Sangam Music app to instil heritage
MUSICAL GEMS ON THE SANGAM APP
NEWDELHI: Two weeks ago, a new app, Sangam Music, made an appearance on the App store and the Playstore. Featuring devotional songs and classical compositions by musicians such as the late M S Subbulakshmi, the late Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the late Gangubhai Hangal, and several contemporary stalwarts, the app isn’t the brainchild of a record company.
Sangam Music is an initiative of t he Ministry of Culture, through the National Cultural Audiovisual Archives of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, an autonomous body under the ministry.
The app has not been officially launched yet. It is still undergoing testing for feature enhancements and user interface refinements.
The idea, according to Irfan Zuberi , Proj e c t Manager, NCAA, is to make people, especially young people, familiar with the diverse classical and folk music heritage of the country. In the pilot phase of NCAA, the world’s first ISO 16363:2012 certified Trustworthy Digital Repository, over 30,000 hours of unpublished, non commercial audio and video recordings representing the cultural diversity of India were put in the public Pandit Bhimsen Joshi Pandit Jasraj
Dr. M. S. Subbulakshmi Pandit Rajan-sajan Mishra Shri Prahlad Singh Tipaniya Shri Bhuvanesh Komkali More than 2500 tracks in 24 languages
350 artistes
Streaming audio domain through the website, http://ncaa.gov.in
Then, a few weeks ago, came the app. “At present, there are more than 2500 tracks in the app but by the end of March we plan to increase it to 4500. Sangam already features nearly 350 artists and content in 24 languages, covering a diverse range of classical and folk music genres from across India. We have unique Vedic content as well, featuring chants of all the four Vedas. But more than that, what is important is that all the content on the app is non-commercial, and hitherto unpublished, which adds uniqueness to these tracks. All t r acks are available i n Hd(high definition) quality playback as 320kbps MP3S,” adds Zuberi.
The proposal for the app was floated by the team of the NCAA in February last year.
Content selection and editing of content commenced in October 2018 and the app has already been made available through both Android and IOS platforms.
The app is being refined; the technology is being created and managed by Tech Mahindra Ltd. This is just the first step, says Zuberi. Over the next five years, NCAA hopes to “digitize and make accessible over 300000 hours of audiovisual content”.
“Users can stream and listen to the rarest and the most significant devotional tracks for free using Sangam. While in the initial stage,we have only devotional and instrumental music, we will soon broaden it to include more classical and folk music ,” says Pratapanand Jha, Director, Cultural Informatics at IGNCA.
There are more than 2500 tracks in the app now, by March end we plan to increase it to 4500 IRFAN ZUBERI, Project manager, NCAA