Describe some of the pitch aspects of the selection, including ...

[anshika]

Describe some of the pitch aspects of the selection, including when in elapsed seconds, the singer starts her vocal solo
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Describe the time-oganization characteristics of the selection, including when, in elapsed seconds, the mridangam provides rhythmic accompaniment.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[Chou]

Answer to Question 1

 0:000:06Drone (electronically-produced) starts out alone playing the tonal center and a perfect fifth above the tonal center and continues to sustain this musical interval throughout the recording thereby anchoring the tonality of the singer's melody. Against this unchanging background a single melody unfolds.
 0:07singer enters with raga-based solo, a highly decorated melody with many embellishing tones (intense ornamentation) some of which are smaller intervals than the Western half-step (microtonal from a Western's point of view), imparting a strong non-Western (Indian) flavor to the melody. (A note' can be a tiny constellation of ornamented pitches.)
 The vocal soloist often glides/slides to and around the important notes of the melody making the melody sound very complex to a Westerner's ears that may be used to symmetrical and relatively unembellished melodies.

Answer to Question 2

 0:28 to endstrong, complex rhythmic background in adi tala (an Indian metric cycle of 4 + 2 + 2 beats) provided by a mridangam (classical double-headed drum of South India). The drummer improvises throughoutimprovisa tion plays an important role in the creation of Indian music.
 steady pulse, but the music is not in any of the duple/quadruple/triple/compound or related meters familiar to Western listeners
 rhythms of sung vocal solo are complemented by the mridangam rhythmsboth voice and drum are in the same tala/metric cycle