Call and Response
The main link in form between "Saamajavaragamana" and "Mr. P.C." is their uses of Call and Response. In music, call and response is characterized by a voice or instrument initiating, or calling, a melody or any musical phrase, and another voice responding to that call with a musical phrase (Meazell).
Saamajavaragamana
This song uses a traditional Call and Response structure. The violin initiates a melody and the tabla responds by creating its own improvisation to the call. This occurs in the improvisation section. Such Call and Response happens several times in the recording, but for explanation purposes, I will only discuss one occurrence. For example, the violin plays the following musical phrase at 11:50 to 11:56 in the recording at the bottom of this page. Even though it is playing two notes at once, I have only included the top note in the score because that is the melody:
Figure 1
Immediately after, the tabla finishes the phrase by responding to the violin with the following rhythm:
Figure 2
Mr. P.C.
This piece uses a specific form of the call and response structure called trading fours. Instruments take turns improvising by alternating solos of a defined length of four bars ("Definitions: Timbre, Ostinato, Stride"). For example, if in a jazz combo the piano and drums have to trade fours over a sixteen-bar form they are given to improvise over, the piano would take bars 1-4, the drums would take bars 5-8, the piano would take bars 9-12 and the drums would take bars 13-16. As we see here, they are alternating their solos. This is a form of call and response because the piano initiates, or calls, its improvisation through the first four bars and the drum set responds with its own improvisation in bars 5-8. This pattern keeps on repeating.
The trading fours between the tenor saxophone and drums starts at 4:59 and ends at 6:25 in the recording at the bottom of the page. The following shows the first round of trading fours between the two instruments, with the tenor saxophone in concert pitch. For the sake of analysis, I have excluded the piano and bass parts and the pick-up note the tenor saxophone begins with. Even though I did not transcribe the drum part due to its complexity, the drums are actually keeping rhythm in the first four bars while the tenor sax is improvising, and the second four bars with the slashes indicate its own improvisation:
Figure 3
As we can see in Figure 3, the saxophone calls by improvising in the first four bars and the drum responds by giving its drum break in the second four bars. This pattern keeps on repeating.
Concluding Statement
It is evident that both "Saamajavaragamana" and "Mr. P.C." use Call and Response between the melody instrument and percussion instrument. The only difference between their uses of this structure is that it is unstructured, meaning that there is no predefined bar length of alternation, in "Saamajavaragamana" while it is structured, since there is a predefined length of four bars for each instrument in each turn for improvisation, in "Mr. P.C." Despite this difference, Call and Response is still the musical link between the two pieces in terms of form.