The sitar’s part is confined to provide an addition of colour to a standard instrumentation of an acoustic pop-song with an explicit folksy flavour of the early sixties. There is no allegorical correlation between the sitar as a cultural symbol and the text of the song. The instrument’s function is primarily that of timbral enrichment of the texture through: i) short melodic interventions (e.g. the main melody of the song), ii) occasional harmonic support of the E major chord through the reinforcement of the fifth degree, the note B. The sitar is here clearly removed from its Indian background and presented as a pure tone-colour supplement within what otherwise remains a well-defined Western song framework in terms of form, pitch (i.e. modal/tonal material), content and instrumentation. Its function remains purely instrumental, and its melodic role is too strongly embedded in the harmonic and melodic fabric of the song to make it stand out as an independent force (see Fig. 2).

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Within you without you, on the other hand, proposes a different situation. The sitar is no longer an instrument in the background, but together with the tabla, dilruba¹⁵

, tanpura¹⁶ and svaramandal¹⁷ is exploited as a signifier of a precise cultural connotation: that of Hindu culture and philosophy (see Fig. 3). The leading instrumental role is clearly assigned to the Indian instruments whilst the function of the string orchestra is to invigorate the texture in three ways: i) through an imitative melodic contour to the voice, ii) as drone reinforcement, iii) as rhythmic intensifier in the solo section as in the saval-javab genre.

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