of the Reang community of Tripura, who balance on an earthen pitcher while keeping a bottle with a lit lamp on the head, and bend the upper body while the feet stay still.