Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Naquaire.

Naquaires is an alternative spelling for Nakers; in 16th- and 17th-century England a naquaire or naccara could also be a bagpipe or a shawm.

Nara.

City in Japan. The country's capital from 710 to 794, it was the cultural centre of ancient Japan. The town and its vicinity are rich with archaeological materials, including remains of ancient instruments such as the wagon (a zither). It was to this area that foreign music was first introduced in Japan; records report that 80 musicians were sent to Nara in 453 by the ruler of Silla, a small Korean kingdom, and that gigaku (Chinese dance and music) was imported in 612. During the succeeding years, music from the continent was frequently introduced, encouraging lively musical activities which eventually led to the establishment of Gagakuryō (the Imperial Music Bureau) in 701; at its inception, the bureau included 250 Japanese musicians and dancers, 72 Chinese, 72 Koreans and a few others. They participated in the celebration of the completion of the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji (a temple) in Nara (752); the instruments used at the occasion, together with some other instruments and musical tablatures, are still preserved in Shōsōin (the Imperial Treasury of Nara).

The great ceremony in 752 also included performances of Shōmyō (Buddhist chants) and soon a number of shōmyō schools were established by various Buddhist sects. The old tradition is strictly kept at Tōdaiji (the Kegon sect), Kōfukuji (the Hossou sect) and several other temples. The founders of nō drama, Kannami and Zeami, were natives of the Nara area; the nō tradition in Nara has been kept primarily by the Komparu school, for which the Nara Komparu Nō Theatre was built in 1962. A movement to revive kagura (Shintō ritual) and gagaku (court music) has been growing since the end of the 19th century and is promoted by a preservation group which has its headquarters at Kasuga Shrine.

For bibliography see Japan.

MASAKATA KANAZAWA

Narayan, Ram

(b Udaipur, 25 Dec 1927). Indian sārangī player. His great-great-grandfather Bagaji Biyavat was a singer and established the family in Udaipur with patronage from the court. His great-grandfather Sagad Danji, grandfather Har Lalji Biyavat and father Nathuji Biyavat were also singers, but farming was as much a family occupation as music and the Sārangī was not played. Ram Narayan’s contact with the instrument as a child was almost accidental: the family’s Ganga guru (genealogist and holy man) happened to leave his sārangī in the house where the young boy tried to play it. Despite a reluctance to allow his son to take up an instrument regarded as both difficult and of low social status, Nathuji Biyavat taught Ram Narayan a basic method of fingering which formed the basis of his matchless technique. His main musical studies were with Uday Lal and Mahadev Prasad in Udaipur. In 1944 he moved to Lahore where Jivan Lal Mattu gave him a job as a radio artist, guided his training and helped him to learn from the singer Abdul Wahid Khan. When Lahore became a city of Pakistan following the partition of India in 1947, Ram Narayan moved to Delhi where he was employed by All India Radio. Sārangī players have always been primarily accompanists to vocalists, but by this time Ram Narayan was feeling resentful of the curbs this role placed on his own artistry and he became notorious and even feared among the vocalists in Delhi. This prompted him to move to Bombay in 1949. In 1954 he was engaged as an accompanist at a large music conference. His success in that role led him to try a solo but he was given a bad slot and the audience was impatient to hear the famous artists, so he was driven from the stage. Two years later, after further solo recitals to more intimate gatherings, he tried again at a similar conference, and this time his performance was a success. By then he had decided to devote himself exclusively to solo performance, an unprecedented strategy among sārangī players. It inevitably led to difficulties and he supplemented his income with more lucrative work in the Bombay film industry. After earlier visits to Afghanistan in 1952 and China in 1954, he travelled to Europe and America in 1964 with his brother, the tablā player Chatur Lal (1925–65), beginning a successful campaign to raise dramatically the status of the sārangī and bring it to a worldwide audience. He is an honoured and respected sārangī virtuoso with many recitals and recordings around the world to his credit.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

J. Bor: ‘The Voice of the Sārangī: an Illustrated History of Bowing’, National Centre for the Performing Arts Quarterly Journal, xv/3–4 (1986)–xvi/1 (1987)

Rag lalit, Nimbus NI 5183 (1989)

Jogiya, Nimbus NI 5245

Rag bhupal tori, Nimbus NI 5119

Rag patdip, ibid.

NEIL SORRELL

Narantsogt, P

(b Buyant sum, Bayan Ölgii aimag, west Mongolia, 1921). Altai Urianghai Mongol Tsuur player. Narantsogt (see illustration) inherited the traditions of playing and constructing this rare three-finger-hole end-blown pipe from his grandfather Gar'd, a renowned player. Narantsogt also plays the jew's harp and uses a variety of stones and pieces of wood to produce musical sounds. He moved to Duut sum, Hovd aimag, west Mongolia when he was 17 years old, working as a shepherd in the Altai Mountains. He had to hide his tsuur during most of the communist period in Mongolia in order to prevent its destruction (see Mongol music). Narantsogt often improvises melodies which imitate the sounds surrounding him, as in Balchin Heer Mor' (‘The Chestnut Bay’) and Har Huryn Naadgai (‘The Playing of Black Grouse’), or which praise the spirits that he believes both live in and comprise nature, as in Altain Magtaal (‘Praise-song of the Altai’). In post-Soviet Mongolia, Narantsogt's son, Gombojav, continues the tradition by performing in international and local concerts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

Mongolie: musique et chants de l'Altai, various pfmrs, coll. A. Desjacques, ORSTOM-SELAF Ceto 811 (1986) [notes by A. Desjacques]

C.A. Pegg: Mongolian Music, Dance and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities (Seattle, 2001)

CAROLE PEGG