Harmonium
A Harmonium is a free standing musical keyboard instrument that is similar to a pipe organ and a reed organ. When air blows through free reeds, the harmonium creates a sound that is similar to an accordion. The air is supplied by pumped bellows. These bellows are usually pumped by hand or by foot.
The harmonium was invented in 1842 by Alexandre Debain, in Paris, France. At the time there was also development of similar instruments as well.
Harmoniums were primarily popular in the west in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were popular in churches and chapels where a pipe organ would be too big to fit the venues capacity.
In India, missionaries brought French made hand pumped harmoniums with them. The harmonium quickly became popular in India because it was portable, reliable and easy to learn. It is popular in the present day and is an important instrument in many genres of Indian music. It is common to find a harmonium in an Indian home. The harmonium was further developed and designed in India from that of its original design in France. In India, the main additions to the French Harmonium were drone stops and the ability to change scales.
Dwijendranath Tagore is credited with implementing and using the instrument in his private theater in 1860. At this time, however, the harmonium was still a pedaled instrument, or it was a variation of a pipe organ. It initially aroused curiosity in the Indian people but gradually people started playing it as it adapted into the smaller portable models.
In the late 19th century, due to the context of nationalist movements that sought to depict India as free and utterly separate from the west, the harmonium was portrayed as an unwanted foreigner.
But because the harmonium was set to the standard musical notation of the west, it was highly used as a the instrument to branch classical indian and western notation styles when the indian notation was being implemented.
Many students of indian music are taught on a harmonium, and this today has standardized the scales, pitches, octaves, and tones of the east and west.
The harmonium, originally used in the west in places of worship, is used in the India and Pakistani places of worship as well. For Sikhs, in their Gurdwaras (sikh temples), and, for Hindus, in their Mandirs (Hindu Temples). In its most simple form, the harmonium is played by one who is singing, and also complimented by a tabla, which is an Indian drum which provided the rhythm (taal) for the melody of the harmonium (raag). Muslims also use the harmonium in their devotional style of music known as Qwaali, which was made popular by singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who, is claimed, to have started the move of Indian/Pakistani music to the west.