Lingua Tonga

Lingua Tonga is a joyful homage to the rich, multihued music of the Hindi film industry, often known as “Bollywood.” I have long loved the Hindi songs and scores of composers such as S.D. and R.D. Burman, Mohammed Zahur Khayyam, A.R. Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, and Amit Trivedi, to name just a few. Throughout this piece, I have sought to evoke elements of Hindi film music, such as their style of ornamentation, common patterns of swaras (notes), and the rapid orchestral gestures found in Indian film “BGM” – background music.

In many Romance languages, “Lingua” means tongue or language. The non-lexical syllables of this piece rely heavily on the tongue articulator. Like Indian film music itself, this piece reflects cultural merging: here, syllables of South Asian languages are pronounced with English consonants. “Tonga,” one of the first sounds in the piece, is therefore meant to sound something like “tongue-ah.” But a tonga (or tanga) is also a type of carriage in South Asia, making the non-lexical Lingua Tonga nonetheless a vehicle of expression. As a child, I didn’t necessarily comprehend the Hindi and Urdu lyrics of Bollywood songs– but this music, to me, was still full of meaning. We don’t always have to understand in order to know, to feel, and to love.

– Shruthi Rajasekar