This piece started as a series of improvisations in which I struggled to conceive of an artistic self that ceased to segregate the figures of the Euro-American and diasporic Indian subjects. Through physical experimentation (like taking apart the bassoon or inserting the reed into different joints of the instrument) and reconfigurations of my body (like sitting cross-legged and attempting to perform Karnāṭak-style inflections by sliding my fingers across the tone-holes), I arrived at a sonic combination of improvising an ālāpana (melodic improvisation) on the wing joint (middle part of the bassoon) over the drone often heard in South Asian music. I realized that this sonic combination reminded me of the sound of a nādaswara, a South Indian double reed instrument often played at weddings and temples. I resolved to imitate the nādaswara and to try and play a traditional Karnāṭak ālāpana.

At first, the unconventional nature of playing the wing joint in isolation led to me making many mistakes. However, as I continued to improvise, I heard these “mistakes” as emergent echoes of an interference between my body and the instrument. This interference arose from the tension between resisting the colonial tendency to treat the musical style geographically situated in the Asian subcontinent as some primitive, “original script” while also honoring the Karnāṭak training that has conditioned my musical body. When my body engages in musical action, I cannot escape the training that has molded my improvisational tendencies, but I can trouble that training. Attempting to recreate the sonic object of my musical training (a traditional Karnāṭak ālāpana) through a physical instrument that comes up against that training produces an intermediary, transnational sensibility without origin that could not be abstractly planned but only physically acted. This work illustrates the failure of attempting the loyal reproduction of traditional musical values. Rather, it recasts the idea of tradition as fundamentally about change. It activates the rhythmicism latent in the interaction between my body and my instrument by allowing my technique to “slip,” to mess up, to fall apart, to create friction, which can then generate the emergent musical sensibilities that wing joint puts forth.