the shehnai of Bismillah Khan short summary class 9 100 words
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English explanation - Sound of Music Part 2
CBSE class 9 English Lesson- The Sound of Music (Part II) Shehnai of Bismillah Khan Class 9 CBSE English Explanation, Summary, Difficult Words
Shehnai of Bismillah Khan CBSE class 9 English Lesson - The Sound of Music Part 2 . Detailed explanation of the lesson along with meanings of difficult words . Also, the explanation is followed by a Summary of the lesson . All the exercises and Question and Answers given at the back of the lesson.
The lesson is about Ustaad Bismillah Khan. He was a renowned shehnai player in India. He is a legend because he did something which has historical significance. He played the shehnai on the day India got independence i.e 15th August 1947. At the Red Fort, before the Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru gave his speech. Before that Bismillah Khan played the shehnai in order to signify something auspicious. Something auspicious for the whole country was about to happen - India was about to get freedom. And so, on that occasion, Bismillah Khan played the shehnai and so, he is a legend.
Lesson and Explanation
EMPEROR Aurangzeb banned the playing of a musical instrument called pungi in the royal residence for it had a shrill unpleasant sound.
banned: prohibited
shrill: very sharp
unpleasant: something that you dislike
Pungi was a musical instrument, the predecessor of the shehnai. When the Mughals ruled India, before the Britishers came, there was a very famous Mughal ruler named Aurangzeb. He did not allow the pungi be played in his royal residence because he felt that it had a shrill, unpleasant sound.
Pungi became the generic name for reeded noisemakers.
generic name: a name given to a class or group as a whole
Generic name means the scientific name or a broad classification of something
reeded: wind instruments which have reeds like the flute, the clarinet, etc.
So, any musical instrument which is made with reeds like we have flutes, clarinets, they all are classified as ‘pungi’. So pungi is a broad term for any type of instrument which uses wind to produce sound.
Few had thought that it would one day be revived.
revived: brought back to live.
As Aurangzeb has banned all these reeded noisemakers, he had banned pungi in his royal residence, no one thought that one day such noisemakers, such instrument which made unpleasant sound would be played and their sound would be liked by the audience.
A barber of a family of professional musicians, who had access to the royal palace, decided to improve the tonal quality of the pungi.
tonal quality: sound
As the pungi had an unpleasant sound, there was a barber who belonged to a family of professional musicians and he wanted to play the pungi but he knew that the sound produced by pungi was unpleasant and so, he decided to improve the sound.
He chose a pipe with a natural hollow stem that was longer and broader than the pungi, and made seven holes on the body of the pipe.
hollow: empty from inside.
This barber took a pipe, a pipe which was a hollow stem. It was longer and broader than the pungi. He made seven holes on the body of the pipe. (If you have seen a flute it is something like this. It is a pipe which is hollow from inside and has holes on it.)
When he played on it, closing and opening some of these holes, soft and melodious sounds were produced.
Then he blew air into the pipe and closed and opened different holes. He found that soft and melodious sounds were produced when he did like this.
He played the instrument before royalty and everyone was impressed.
When the barber played this instrument in the royal court, everyone liked the sound produced by it.
The instrument so different from the pungi had to be given a new name.
The royal court thought that this instrument was different from the pungi and so, it should have a different name also.
By Ruchika Gupta