MUSIC RESOURCE GUIDE

Transcription

1 MUSIC RESOURCE GUIDE An Introduction to the Music of India The vision of the United States Academic Decathlon is to provide students the opportunity to excel academically through team competition. Toll Free: USAD (8723) Direct: Fax: Website: This material may not be reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, by any means, including but not limited to photocopy, print, electronic, or internet display (public or private sites) or downloading, without prior written permission from USAD. Violators may be prosecuted. Copyright 2015 by United States Academic Decathlon. All rights reserved.

2 INTRODUCTION... 5 SECTION I: INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC THEORY AND THE MUSIC OF INDIA... 6 Basic Elements of Music Theory...6 Sound and Music...6 Music Is Sound Organized in Time... 6 Sound Waves...6 Instruments as Sound Sources...6 Pitch...7 Properties of Musical Sound...7 Pitch on a Keyboard...7 Generating the Twelve Pitches by Dividing the Octave... 8 Melody Defined with an Example Using Scale Degrees...8 Rhythm...8 Beat and Tempo...8 Grouping and Downbeat...9 Syncopation...9 Harmony...9 Chords and Harmony...9 Other Aspects of Musical Sound Texture, Timbre, and Instrumentation...10 Form, Genre, Style Musical Form Perceiving Musical Form...11 Elements of Form...11 Composed and Non-Composed Music...11 Table of Contents Repetition and Variation...12 Improvisation...12 Verse-Chorus Form...12 Which Is the Real Music?...13 The Region, Languages, Contexts...13 South Asia...13 North and South India...13 The Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Language Families Hinduism and Music Islam and Music in India Other Religious Settings Formal Music of the Courts The Modern City: Urban Audiences and the Concert Hall Media...20 Recording...20 Radio...20 Television...21 Internet...21 India s Film Industry...21 Section I Summary...21 SECTION II: INDIA S REGIONAL MUSIC TRADITIONS AND DEVOTIONAL MUSIC Regional Music Traditions...23 Regional and Pan-regional...23 Introduction to Instruments in Rural India USAD Music Resource Guide

3 Songs of Village Life...24 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 1: Hymns For The Chathi Fast, Chathi Mata Rural Professional Music: Three Case Studies...25 Hereditary Musicians of Rajasthan...25 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 2: Manganiars of Rajasthan, Kachi Ghuldalo Drumming in Kerala...27 Chenda...28 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 3: Temple Musicians Of Kerala, Maddalam Chenda Keli Idakka...28 A Rural Music Becomes a Pop Genre Bhangra...29 Devotional Music...30 Hindu Songs of Love and Praise: Bhajan and Kirtan...30 Longing for Her Lord: Mira...31 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 4: Mira Bhajan, Manade Ra Mohan...32 In Search of What is Beyond Description: Kabir...33 Bhajan Summary and a Note on Musical Settings...34 Kirtan Music for Ecstasy: Baul and Sufi Music...34 Bauls of Bengal...34 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 5: Baul Song, Ekdin Matir Bhitar Hobe Ghar Sufi Poetry...36 Qawwali Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 6: Qawwali, Allah Hoo, Warsi Brothers: Sufi Qawwali Sufi Music...38 Section II Summary...38 SECTION III: INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC What Is Classical?...40 Theory and Practice...40 Modern Theory...40 What Is a Raga? Svara (Pitch)...42 Shruti and Gamaka (Microtone and Ornament)...43 Shruti in Scale Theory...43 Shruti as Nuance...44 Shruti as Tonic and Drone...44 The Use of Notation...45 Tala (Rhythmic Cycles)...45 Guru-Shishya / Ustad-Shagird: The Traditional Learning Relationship...46 Hindustani Music Three Examples...47 Dhrupad Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 7: Raga Yaman, Chautal (Twelve Beats), the Gundecha Brothers...47 Khyal...49 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 8: K h ya l, Vani: Raga Bhimpalasi Khayal, Veena Sahasrabuddhe Hindustani Instrumental Music...50 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 9: Sitar and Sarod, Raga Manj Khammaj, Ali Akbar Khan and Nikhil Banerjee Semi-Classical Genres Thumri and Ghazal Carnatic Music Two Examples...53 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 10: K r it i, Sadhinchane, Saint Tyagaraj Ghanaraga, Pancharatna Kritis, Sanjay Subrahmanyan and P. Unni Krishnan Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 11: Ragam Tanam Pallavi on Chitravina and Violin, Chitravina N. Ravikiran Section III Summary...57 SECTION IV: FILM AND POPULAR MUSIC...59 Introduction...59 Bollywood: Hindi Film Music General Characteristics...59 Bollywood Style in 1936 and USAD Music Resource Guide

4 Two Bollywood Romance Songs of 1976 and Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 12: Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein Khayal Aata Hai, Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh Main Yahan Hoon...64 Tamil Film and A.R. Rahman...65 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 13: Enna Solla Pogirai, Performed by Shankar Mahadevan, Music by A.R. Rahman, from Kandukondain Kandukondain Indian Popular Music Outside of Film Rock Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 14: Freedom, Shaa ir + Func, From Re:cover Sufi Rock...68 Section IV Summary...70 CONCLUSION...71 GLOSSARY...72 Glossary of Names...76 MUSIC OF INDIA: TIMELINE...78 NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY USAD Music Resource Guide

5 This resource guide introduces students to the music of contemporary India music that involves the larger region of South Asia with its diverse languages and complex social history. This guide is divided into sections dedicated to contextual background and to regional, devotional, classical, and popular music. Listening examples will provide you with a window into the sounds and structures of chosen genres. Recommended video links provide ways to explore further. Section I begins with an overview of analytic concepts; musical sound, pitch, melody, rhythm, form, and composition are some of the topics introduced here. The section continues with an overview of the region of South Asia and some of the basic linguistic, religious, and urban contexts in which music is heard. Section II introduces regional and devotional music. You will learn about group singing by rural women in North India; the music of hereditary professionals in Western India; and temple drum ensembles in South India, all of which contribute to building a sense of India s rural life. The section continues with an examination of some important genres of Hindu and Islamic devotional song and poetry, which we explore in a range of musical settings. India s classical music is the subject of Section III. This type of music is heard in the concert halls of London and New York as well as in Mumbai and Chennai. We begin Introduction with the Indian systems of scale and pitch and will define key concepts such as raga and tala, the melodic and rhythmic structures of Indian classical music. Listening examples of performances by North and South Indian vocalists and instrumentalists are described here in some detail to give you a fairly in-depth introduction to the formats and instrumentation of classical music. Section IV offers an overview of popular music. Film song is the dominant popular music of India, and the songs produced by Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry, receive the most coverage. Here we will trace the diverse elements that come together to form a hit film song. Film music from other language areas, Indian rock, and Sufi popular music are touched upon in this section as well. As you use this guide, we hope that you will begin to get a sense of the extraordinary beauty and complexity, not just of Indian music, but of life in contemporary India. Enjoy the tour! NOTE TO STUDENTS: You will notice as you read through the Resource Guide that some key terms and phrases are boldfaced. Terms that are underlined as well as boldfaced are included in the glossary of terms at the end of the Resource Guide. USAD Music Resource Guide

6 SECTION I: Introduction to Music Theory and the Music of India Basic Elements of Music Theory Sound and Music MUSIC IS SOUND ORGANIZED IN TIME The broadest definition of music is sound organized in time. Different cultures have markedly different views of music; indeed, in some cultures music is so interconnected with ritual, language, dance, and other aspects of life that in some languages there is no separate term for it. Western and non-western traditions have encountered and incorporated each other s musics again and again over time. In recent decades, globalization has made the boundaries between cultures increasingly permeable. This guide will introduce you to some basic principles of music, and then to the music of contemporary India. Many of India s music and song types are known and loved across the world. SOUND WAVES In the abstract, sound is described as a wave of energy. As a wave, it has both amplitude and frequency. The amplitude affects the decibel level, or how loud or soft the tone is. The higher the amplitude of a sound wave, the louder it is. The frequency affects the pitch, which is the highness or lowness of the sound. The greater the frequency of a sound wave, the higher its pitch. INSTRUMENTS AS SOUND SOURCES How is a musical sound wave produced? In the late nineteenth century, two ethnomusicologists (the modern term for scholars who study the music of other cultures, or who study multiple cultures comparatively), Curt Sachs and Erich von Hornbostel, grouped instruments into four categories. They found the inspiration for this grouping, in fact, in the music theory of India, which was known in Europe even at that time. Chordophones (such as violins, harps, and guitars) have one or more strings, which are plucked, bowed, or struck. These vibrating strings, which also induce vibrations in the instrument s body, transfer their energy to the surrounding air to produce sound; this transfer of energy from instrument to air is how all musical instruments create sound. Aerophones (wind instruments, such as the many varieties of horns and flutes) produce sound by directly vibrating a column of air. Membranophones have a skin or other membrane stretched across some kind of frame. The membrane vibrates when struck. With Idiophones, the body of the instrument itself vibrates when struck. Some examples of idiophones are bells, woodblocks, and xylophones. Before the Sachs-Hornbostel system came into use, Western orchestral instruments were grouped into families, and these categories are still widely used today. Strings or stringed instruments are usually bowed or plucked. Brass instruments, aerophones made of metal, are sounded by the performer s buzzing lips, which make the column of air vibrate. Woodwind instruments are also aerophones in which the column of air is moved by breath alone as in the case of flutes and related instruments or by one or two vibrating reeds (called single or double reeds) usually made from wood. Percussion instruments include membranophones as well as idiophones, plus some chordophones that are struck rather than bowed or plucked, such as the piano. In some cases, keyboard instruments constitute a fifth category. In describing musical instruments across the world, it is useful to add a few more terms. String instruments may have a neck attached to a resonating body. They may or may not have frets, metal bars or strings arrayed across the instrument s neck at pitch intervals. Whether an instrument is plucked or bowed is fundamental to its sound, as are the materials from which it is made. All these characteristics help in describing an instrument. The sitar of India, for example, has a long neck with metal frets. It has a resonator (sounding body) made of a gourd and covered with wood. Its metal strings are plucked with a metal plectrum. It also has metal strings, called sympathetic strings, that resonate without being separately plucked. 6 USAD Music Resource Guide

7 Table 1 The most common members of each family of instruments. Family Stringed Instruments Woodwinds Name Bowed: violin, sarangi, kamaicha Plucked: guitar, sitar, sarod, vina, tambura, ektar Flutes Double reed: shehnai Sachs/Hornbostel Classification Chordophones Aerophones Brass Trumpets, horns Aerophones Percussion Drums, barrel: dholak, dhol, mridangam Drums, two-piece: tabla Drums, frame: kanjira Cymbals, kartal, ghatam Membranophones Idiophones Keyboards Piano, harmonium varies Instruments tell us a rich and complex story about the spread and flow of people and music, changing shapes and names as they move through time and place. Pitch PROPERTIES OF MUSICAL SOUND A single, isolated musical sound has four properties: pitch, duration, volume, and timbre. Pitch is the highness or lowness of a sound. A tuba is pitched lower than a trumpet. When musicians speak of a pitch, they are referring to a single tone whose highness or lowness does not change that is, a sound that consists of a steadily oscillating sound wave. If you pluck the A string on a guitar, find the exact midpoint and press it firmly to the fret board, and then pluck the now-half-as-long string (either side), you will hear the next-higher A. This is because when you halve the length of the string, it naturally vibrates twice as fast, producing a pitch twice as high. The musical term for the distance between A and the next-higher or next-lower A is called an octave. PITCH ON A KEYBOARD Keyboard instruments are used all over the world. In India, the harmonium, a small hand-pumped organ, is used for all kinds of music. While the names of the western scale tones are not used everywhere, a keyboard provides an excellent visual aid for understanding pitch. High-sounding pitches are to the right; low-sounding pitches are to the left. Moving from left to right is called moving up the keyboard, while moving from right to left is called moving down. Middle C is roughly equidistant from either end. The black keys are arranged in alternating groups of two and three. Middle C is located to the left of the group of two black keys closest to the middle of the keyboard. f i g u r e 1 identifies the names of the keys on the keyboard. The distance between any two adjacent keys on the keyboard is called a half step, or semitone. A whole step is the distance between every other key (regardless of color, black or white). Half steps and whole steps are the basic intervals of any scale (a sequence of pitches in ascending or descending order). The white keys are usually called the natural keys, named in the Western system by seven alphabetical letters, A through G. Some musical systems of the world use pitches smaller than half steps, which may be called microtones or quartertones, pitches not available on most Western keyboard instruments. The alphabetical names of pitches are not used in tra- USAD Music Resource Guide

8 Figure 1 whole step half step half step ditional Indian music. Instead, musicians use a system akin to the Western solfege Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti. One sets the Do to any pitch and builds the scale from there. In Indian classical music, the notes or pitches are named Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. You will read more about this in the section on classical Indian music. GENERATING THE TWELVE PITCHES BY DIVIDING THE OCTAVE In the world of pure sound waves, pitch intervals follow mathematical patterns. In musical cultures where pitches are determined by ear, the system is called pure or just intonation. In the tuning system created for keyboard instruments called equal temperament, the mathematical ratios are adjusted so that the octave is divided into twelve equal parts. The twelve different pitches in ascending order are called the chromatic scale. The distance between any two consecutive pitches in the chromatic scale is called a half step. MELODY DEFINED WITH AN EXAMPLE USING SCALE DEGREES A melody is a series of successive pitches perceived by the ear to form a coherent whole. One pitch at a time makes up a melody; if two pitches occur together, you have harmony, or a second simultaneous melody. Most melodies are based on the seven notes of a single scale. The natural scale is the scale in which you sing Do-Re- Mi. The home or fundamental pitch on which a scale is based is called the tonic. When scales are notated by OCTAVE Pitch on a keyboard. half step whole step number degrees, the tonic pitch is notated as 1. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star uses the scale degrees shown in f i g u r e 2. We can substitute Do Re Mi solfege for the numbers, or we can substitute the names of the Indian pitches. f i g u r e 2 shows the Indian names along with the pitch number. Rhythm Rhythm is the way music is organized in time. BEAT AND TEMPO Beat is the steady pulse that underlies most music. Every beat may not be sounded by a drum or note, but the pulse is present, like the seconds being tracked on a watch. The speed or pace of the beat is called the tempo. The tempo of a piece might remain steady for the duration of the piece, or it may slow down or increase as the piece progresses. In Western classical music, a great many terms are used to describe appropriate tempos in a piece. In Indian music the terms slow, medium, and fast are often used, and each has a range of possible tempos. When the notes of a musical piece express the base underlying tempo of its beats, this may be called single speed; if they are doubled, that is, when two sounds occur in the space of one beat, this may be called double speed or double tempo. Three in the space of one may be called triple speed, etc. When there is no steady tempo or no discernable beat music is sometimes called unmetered. Other less formal terms, such as free rhythm, are also used. 8 USAD Music Resource Guide

9 Figure Sa Sa Pa Pa Dha Dha Pa Ma Ma Ga Ga Re Re Sa Twin kle Twin kle Lit tle Star How I Won der What You Are Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with pitch numbers and Indian pitch names. Tanjore-style Carnatic tambura. The tambura is a common drone instrument that primarily sounds the tonic pitch. Photo by Martin Spaink. GROUPING AND DOWNBEAT All beats are of equal length, but not all beats are of equal importance. Normally, beats are grouped into regular clusters. The first beat of a grouping is often the strongest, so it is customarily called the downbeat or strong beat. Music may have groupings of two beats, alternating as STRONG-weak-STRONG-weak, etc., or three-beats, with a STRONG-weak-weak-STRONG-weak-weak pulsation. Most common of all is a grouping of four beats, with 1 being the strongest, and 3 being the second strongest beat. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star has this typical four-beat grouping. Other groupings are those that are uneven and made up of smaller groups. Fairly common are five-beat and seven-beat groupings. A fivebeat grouping may be made up of groups of two and three (STRONG-weak-STRONG-STRONG-weak). You will read later how the traditional rhythmic system of India organizes beats into groupings, and then into longer cycles, which repeat throughout a song. SYNCOPATION Rhythm is syncopated when accented or emphasized notes fall on weak beats, or in between beats. Harmony CHORDS AND HARMONY A chord is made up of three or more pitches, which are intentionally sounded simultaneously. A book, or a forearm, pressed down on a piano keyboard creates a chord, but the most common musical chords do not employ immediately adjacent pitches. Harmony occurs when chords are used systematically in a musical piece. Chords are typically used in sequences called chord progressions. The use of harmony may seem to be a given in music, but many traditional musics of the world do not use chords or harmony. Classical and regional music genres of India are based on lines of melody. (For a definition of genre, see Form, Genre, Style. ) In traditional formats, the main melody may be accompanied by a drone instrument primarily sounding the tonic pitch. It may also be accompanied by a second melody line, one that follows behind and enhances the main melody. In Indian classical and regional music (and in other traditions across the world), there are many sounds occurring simultaneously that are not classified as chords or harmony. India s traditional music, and that of many other world cultures, is considered a melodic rather than a harmonic system. Popular music genres in India, and indeed all over the world, have adopted harmony and instrumentation from Western sources for generations. The main sources of inspiration have been popular music and rock. Com- USAD Music Resource Guide

10 The skin-covered body of the North Indian bowed sarangi gives it a special type of hollow-sounding resonance that is an instantly recognizable timbre. Photo by Wendy Kaveney. posers of film music, Indian rock and fusion bands, and singer-songwriters in India create their own sounds as they see fit, using chords in sometimes standard and sometimes unconventional ways according to Western classical standards. The sections on Indian classical music in this resource guide will return to the subjects of scale and pitch, but not to harmony. Other Aspects of Musical Sound TEXTURE, TIMBRE, AND INSTRUMENTATION Besides melody, rhythm, and harmony, a number of other factors affect how a performance sounds. Texture has a specific musical meaning. It describes the number of things that are going on at once in a piece of music. A song may consist of a single, unaccompanied melodic line. In Western theory this is called monophony. Multiple instruments or voices may be playing a single melodic line, and if they are all performing the same pitch at the same time, it is called monophony. They are also playing the line in unison. If two or more performers are producing slightly different versions of the same melody at the same time, but are not playing in precise unison, the texture is called heterophony. This kind of texture is common in Indian music. Western theory terms are not generally used in India, but listeners are keenly aware of slight variations, textures, and ornaments in a melody line. Timbre is the quality, character, or color of a musical sound. Musical sound qualities are described in many ways, and there are no limits on what terms can be used. The timbre of a pitch is affected by the individual s voice or technique, and by the instrument s material, shape, and density. The timbre of an acoustic guitar is affected by the size and shape of its hollow wooden body, where the sound waves produced by the strings resonate and are amplified. The skin-covered body of the north Indian bowed sarangi gives it a special type of hollow-sounding resonance that is instantly recognizable. Instrumentation refers to the instrument or combination of instruments used, and it is among the most noticeable and distinctive features of a given piece of music. Describing the instrumentation is fundamental to writing about a musical performance. Dynamics, the loudness and softness of a sound (a result of the sound s amplitude wave), are useful to performers for expressive purposes. A very common pattern in Indian music is for singers to increase the volume of a section or an overall piece to mark its climax. A gradual increasing of volume and speed, and a matching use of higher and higher pitches, is a very common technique, which can be called intensification. Gradual intensification draws the listener in and raises the excitement level of a piece of music. Ornamentation refers to localized embellishments on a melody. In Indian music, it is often difficult to separate ornamentation from the main melody. Still, ornamentation is considered to be at the heart of a melody s expressiveness. In various ornamental techniques, pitches are made to move suddenly and intricately, flourishes move away from and return to a pitch, or a sustained note is subtly flattened or sharpened. When a section of music uses these techniques profusely, it may be called ornate. A final pair of terms is useful in this context. Melisma is used to describe a melody that moves across several pitches smoothly, sweeping from note to note without a change of syllable or added instrumental strokes. A piece or section that uses these kinds of sounds is called melismatic. The contrasting term, used to describe music phrases marked by syllables, changes in bow direction, or instrumental strokes, may be called syllabic music. In these sections or pieces, each pitch is marked by a separate syllable or stroke. Form, Genre, Style Form describes how music is organized on a larger time scale how units, such as sections, subsections, and lines, are combined to make larger structures. Form is the architecture of music. A genre of music is a category, usually named and recognized by a specific set of conventions. Form, instrumentation, context, poetic content, and techniques are some of the ways a genre may be distinguished. A genre may be a large category, such as classical or popular, or a more specific category, such as blues or country. In this guide, you will read about large categories such as classical, regional, devotional, and popular, and more specific ones with their own names. Style is a term that is used quite broadly in music and may overlap with genre. It usually refers to the particular set of techniques or conventions used by an individual or a group. 10 USAD Music Resource Guide

11 Indian compositions are not written out in scores; rather, most are learned aurally from a teacher and memorized in all their detail. Musical Form PERCEIVING MUSICAL FORM Music takes place in time, so memory and anticipation are the key components to the listening experience. As the listener hears a piece, he/she experiences an ebb and flow of tension and release. Tension and release lend shape to a melody. One way tension is created is through dissonance and resolution. In Indian music, the tonic pitch, the first note of the scale, is the basis on which consonance and dissonance are perceived. When a drone instrument sounds the tonic pitch, each other pitch has its own character as it sounds over the drone. In Indian music theory, each pitch has its own emotional flavor and subtle variations are at the heart of musical enjoyment. Tension can be created in other ways, including increased dynamic level, increased tempo, or increased rhythmic activity using shorter durations. Combinations of all of these features create tension and release throughout a performance. In the next section, we will describe the building blocks of musical form. Then, we will examine how composers and performers combine these to create larger forms using repetition, variation, development, and contrast. ELEMENTS OF FORM A phrase is a cohesive musical thought. In Happy Birthday, the music for the first four words ( Happy birthday to you ) can be thought of as a short phrase. It has a beginning (the motive) and an end, followed by a brief pause. The second time the words Happy birthday to you are sung, they constitute a second short musical phrase, also followed by a brief pause. It begins with the same motive, but ends a little differently. A theme is a set of phrases that make a complete melody, which plays a prominent role in a longer piece of music. Musical form controls larger spans of time. Just as mystery novels, thirty-minute television sitcoms, and movie scripts tend to follow certain patterns, so does music. Balance, proportion, drama, climax, and denouement operate in musical form. Some music-specific vocabulary will help explain common forms. COMPOSED AND NON-COMPOSED MUSIC The idea of composition in Indian music is somewhat different from that in Western music. For one thing, Indian compositions are not written out in scores (notations from which a musician reads). Rather, most are learned aurally from a teacher and memorized in all their detail. Compositions, however, make up a central part of a musician s repertoire. Handed down over the generations, they are highly valued and make up the core on which a longer performance is based. The core composition is most often a short line or two, which is followed by repetitions and variations. The variations may be pre-composed, that is memorized ahead of time, or they may be improvised, that is, created anew at each performance. USAD Music Resource Guide

12 The core composition often consists of just two or three sections or lines. The first or main section is like the theme in Western music: the melody to which the singer or instrumentalist returns between variations and other sections. The second section of the core composition usually reaches the higher pitches and may go into the upper octave. A two-section scheme like this is often used in Indian classical music and for singing the verses of songs in many regional, devotional, and popular genres. In a song, the melody of the first line will be used for the refrain, and the higher second melody line will be used for each new verse. The change in pitch uses the principle of tension and release to attract the listener s ear to each new verse or section. A piece of music that is composed from beginning to end may be called through-composed. However, very often in Indian music, a piece is flexible, allowing performers the chance to expound or improvise according to their judgment of the audience or the needs of the performance. REPETITION AND VARIATION These are the most basic formal processes in music. The listener must remember what he/she has already heard in order to recognize repetitions and variations. Often, musical memory happens on a subconscious level. A phrase may simply sound right ; a song heard for the first time may seem oddly familiar when the composer makes skillful use of repetition. Repetition means, literally, repeating musical material, using the identical pitches and rhythms, or at least a close approximation. Generally speaking, variation is repetition with enough alterations that the listener senses both continuity and contrast. When describing musical form, sections of music may be labeled with capital letters. The music to a song made up of a single, multi-phrased melody, repeated four times with different words each time might be diagrammed as: A A A A. Another melody that alternates with a section of different melody can be diagrammed as A B A B A. IMPROVISATION Improvisation uses the principle of variation. Individual performers create spontaneous variations, extensions, or free explorations, of a melody. Improvisations may be based on memorized phrases, or on systematic patterns, which are chosen and played on the spot (extemporized) in new combinations. Repetition and variation occur throughout music on different levels. Short phrases, longer phrases, or fully realized sections of melody and rhythm may be repeated or varied. As a localized example, the second phrase of Happy Birthday varies the material of the first. Rhythmically, the song is quite repetitive: try speaking the rhythms on a neutral, un-pitched syllable, and you ll Painting of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of all knowledge, music, arts and science, with her instrument, the veena, by Raja Ravi Varma. find it impossible to distinguish the first, second, and fourth phrases. On a larger scale, you can think of every new birthday performance as a repetition. Sometimes a brave soul will vary the words or the tune. Everyone present usually realizes this is a variation on the familiar song, not a new composition. Whether taking place on a small scale or in the form of a lengthy piece, repetition and variation lend continuity to music. They prevent a piece of music from sounding like a string of unrelated events by providing musical coherence. VERSE-CHORUS FORM A very common form of musical architecture is the verse-chorus (or verse-refrain) form. It consists of multiple verses, each with different words, and a repetitive chorus, or refrain. Another common form is theme and variations, where a melody line is recognizable but played in different ways. In the sections that come later in this guide, you will read some more about form in Indian music, learning how pieces are structured that is, how each performance typically proceeds. 12 USAD Music Resource Guide

13 The term South Asia generally includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Afghanistan is often counted as well. Which Is the Real Music? Today, most of us experience music by listening to mp3 tracks or watching YouTube videos. We also occasionally hear the great ensembles and musicians of our time in concert halls and stadiums. Some of us study and practice music ourselves, reading notations of pieces that may have been composed centuries ago, or reproducing songs by ear. What kinds of experiences are left out when we don t see musicians performing? What experiences are enhanced by the clarity of recorded music and the ability to listen to a piece over and over again? How much (or how little) does written notation tell us about the sound and rhythmic details of the music as it was performed in the composer s time? Think of how a score allows us to analyze a piece of music and share it. All of these various manifestations of music are real, and each has a quality of its own. Listening to familiar music is one of the most comforting experiences we can have. And being exposed to new sounds and unfamiliar music can send us on the most amazing adventures. Using this resource guide, we invite you to explore and enjoy the music of India. Some ideas will be familiar and some new. We hope it will open you up to new experiences and new ways of listening to the wonderful music available to us in our world today. The Region, Languages, Contexts South Asia South Asia has been prominently featured in the news recently, but the economic importance of the region, its cultural history, and its diaspora have been significant on a global scale for a long time. The term South Asia generally includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Afghanistan is often counted as well. Bounded by the Himalaya Mountains to the north and the Indian Ocean to the south, South Asia was a crossroads of movement between East and West for more than a thousand years. Trade routes known as the Silk Road (named after the major commodity traded by China) allowed for the movement of people, goods, and technologies from China through South and Central Asia to Europe from 100 bce to the fifteenth century ce. The Khyber Pass, the crossing from present-day Afghanistan into Pakistan, also brought armies and their followers from West Asia into the Indian subcontinent. The national boundaries we now know were drawn in the twentieth century. The Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan were partitioned in 1947, after achieving independence from British rule, which lasted nearly two hundred years. The Peoples Republic of Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan in Linguistic, ethnic, and religious groupings cross national boundaries. In 1947, for example, the Punjabi language area was divided or partitioned between Pakistan and India. The Bengali language area spans India and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka s Tamil population shares strong cultural links with Tamil-language speakers in South India. Each nation s policies, institutions, and economics have differed substantially, but in many ways cultural identity transcends the borders. This resource guide focuses on present-day India, but many aspects of cultural history and music are shared with the other nation-states in the region. North and South India India is the largest nation in South Asia. With a population of more than 1.2 billion, it has the second largest population in the world, after China. India s basic administrative divisions consist of twenty-nine states and territories. The Central Government, in New Delhi, is based on a parliamentary system, and members of its two houses are chosen directly by popular vote every five years. Due to its legacy of safe and successful elections, India is known as the world s largest democracy. Mountain ranges, river plains, coastal plains, plateaus, and deserts make up India s varied topography. Although these natural barriers no longer constrain trade, travel, or political control as they once did, they mark a long legacy of distinctive regional identities. They also hold deep sig- USAD Music Resource Guide

14 A chain of hills and ridges called the Vindhya Range crosses much of central India, marking a traditional geographical division between North and South. The Vindhyas feature in many mythological stories, but in current practice, North and South are defined as the regions in which the Indo-European and Dravidian language families, respectively, are spoken. You will read more about these language families shortly. The city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), on the central west coast, is the capital of Maharashtra state, southernmost of the states in the North Indian language area. With a population of more than 12.5 million, not counting its suburbs, Mumbai is India s most populous city and its booming center for industry, finance, and entertainment. In Mumbai you will see the eyepopping contrasts that make up modern India. Luxury high-rises and glittering jewelry markets are bordered by shantytowns, where workers and families have flocked Topographical map of India. Mountain ranges, river plains, coastal from rural areas to find work. A vast middle-class population commutes by train, car, and motor plains, plateaus, and deserts make up India s varied topography. rickshaw to work and lives in the various neighborhoods of greater nificance in popular culture and are often mentioned in Mumbai. the mythological lore of the region. The broadest geographic division in popular usage in India is North and South of Mumbai are the states and territories of South. The division is not official, but is widely used. South India. This triangular-shaped region bordered by Secondary in usage are the divisions of eastern, western, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal consists of elevated plateaus, river basins, and coastal plains, and the cit- and central India. ies, villages, and temple towns of the five South Indian The high peaks and foothills of the Himalayas form states. The Kaveri River flows from the west across the India s northern border. The Indus River, from which states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and empties into the name India was derived, flows from the Himalayas the Bay of Bengal. At the lower reaches of the Kaveri through Pakistan. The Ganga River (also known as the River is the city of Thanjavur. The Chola rulers who controlled this region for almost four hundred years prior Ganges River) flows from the Himalayas and along with its tributaries (called the Indo-Gangetic system) creates to the fourteenth century were patrons of South Indian the fertile plain that crosses the densely populated states musicians and dancers and left great examples of South of North India. Its tributary, the Yamuna, flows through Indian temple architecture in this area. Delhi (the older part of the city, conjoined with New Delhi). The Delhi area was the home of both Hindu and Also in Tamil Nadu is South India s center of culture Muslim dynasties that controlled North India over many and education, Chennai, formerly Madras. In December centuries. Flowing to the east, the Ganga branches into and January every year, Chennai hosts a city-wide festival, where hundreds of classical musicians perform for the Hooghly, which flows through Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), the great metropolis of eastern India. The thousands of avid listeners. Not far to the northwest, in Ganga empties into the Bay of Bengal in a large delta the state of Andhra Pradesh, is Tirupati, whose temple spanning Bangladesh and India s state of Bengal. is one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world. Millions of Hindus come each year to pay their devo- 14 USAD Music Resource Guide

15 Map showing the languages of India. The Indian government lists twenty-two official languages and recognizes some twenty-seven others. USAD Music Resource Guide

16 A Lady Playing the Tanpura, c (Rajasthan). tions to Venkateshwara, a manifestation of the Hindu deity Vishnu. To the west of Chennai and capital of the state of Karnataka is Bangalore, another of South India s major cities, which is noted internationally for its successful tech industry. The Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Language Families Language is fundamental to one s family identity. One s language, and often the dialect of one s parents village, carries a sense of home and belonging. The Indian government lists twenty-two official languages and recognizes some twenty-seven others. The largest language family in India is Indo-Aryan, a sub-branch of the Indo-European family, to which most of the languages of Europe and that of Iran also belong. In India, the languages of this family are spoken mainly in the North. The other main language family in India is Dravidian, whose languages are spoken in the South. English, the legacy of long British rule in India, is used for government, business, media, and conversation in the big cities, but most people communicate primarily in regional languages. Many people are bilingual or trilingual, that is, they know two or three languages. Hindi, belonging to the Indo-Aryan family, is spoken by a larger percentage of Indians than any other single language, and the government has designated it (and English) for official government use. Even in the Hindi-speaking regions, people say, walk for twenty miles, and you ll find another dialect. A standard urban Hindi is widely shared, however, and many more Indian people speak it as a second or third language. But Hindi remains a language of North India. Government initiatives to promote its use are opposed by many speakers of other languages, especially in the south and east. Other languages of the Indo-Aryan family spoken across North India are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Marathi, Punjabi, Nepali, Oriya, and Urdu. You might note as you read further, that states names sometimes reflect the majority language. Bengal, Gujarat, and Punjab are examples of this. Often, however, one s language group is more significant than the border of the state in which one lives. Sanskrit, an early member of the Indo-Aryan family, is the language of Hindu sacred texts, mythology, and classical literature. Its place is like that of Latin or Greek in Europe. In fact, Sanskrit is related to Latin and Greek. Sanskrit is a language of ritual and scholarship and has rarely been used for daily conversation. Its liturgical use was traditionally the preserve of specialized males of the priestly Brahmin caste. It gradually became more widely accessible after the medieval period, however, and you can hear Sanskrit recited regularly in Hindu homes and temples today. The Dravidian language family of South India has four main languages recognized by the government: Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. There is no definitive evidence that links the Dravidian language family to any other language family of the world. It is thought to have been widespread in ancient India, however, and likely predates the Indo-Aryan languages in the region. As you read through this guide, you will find that certain languages, along with their poetry and song, are known across various regions of India, and across borders in other nations of South Asia as well. When any language or practice is known and used beyond its local area, it can be called pan-regional. Hinduism and Music Hindus make up the majority population of India, at some 80 percent. The castes (hereditary social groups) and economic classes of Hindu society, rural and urban, make a complex picture indeed. It is misleading to make many general statements about Hindu society. Hinduism is an umbrella term for many streams of practice. It is the worship of deities who appear in many forms, as described in local histories, or in widely shared epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Hinduism is various 16 USAD Music Resource Guide

17 Chishti Sufi gathering. The Chishti order is a prominent branch of Sufism in India that uses sama, music in ritual settings, to help attain a state of spiritual ecstasy. schools of philosophy that describe the universe and are constructed with utmost intellectual rigor. Hinduism is festivals, songs, and ritual dances reenacting the stories of the deities. Hinduism is poems of praise and love sung at home or at a temple. As you see, Hindu practices are not easily generalized, nor are they easily separable from daily life. Despite the mind-boggling variety though, it is probably safe to say that most Hindu worship practices involve song and music. Some people trace the origins of formal music in India to the chants of priests performing rituals prescribed in the Vedas, the earliest texts of Hinduism, which date to as early as 1500 bce. The Vedas were transmitted orally, memorized, and recited in musical tones. Certain principles in later performance, such as the use of vocal syllables and hand gestures indeed may have such ancient roots. Musicians also are inspired by the Hindu metaphysical idea that sound originates as a silent point before becoming audibly manifest and that it can be experienced in the quiet mind of a disciplined yogi, a spiritual practitioner. In popular Hinduism, worshippers cultivate a connection to a marvelous world of divine figures. Shiva, Vishnu, the Goddess, and countless local manifestations of male and female divinity are evoked in ritual festivals or celebrated at home and in temples. Festivals and temple rituals are major sites for specific genres of music. A particular type of worship is bhakti, personal love and longing for the divine. It is expressed in poetry and song. You will read about various kinds of Hindu devotional music in Section II of this guide. Hindu patrons, landowners, and rulers of large or small territories across South Asia also cultivated music for entertainment in their courts and considered it a high art along with poetry and theater. The various kinds of music supported by such patrons became the basis for India s formal music, later called classical music, which is performed in the modern concert hall. Islam and Music in India Islam came to India with Arab traders by sea, and overland through the Khyber Pass from Iran, Turkey, and Central Asia. Beginning in the twelfth century, armies and their leaders established successful ruling dynasties in North India. Their languages, technolo- USAD Music Resource Guide

18 This painting depicts the Hindu god Krishna dancing with maidens. gies, textiles, architecture, and arts gradually mingled with local ones to form North Indian culture. Islam spread through much of India, integrating into regional cultures. About 13 percent of India s population identifies as Muslim, with most Muslims living in the North. Hindus and Muslims share the culture of daily life, but as a minority group, Muslims have at times faced social and economic pressures. North Indian music reflects the legacy of its Indic, Persian, Turkic, and Central Asian sources. Formal classical music developed differently in the North from that in the South instruments in North Indian music, for example, developed from instruments brought from Central Asia and Afghanistan. In India, as elsewhere in the world, music is not sanctioned in certain orthodox Islamic environments. Recitation of the Quran is celebrated in mosques and Islamic schools, but it is seen as separate from music. Song and drumming, however, have been lavishly supported in Muslim court environments, and music has also been practiced among certain sects of Sufis. Sufism, Islamic mysticism, thrives across the Muslim world and is practiced in many branches, called silsila. Its followers seek nearness to God by contemplation and by cultivating love for the divine, who is conceived as the Beloved. The Chishti order is a prominent branch of Sufism in India that uses sama, music in ritual settings, to help attain a state of spiritual ecstasy. Shrines honoring Chishti saints are found throughout India and Pakistan, where Islamic or Sufi devotional music is performed. Other Religious Settings Christians make up the third largest religious group in India and live all over India, with concentrated communities in South and Northeast India. Some Christians in Kerala on India s Southwest coast trace their community to the first centuries ce. Christian hymns are sung in English or in regional languages. Melodies may derive from long traditions, may be composed on European models, or may be based on classical or Hindu devotional style. The variety of Christian practices in India represents centuries of history. Sikhism was founded in the Punjab region of North India in the fifteenth century, where the largest Sikh population is still concentrated. It shares some ideas and practices with Hindu bhakti and Sufism and uses music as a central means of worship. The core text of Sikhism is the Guru Granth Sahib, Honorable Book of the Teachers, a collection of devotional poems, which are sung in worship services. From even this brief overview, it is clear that India has a tremendous variety of religious practices. Religious culture and secular culture are difficult to separate and share many ideas and practices. Themes of love, longing, and loss are used in all kinds of music devotional, classical, and popular. Religious divides are often blurred in music, which makes it an excellent representative of South Asian culture overall. Formal Music of the Courts Many aspects of the music heard in the concert halls of Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai have roots in worship, but the story of classical and other urban musics involves the larger forces of Indian history. Various dynasties controlled large and small swaths of present-day India and Pakistan, and their courts were great centers of music, painting, poetry, and architecture. Rulers also often controlled huge temple complexes to which musicians were attached. Music historians look to court and temple sculpture, poetry, and music theory texts to trace aspects of the early history of formal music. Mainly, however, music was carried orally by musicians who were employed in such centers of patronage and who transmitted the art directly over the generations. Formal music, or art music, is based on a system of melodies called raga, and a system of rhythmic cycles called tala. (You will read much more about raga and tala in Section III when we will discuss classical music.) Musicians employed in courts came from all over South 18 USAD Music Resource Guide

19 Stage decorations for classical music concerts are often designed to represent the pillars and arches of temple or court architecture. Asia and from West and Central Asia as well. By about the fifteenth century, musicians in the courts of North India and the courts and temples of South India had developed systems that were significantly different from each other. The two systems were related, but differed in their instruments, melodies, and rhythms. The North Indian system became known as Hindustani music and the South Indian system as Carnatic (also spelled Karnatak) music. Some people believe that South India s music system is older than that of the North since it was less touched by the music of Iran and Central Asia. North India s music, indeed, was enriched by ideas and aesthetics from West Asia. In fact, however, both systems are the products of constant interactions among regions and peoples. The entire Indian subcontinent has a long history of contact with the Arab world and West Asia. During the period of British rule, beginning especially in the eighteenth century, the court and temple centers throughout India began to break up, and musicians moved to the emerging cities. The Modern City: Urban Audiences and the Concert Hall In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British created new alliances and territorial boundaries in India, and many musicians were displaced. Some musicians found employment with rural landowners who kept a traditional patronage system alive. Others moved to the growing cities. In the theaters, music circles, schools, and public concert halls of Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata, musicians found new kinds of audiences. Urban audiences celebrated courtly music as India s national legacy. Scholars researched its history and theory. Favorable comparisons to European music were made, and the English term classical came to be applied. Urban students sought out the professionals who had moved to the cities from the courts, and schools were founded to teach raga and tala to urban youth. New generations of players and singers began to populate the concert stage. While some traditional musicians found themselves unable to adjust to the new venues, those who were able to present themselves to a large public and to be successful in radio, film, and TV became the twentieth-century stars of classical music. USAD Music Resource Guide

20 Photograph of Indian musicians taken during Fred Gaisberg s recordings in Kolkata. The legacy of courtly and temple patronage is still visible in the atmosphere of a classical music concert. The formal attire, the ornate carpet, and the courtly or spiritual reverence shown to the musicians are reminders of past settings. In South India, audiences particularly honor the history of temple contexts. Stage decorations for Carnatic music concerts are designed to represent pillars and arches of the great South Indian temples. Media RECORDING When Fred Gaisberg of the British Gramophone Company recorded professional singers in Kolkata in 1902, there were already local businesses producing songs and promoting indigenous companies. Thousands of recordings made by the early decades of the twentieth century made music classical, film, patriotic, and theater available to an upper-class market. Vinyl records, in their various formats, from 78rpm to the LP, reached growing urban markets through the mid century. In the 1980s, the emergence of relatively low-priced cassette technology allowed the industry to boom, expanding to local markets. The contemporary Indian recording industry is as diversified as any in the world. RADIO Beginning in the 1930s, radio became a force in making classical, popular, and regional musics available to a mass population. India s national broadcast organization is All India Radio, or Akashvani Voice from the sky, centered in New Delhi. Early on, the government tried to influence the public taste, directing it toward traditional music. In the 1950s, the Minister for Broadcasting banned film music for some time on All India Radio, but popular demand eventually won out. Regional stations and many local transmitters broadcast programs in more than twenty regional languages, and radio remains the farthest-reaching media in the country. Radio brought much wider exposure to some musicians, and it became a force, for better or worse, in standardizing styles and tastes. It was not until the 1990s that the Indian government began to lease airtime to private radio broadcasters. Since 2000, FM stations in India have proliferated, and all kinds of radio programming can be found, except news, which is still restricted to government broadcasts. The city of Bangalore lists thirteen radio stations, broadcasting in Hindi, English, and Kannada, with one specializing in classical music and another in education pro- 20 USAD Music Resource Guide

21 gramming. The others broadcast a mix of dramas, talk, and popular music. TELEVISION The National television service, Doordarshan or View from afar, has broadcast since the 1970s. Government channels were the only ones available until the 1990s. Since then, with deregulation and new technologies, private TV channels have proliferated, and hundreds of channels are available. Drama series, sitcoms, talk shows, reality shows, and film stars feature on Indian TV channels in many languages, which are available through satellite and cable all over the world. Urban television ownership is reported overall at about 75 percent, but a high rate in Delhi is balanced by a 15 percent rate in Bihar, North India s poorest state. In rural India the most recent census reports that only about one-third of rural households own a TV. 1 INTERNET Like other media technologies, the internet is most available in cities. Internet services were launched in India in the mid 1990s. The user base in 2013 was reported to be around 200 million, some 15 percent of the total population. A Gallup poll reported that 3 percent of those polled responded that they had internet access at home. Mobile phone technology and usage in India is high, however, and mobile internet subscriptions make up one of the fastest growing segments of the tech economy. 2 INDIA S FILM INDUSTRY The silent movie Raja Harishchandra, based on a story from the Hindu epic Mahabharata, premiered in 1913 and is celebrated as the first Indian-made feature film. The first Indian sound film, Alam Ara, was first shown in Mumbai in March Today, the Indian film industry is the largest in the world, measured by the number of feature films it produces. Bollywood is the term for the Hindi-language film industry, which is largely based in Mumbai. Bollywood films, with their catchy music and dance sequences, glamorous stars, and lavish plots, have a huge fan base. They are loved not only throughout India and South Asia, but also have had fans in parts of the Middle East, East Asia, and Eastern Europe for many decades. South Asian diaspora populations all over the world watch the latest films and revisit the classics on cable and satellite TV and DVD. More recently, international collaborations and Bollywood-inspired techniques have made Bollywood a familiar term in popular culture all over the world. Bollywood s name is well known, and its style is influential, but the Indian film industry has many other centers as well, grouped by the language in which the films are made. The Film Federation of India reported in 2012 that it certified 1602 feature films in thirty-five different languages. The Tamil-language film industry, which is as old as that of Mumbai, is sometimes called Kollywood, named after the neighborhood in Chennai where it is centered. In 2012, it produced more films than Bollywood. Film industries of other language groups and dialects respond to the interest of regional audiences and their diasporas, offering characters, language, and music styles that feel closer to home than Mumbai. Indian mainstream films feature song and dance sequences, which are seen as essential to the film s success. For the most part, film singers do not appear on the screen; actors lip-sync their songs. But singers and music composers are nonetheless stars. Film music recordings and music videos are the mainstay of popular music in India. Film music and dance had their early sources in traditional theater, but they quickly expanded their vocabulary by drawing on all kinds of popular and classical styles, both Indian and European. Film music and dance in India are exuberant expressions of India s cosmopolitan culture. However, it should be noted that films do not reach the entire population equally. As is the case for television and other media, urban centers and middle-class and upper-middle-class populations remain the central markets for the film industry. International markets also make up a growing share. Section I Summary o Music is sound organized in time. o Sachs and Hornbostel grouped musical instruments into four categories: chordophones, aerophones, membranonphones, and idiophones. The family names of instruments are widely used. o P itc h is the highness or lowness of a sound. It is the basic building block for melody and harmony. o The octave is created by doubling the vibrations of a pitch. o Western and Indian tradition divides an octave into twelve intervals called half steps. o With a Solfege system, the Do tonic pitch is chosen, and a scale is built from there. The tradition of India uses a solfege-type system in which the pitches are named Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. o Melo d y is a coherent succession of pitches perceived as a whole, with a beginning, middle, and end. o R hy t h m is the way music is organized in time. o The beat is the steady, regular pulse underlying most music. Tempo is the speed of the beat. o A chord is made up of three or more pitches sounded simultaneously. Harmony is a systematic use of chords. Traditional music in India is not based on USAD Music Resource Guide

22 harmony and is considered a melodic system. o Te x t u r e describes the number of things that are going on in a piece of music o Timbre, instrumentation, dynamics, and ornamentation are important features that can distinguish musical sounds. o Motives, phrases, cadences, and themes are the smallest building blocks of form. Tension and release use consonance and dissonance to lend shape to melody o A genre of music is a category that uses a specific set of conventions. o A musical form may be pre-composed or improvised. Musical material may be repeated, varied, developed, or contrasted with different material to create longer forms o B orde r s and nation-states of South Asia changed significantly in the twentieth century. Cultural history is shared across national and state borders. o It is common to speak of North and South India as distinctive regions. o Language is fundamental to one s identity in India. Most languages of the North belong to the Indo- Aryan family, and most languages of the South belong to the Dravidian family. o Hinduism covers a wide range of practices, formal, liturgical, and popular. Devotional Hinduism, bhakti, is a theme throughout the arts. o Islam is the second largest religion in India. Cultural practices from West Asia mingled with earlier traditions to form North Indian music. Music is important to some schools of Sufism, Islamic mysticism. o India s formal music, with written and oral theory, developed in court settings. Formal music is based on a melodic system called raga and a rhythmic system called tala. o Concert music in India s modern cities draws on a legacy of court and temple patronage. o The recording industry, radio, and television have shaped popular tastes, especially in urban contexts. o India s film industry is the largest in the world. Bollywood is the Hindi-language film industry, and there are many other film industries in India today, based on language. 22 USAD Music Resource Guide

23 SECTION II India s Regional Music Traditions and Devotional Music The dholak is the most common rural drum of North India. It is held horizontally across n the lap and played with both hands. Regional Music Traditions Regional and Pan-regional If you were to travel from village to village across even one part of India, you would find subtly different practices that reflect the history and the dialects of each area. This level of music might be considered local. If you were to travel across Hindi-speaking parts of North India, you would find that many song types are shared across the larger region. Music shared by speakers of a particular language can be called a regional music. Regional styles aren t necessarily confined to geographic areas though. In the past as well as in contemporary India, people have moved around, taking their language and music with them. Regional musics, therefore, are those linked to a particular language and are found wherever the language speakers live. Some music genres are shared across much wider areas, by speakers of different languages, say all across North India. Or, a music might be shared across South Asia and the diaspora. These types of music can be called pan-regional. Typically, music developed by professionals in the court centers, temples, and cities came to be shared from center to center across wide regions. Later, styles of popular music were disseminated across the nation by radio, TV, and films. Among the dominant panregional music genres today are classical, semi-classical, Bollywood, and pop. Western genres such as jazz and rock are also known across India s urban centers. In this section of the guide, we will explore some of India s rural and regional musics. Introduction to Instruments in Rural India Barrel-shaped drums are ubiquitous across South Asia. Large or small, held vertically or horizontally, played by hand or stick, they have different names and uses. The two skin-covered sides may have higher and lower pitches, giving these drums a full, musical sound. The dholak is the most common rural drum of North India, and it is used pan-regionally. It is held horizontally across the lap and played with both hands. The metallic highs of the right side and forceful lows of the left provide a sound distinctive to rural India. Bells, clappers, cymbals, and other idiophones made of metal or wood play important timekeeping roles and have specific names and shapes. Wooden clappers with cymbals attached or rod-shaped metal clappers called kartal are common in both North and South India. They provide the driving rhythms characteristic of group song in regional and devotional genres. The harmonium, a small hand pump organ, is played throughout South Asia in rural as well as urban settings. You will find references to the harmonium throughout this guide. String instruments, plucked or bowed, are generally played by specialists. An important distinction to note is whether a string instrument is being used for drone or for melody drone instruments sound one pitch USAD Music Resource Guide

24 Wooden clappers with cymbals attached or rod-shaped metal clappers called kartal are common in both North and South India. throughout. Reed and brass wind instruments are also generally played by specialists. They are often associated with outdoor playing, especially processions, at wedding or temple events. Double-reed instruments, like oboes, and flutes made of bamboo or wood, are found in various contexts, and may be played by specialists and non-specialists. Songs of Village Life Some 72 percent of India s population is classified as rural. Men and women in Indian villages typically do separate kinds of daily work and gather separately for music. Thus, village music is usefully characterized as women s or men s music. Musicians may be non-specialists or specialists, according to whether they have special training, and non-professional or professional, according to whether they perform for pay. The lyrics of a song, its subject matter, or the occasion on which it is sung are typical ways that songs are categorized. Many types of women s songs in village settings are performed by groups of non-specialists, where everyone participates equally. There may be no accompaniment or someone might play a dholak and perhaps a kartal or other idiophone. Women s work songs; songs celebrating the spring Holi or the fall Diwali festival, or the many other festivals that mark the Hindu year; songs for the monsoon and other seasons; songs in praise of the Goddess or a local deity; and prominently, songs celebrating life-cycle events are the subject of women s group songs. From the birth of a baby to the child s first hair cutting ceremony, to a marriage engagement, to events surrounding a wedding, and the departure of a bride from the home on all these occasions, women s songs are essential to the event s auspicious outcome. In such contexts, songs are not thought of as performances. No one in the village judges the song by the qualities of the singers voices or by whether its melody is artistically pleasing. Men and children may sit or pass by as though nothing special is happening. However, one of the most basic functions of song is represented in women s village music to gather, mark, and celebrate an occasion for the benefit of the community. Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 1: HYMNS FOR THE CHATHI FAST, CHATHI MATA The Chhathi Sixth-day is a four-day period of rituals and fasting in North India that is dedicated to the Sun and to the Mother Goddess. It begins yearly on the sixth day of the Hindu month of Kartik, in October November. Listen to this recording of a group of women singing in a North Indian village. You can feel the informal atmosphere as people talk and move in the background. A woman leads with words and melody, and the group repeats the last phrase of the stanza. A few others join in to lead as the song progresses. The song has a pleasing rhythmic pulse that might be felt as a lilting seven-beats. The short and long syllables of the text dictate its internal rhythms. Rural women specialists, who receive special training, and women professionals, who perform for money, traditionally belong to hereditary musicians family lines. They typically perform among women s gatherings or with male family members in public gatherings. Radio, TV, and film have brought rural specialists to wider attention and have attracted non-hereditary singers to the profession. Nowadays, it is an option for a young woman from a small town to aspire to be a singer and record in a studio or for TV. Studios specializing in recording for rural and local markets have greatly increased in number as recording technology has become less expensive. Men s non-specialist groups in village settings typically include drums and cymbals and a harmonium. Men s groups may sing festival songs or Hindu or Muslim devotional poetry. Men s group songs are often characterized by their volume and high energy. As the song progresses, it may increase in tempo, and the drumming, cymbals, and the actions of the singers become more and more animated. Group singing is the ideal format for achieving the experience of fervor so basic to Hindu and Islamic devotional song. [You can see a group of rural men singing a devotional song here: Male professionals in rural settings traditionally come from hereditary family lines. They may perform for lo- 24 USAD Music Resource Guide

25 Rajasthan, in northwestern India, is well known for its desert landscape, the vivid colors of men s turbans and women s flowing skirts, the ornate stone architecture of its forts and palaces, and its musicians, both traveling and settled. With strong melodious voices and the resonating sound of the bowed Sindhi sarangi, Langa musicians sing love ballads of regional heroes and other kinds of songs. cal patrons or travel across the wider region seeking out performance opportunities. Their music is tied to specific contexts and has specific instrumentation. Rural Professional Music: Three Case Studies HEREDITARY MUSICIANS OF RAJASTHAN Hereditary professionals perform for hire and teach their repertoire orally to their children. These families have been the carriers of traditional music for centuries. Options for members of such families are more fluid now than they once were. A young man from a hereditary musician s family might go to the city in search of another kind of job. And, a talented young person from outside a hereditary family nowadays might learn to become a studio singer. Amidst these changes, however, traditional music in India s villages and small towns thrives with amazing variety. Let s take a tour of some of the professional music and musicians in rural Rajasthan, in northwestern India. Rajasthan is well known for its desert landscape, for the vivid colors of men s turbans and women s flowing skirts, for the ornate stone architecture of its forts and palaces, and for its musicians, both traveling and settled. When you visit, you might encounter many of the following traveling professionals who seek out performance opportunities around the region. Members of the Bhat caste are genealogists, who fulfill a special niche of recording and retelling the histories of family lines. They also perform with puppets, reenacting stories of local and national heroes. They may be accompanied by a female singer from their family and a dholak player. Bhands are traveling actors who specialize in humor, slapstick, and musical parodies. You might see a pair of bhands at the center of a group of laughing people on a street corner. One bhand slaps the other with a soft leather paddle as they trade insults and illustrate jokes with songs. Nat is a traveling community of acrobats and musicians who play the dhol, a large barrel-drum, and brass trumpets as they act out local or romantic stories. We find references to bhands and nats in poetry, painting, and song dating back centuries ago. You might see saperas, who are snake charmers, so well documented by foreign travelers. Snake charmers have a well-recognized place in rural India. They play specific reed wind instruments and are thought to have special powers. Bhopas are men or women who are spiritually attached to a local deity and act as local priests. Bhopas sing and accompany themselves on a bowed instrument, the ravanhattha, telling the stories of the deity and entering a trance as they perform. Some musicians travel as singers of devotional music on the streets or are employed at Sufi shrines or Hindu temples. A category of singers called jogi renounce their normal life to move from village to village. They often accompany themselves on the ektar (or ektara) single USAD Music Resource Guide

26 Bhopas sing and accompany themselves on a bowed instrument, the ravanhattha, telling the stories of the deity and entering a trance as they perform. string, a string drone and rhythm instrument. Qawwals are the highly specialized hereditary performers of the stirring poetry of Sufi mystics at shrines. We will read more about qawwali music in the section on Islamic devotional music. Other professionals in Rajasthan work in an arrangement of stable employment. Settled in one area, they sing at weddings, births, festivals, and other occasions for specific families of patrons and receive grain, clothing, and money on a seasonal basis in return. Among such professionals are the Langas and the Manganiars, who live in the desert regions of Western Rajasthan. With strong melodious voices and the resonating sound of the bowed Sindhi sarangi, Langa musicians sing love ballads of regional heroes and other kinds of songs. Their traditional patrons are families from a particular class, the Muslim Sindhi class of the region. Langas have a long history of professional service. They are Muslims, but trace their ancestry to the Hindu Rajput class, the dominant ruling class of Rajasthan. The sarangi they play is carved from a block of wood with a hollowedout neck and a body covered with skin. Its sympathetic strings ring out by themselves when the main gut melody strings are bowed. The small, slightly rounded shape of the Sindhi sarangi distinguishes it from the larger classical sarangi. Besides the sarangi, Langas play the satara, a double-barreled wooden flute; the murli, a reed wind instrument; and the morchang, a metal mouth harp. They play virtuoso instrumental interludes between verses of songs. Talented boys are trained from childhood and are featured on an instrument or on the dholak as they perform with their older relatives. Manganiars, who are closely related to Langas, are also Muslim musicians said to be descended from Hindu Rajput classes. Their traditional patrons are Hindu families in their region. They are by tradition devotees of a local Hindu goddess and serve in her temples. Manganiar musicians play a distinctive bowed instrument of their own, the kamaicha. Kamaichas, which have a large, round skin-covered body, nearly disappeared from use in the mid twentieth century when Manganiar musicians took to playing the harmonium instead. The kamaicha was later revived with the encouragement of music scholars and the Rajasthan government. Manganiars also play the dholak or the dhol. The dhol is a large, double-sided drum held by a standing player and played with sticks. The Manganiar version of the kartal is a set of wooden clappers. Manganiars also play various wind instru- 26 USAD Music Resource Guide

27 A Manganiar musician plays a distinctive bowed instrument, the kamaicha. ments of flute and reed varieties. Manganiars and Langas play a repertoire of songs classified into the categories great and small. Great songs are those more sophisticated in length and poetic content. They include those related to classical music, devotional songs of the medieval poets, songs in the old regional dialect, and local love ballads. The small song repertoire consists of songs sung at festivals and life-cycle events, whose musical style is less technically demanding. 3 Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 2: MANGANIARS OF RAJASTHAN, KACHI GHULDALO Listen to this recording of Manganiar musicians performing a song that would traditionally be sung at a wedding celebration of a patron s family. We hear the delicate sound of the Sindhi sarangi soon joined by a male singer. Both briefly hold the tonic note, on which the scale is built. As the song begins with a catchy phrase, the dholak enters with a quick eight-beat rhythmic cycle. We can hear other voices joining the lead singer, especially toward the end of each phrase. At about 00:35 the sarangi plays an interlude based on the main melody. The entire pattern repeats again with different words, followed by a sarangi interlude. As the song continues, we might note that the melody lines are the same throughout, and the text of the first line repeats as a refrain, alternating with new lines of text. At each interlude, the sarangi player creates more elaborate variations in higher registers, adding some quick running improvisations. This song celebrates the arrival of the groom who comes on horseback to the bride s house. We can hear a Manganiar musician Mame Khan. happy, celebratory quality to the song. We can imagine a procession with family members surrounding the young groom, who is wearing a bright turban and garlands of flowers. Since the 1970s, Langa and Manganiar musicians have come to the attention of national and international audiences. Government and private music promoters have sponsored tours and recordings, and groups have been featured in international festivals. Today, individual Langa and Manganiar musicians are becoming recognized for their own accomplishments, rather than as anonymous representatives of the hereditary group. Individuals like Mame Khan are working to create careers that balance modern professionalism and family tradition. [You can visit the website of Mame Khan here: DRUMMING IN KERALA The state of Kerala, on India s southwest coast, is home to a number of distinctive drumming styles. Some are central to Hindu temple rituals and village festivals. The sharp, driving sound of drum ensembles is particularly striking and ubiquitous in Kerala. USAD Music Resource Guide

28 The state of Kerala, on India s southwest coast, is home to a number of distinctive drumming styles. CHENDA Drum ensembles accompany processions of a deity through the streets on a temple festival day. Various combinations of players perform at specific points of a festival. The chenda (also spelled centa) features in a number of such contexts and ensembles. The chenda melam (chenda group) is its biggest ensemble. It can consist of as many as forty-five chendas, fifteen horns, fifteen double-reed woodwinds, and thirty pairs of cymbals. 4 Different sections of a performance feature chenda soloists, with other chenda players and instrumentalists acting as timekeepers. Smaller chenda groups perform with cymbals, providing the basic underlying beat. In l i s t e n i n g e x a m p l e 3, you will hear how rhythmic patterns are layered on top of each other. The chenda is hung vertically in front of the player. The drummer uses one stick, two sticks, or one stick and one hand, depending on the player s rhythmic role. A repertoire of sophisticated rhythmic patterns is played. Chenda drums are traditionally played by men, but female ensembles and players from outside the traditional drumming lineages are learning in schools and private institutions in modern Kerala. Listening Example 3: TEMPLE MUSICIANS OF KERALA, MADDALAM CHENDA KELI This recording of a chenda group in a temple context begins with the cymbals marking the underlying tempo. A chenda drum is lightly playing in double time with sharp-sounding strokes on the edge of the drumhead. At about 0:27 this introduction resolves into regular on-beat strokes, and another chenda player enters with patterns in quadruple time. Listen to the lower and higher sounds that give different emphases to the rhythm. At about 1:00 the patterns change. The tempo increases. Then, against the background of the regular cymbal sound and a timekeeping chenda, a solo chenda player plays quick, varying patterns. At about 2:15, off-beat (syncopated) strokes are particularly noticeable. At about 2:55, a regular on-beat pace resumes, and another solo chenda enters, playing quadruple-tempo (4x) patterns. Listen here to the varieties of tone that the drummer is able to produce. If you listen closely, you will even hear occasional bursts of strokes in 8x tempo. At about 3:49 the tempo increases again, and the players settle into a repetitive sound dominated by the clanging cymbals. The rhythmic clashing of cymbals is one mark of a culminating ritual in a Hindu temple, where devotees celebrate the image of the deity. [Here is a video in which you can see a small group of temple chenda and cymbal players, with three different layers of rhythm being played by the six drummers: You can see a larger chenda melam being performed here < youtube.com/watch?v=ayfyjzu0qd0> in a diaspora setting in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. The World Association of Malayalam, Kerala s dominant language, was the sponsor of this performance, celebrating Kerala culture in a foreign land.] IDAKKA Hindu temples in India are not just places for worship, but are also centers of social and cultural life. With people coming and going morning and night, bells ringing, chants and drumming, a temple is a lively place indeed. Hereditary drummers in Kerala belong to several different groups, from the high-caste Marars who accompany dance, theater, and temple rituals, to the Parayans (from which the term pariah is derived) who drum for festivals among lower castes. Certain drums are associated with specific parts of a temple ritual, concert, traditional dance, or theater genre. The idakka (also spelled edakka or edaykka) is played at regular points in daily worship services, so Keralans associate its distinctive sound with temple rituals. The idakka is a pressure drum. Hourglass-shaped, hanging from the shoulder, and held horizontally, it is played with a single stick. The drummer raises and lowers the pitch by pressing the lacing that attaches skin to frame with the other hand. It is said to be capable of producing all the syllables of a human voice. Indeed, its sounds range from high ringing clicks, to midrange punchy staccato, to deep rolling pulses, and it can even play a full melody, sounding 28 USAD Music Resource Guide

29 A chenda ensemble. The chenda is hung vertically in front of the player and is played with one or two sticks, or one stick and one hand. almost like a string bass. The idakka is difficult to play, and training consists of a long, disciplined apprenticeship. The student practices on a solid block of wood and learns to produce sets of sounds that are first learned through spoken syllables. [You can see an amazing solo performance on an idakka in this video: watch?v=3p1loi5q38q.] A Rural Music Becomes a Pop Genre Bhangra Bhangra is a music and dance now known around the world. The story of how it emerged from rural Punjab and ended up in the dance clubs of New York is a story that parallels modern India and the spread of its global diaspora. Bhangra was created out of several Punjabi local dance styles. After Indian independence in 1947, folkloric styles, that is, new genres based on rural music, were admired and promoted. Bhangra was first performed and named by a group made up of hereditary specialists and college student dancers near the city of Patiala in the 1950s. A local administrator promoted the new dance, and the group was sent to represent the Punjab state at the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. 5 Bhangra dance is vigorous and joyful. The music is characterized by its energetic beat and lyrics celebrating rural life. Its main instruments are the Punjabi dhol, a large barrel drum held horizontally and played with sticks, and the tumbi, a small single-stringed plucked instrument. Bhangra came to be seen as representing the heroic energy of rural Punjab. Bhangra was carried to England by Punjabi workers, where in the 1970s and especially the 1980s studio musicians blended it with Western dance music. Various phases and styles of bhangra made it something of a pop phenomenon. DJs made remixes with hip-hop, house, and other dance genres. In England, Canada, and the U.S., the reputation of bhangra grew, and it came to represent not just Punjab, but the aspirations and energy of USAD Music Resource Guide

30 The idakka is a pressure drum that is hourglass shaped, hangs from the shoulder, is held horizontally, and is played with a single stick. contemporary South Asian youth. College campuses became homes for bhangra dance competitions, where panels judge teams in front of a large cheering public. The dhol might be replaced by synthesized drumbeats, but rhythms based on the dhol, along with Punjabi lyrics and the characteristic exuberant vocals, identify bhangra and its offshoots. The bhangra phenomenon has lasted in various styles, but recently musicians have been exploring other sources, and Punjabi music of types other than bhangra seem to be on the ascent. Browse YouTube to get a sense of the world of bhangra and its offshoots. Many collections are organized by the decades in which they were popular. What do you find when you search Bhangra 2014? Devotional Music We will define devotional music here as music performed in a religious setting or as a spiritual practice. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians all have specific devotional genres, and they are composed in various styles. We will discuss some of the most well known of them. A bhangra dance performance. Bhangra is a music and dance now known around the world. Hindu Songs of Love and Praise: Bhajan and Kirtan Bhakti is devotion a feeling of love and intimacy with the divine, longing for the divine presence, or the agony of separation. The object of longing may be Krishna, Shiva, the Mother Goddess, another manifestation, or an unnamable ultimate divine. Bhakti is expressed in ritual actions and, most prominently, in poetry and song. When bhakti poems are sung, they are called bhajan-s. The earliest bhakti poetry is traced to the Tamil region of South India in the seventh century. Bhakti is thought to have originated as a reaction against dependence on the priestly elite. Through it, an individual could experience the divine directly, without relying on the rituals and chanting of elite priests. Poets composed beautiful poems in colloquial languages, using a full range of imagery, which they drew from a long tradition of love poetry. Separation, longing, entreaty to a distant lover, tenderness, and blissful remembrance, are some of the themes found in bhakti poetry. 30 USAD Music Resource Guide

31 A painting of Mira, a poet and sant. The story of Mira s life is told in her bhajans, which have been carried by singers all over India. An eighth-century Tamil poet expressed bhakti as the anguish of a girl who feels Vishnu has deserted her. One manifestation of Vishnu (one of the major deities of Hinduism) is a beautiful figure reclining on a great serpent and floating on the cosmic ocean. The whole town fast asleep, the whole world pitch dark, and the seas utterly still, when it s one long extended night if He who sleeps on the snake who once devoured the earth and kept it in His belly will not come to the rescue, who will save my life? 6 The fifteenth-century Hindi poet Surdas expressed bhakti as a love that leaves no room for any other. Krishna, a manifestation of Vishnu, is visualized as a playful and handsome youth who was raised by a human family in rural north India. There is no room left in my heart; while Nananandan (Krishna) remains there, how can another be brought in? Walking, looking, awake in the day and dreaming in slumber at night, that intoxicating image strays from my heart not for a single moment. 7 LONGING FOR HER LORD: MIRA Many of the poets who composed bhajans are honored as sant-s, people who know the spiritual truth. One of them is Mira (also Meera or Mirabai). The story of her life is told in her bhajans, which have been carried by singers all over India. Later, Mira bhajans were also composed by others in her name. Mira was born in the late sixteenth century to a royal family of Rajasthan. She became a devotee of Krishna, falling in love with him in childhood. As a young woman, she was given in marriage to the king of another royal household. She refused to act as a royal daughter-in-law, however, and persisted in her single-minded devotion to Krishna. She even left the household to join groups of wandering devotees, a great offense in the social environment of sixteenth-century Rajasthan. Bhajans tell of her persecution by her father-in-law, who even tried to poison her. Her poems express longing, suffering, and the ecstatic joy of pure devotion. USAD Music Resource Guide

32 One of the most well-known nirgun bhakti sants is Kabir, who is shown in this painting (second from the right) with a group of followers. Mira tied bells to her feet and danced; I have myself become the slave girl of my Narayan (Krishna). People say Mira has gone mad; kinsmen call her a destroyer of family; Ranaji sent a poisoned cup, Mira laughed as she drank it. Mira has readily found her lord, the courtly Giridhar (Krishna), the eternal one. 8 Listening Example 4: MIRA BHAJAN, MANADE RA MOHAN Listen to this Mira poem sung by a Langa professional group. The track begins with rhythmic strokes on the ektar, the single-string drone instrument. A dholak then enters, along with finger cymbals. The rhythm is not a straight meter of fours or threes, but one with an uneven grouping. Soon we hear the Sindhi sarangi, the bowed instrument of Langa musicians, enter with a beautiful melody. The singer begins with a long single tone. This is the tonic on which the song is based. As the song begins, the rhythm becomes easier to follow. It is a seven-beat, loping cycle, of The instrumentation ektar, dholak, finger cymbals is typical of many devotional genres in India. The Sindhi sarangi, and the singer s tone and language, identify this music as that of Rajasthani professionals. Listen to the short core theme sung first and followed by a pause. It will come again at 1:00. It is followed by a section of higher-pitched melody lines. At about 2:30 the theme comes again. The sarangi is heard lightly in the background as a drone and in short interludes that echo the vocal phrases during pauses. The complex melody, the highly skilled voice, and the sophisticated instrumental accompaniment mark this as professional music. As you listen, now try to feel the mood of the song. Do 32 USAD Music Resource Guide

33 A painting of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (b.1486) performing kirtan, devotional chanting and dancing. you feel the dignity of the music, the feelings of longing, and the joy of celebration? The voice expresses so well the longing quality of Mira s bhakti. The Sindhi sarangi, for many listeners, evokes images of the beautiful desert environment of Rajasthan. IN SEARCH OF WHAT IS BEYOND DESCRIPTION: KABIR Some, like Mira, express devotion to a deity who appears to them vividly in human guise. Other devotees worship a divine who is beyond all description. The senses cannot perceive him directly, and there are no words capable of describing him. This type of devotion is called nirgun bhakti: devotion to a divine that is without characteristics. This kind of bhakti often crosses the boundaries that divide religious sects. One of the most well-known nirgun bhakti sants is Kabir, who is admired across sectarian lines. He is said by Hindus to be Hindu and by Muslims to be Muslim, and his songs form a part of the Sikh sacred book. Kabir was born into a poor weaver s family in the Hindispeaking region of North India in the fifteenth century. Kabir s poems speak out against hypocrisy, blind ritual, and class prejudices. His poems address the listener directly, asking us to find truth by looking deeply into our own selves. Don t depend on a priest, pandit (scholar), or teacher, he says. Don t even depend on a deity such as Brahma (like Vishnu, another powerful figure in the Hindu pantheon). The only real teacher is within you. Read, read, pandit, make yourself clever, Does that bring freedom? kindly explain. Where does the supreme being dwell? In what village? Pandit, tell his name. Brahma himself made the Vedas, but he doesn t know the secret of freedom. People babble of alms and merit but don t hear news of their own death. One name unreachably deep. Unmoving the servant Kabir. 9 USAD Music Resource Guide

34 BHAJAN SUMMARY AND A NOTE ON MUSICAL SETTINGS You have been introduced to two great bhakti sants, Mira and Kabir. Their poems represent just a sample of the various expressions of bhakti. And just as there are many forms and styles of bhakti poetry, its sung versions, bhajans, are set to many musical styles. Certain bhajans are known throughout the Hindu world, and their tunes alone are instantly recognizable to millions of people. Vaishnava Jana To is one such tune. It was a favorite of Mahatma Gandhi ( ), one of the great social and political figures of India s independence movement. The lyrics, in Gandhi s mother tongue Gujarati, speak of an ideal devotee as one who is selfless, respectful, and truthful. Vaishnavas (devotees of Vishnu) are those who feel the pain of others, help those in misery, and never let ego or conceit enter their mind. Vaishnavas respect all the people of the world. They do not criticize anyone; their words, actions and thoughts are steady and calm. The mother of such a one is blessed indeed. 10 Listen to the melody of Vaishnava Jana To by searching for it on YouTube. You will find it performed in many formats, including instrumental versions. To hear other bhajans in a contemporary popular style, try browsing bhajan on YouTube. You will get a sense of how big the market is for studio-produced bhajans, with synthesized instrumentation and studio-enhanced vocals. KIRTAN Kirtan, sung praise is another type of Hindu devotional music. The term is used in a variety of ways. In the Hindi-language region of North India, kirtan is a chant, a short text sung in a group in a call-and-response format. A lead singer sings the text, and the group repeats it a certain number of times. You may see an all-night kirtan being held under a colorful canopy in a small town, or a kirtan being held continuously over a week, broadcast from loudspeakers in a city. These kinds of kirtans are sung in a steady, easy rhythm. The text and melody may be repeated many times, creating a special participatory experience. Over the course of a kirtan, the pace and volume may increase, building a sense of intensity. Kirtans are considered to have benefits for those singing as well as for the community in which they are held. In other regions and among specific sects, kirtans have their own formats and use specific texts. A spiritual leader or teacher is often the leader of a kirtan assembly. In North or South or western India, you might find a spiritual leader leading a stadium full of people in a kirtan and interspersing spoken teachings with singing. Sikh kirtan or Shabad kirtan ( Kirtan of the Word ) is the devotional singing of poetry contained in the The Bengali language area straddles the Indian state of Bengal and the People s Republic of Bangladesh in the northeast and is home to the Bauls. Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib. Sikh philosophy, which developed out of Hindu bhakti and Islamic Sufism, emphasizes human equality, service, discipline, and restraint. As in nirgun bhakti, the divine is beyond naming. Indeed, Kabir s songs form a part of the Sikh kirtan repertoire. Sikh kirtans, performed in Gurdwaras (Sikh places of worship) by specialized singers, are characterized by dignity and quiet reverence. A contemporary type of kirtan has found a place in the U.S. You will find large groups assembled in yoga studios, workshops, and special gatherings to be led in kirtan chants by nationally known specialists. The contemporary Western kirtan is in many cases non-sectarian. That is, it is seen as a healing or soothing practice not belonging to any specific religious group. If you search kirtan on YouTube, you will find many examples of Sikh kirtans, contemporary kirtans, and kirtans led by spiritual teachers. You would have to search a bit harder to find the more traditional kinds of kirtan held by local people in a small town or village. [This YouTube video shows a traditional akhand (continual) kirtan in the city of Varanasi, in the Hindi-language area of North India: watch?v=dnxgr23mkym.] Music for Ecstasy: Baul and Sufi Music BAULS OF BENGAL The Bengali language area straddles the Indian state of Bengal and the People s Republic of Bangladesh in the 34 USAD Music Resource Guide

35 northeast. It is home to a widely dispersed sect known as the Baul. The musical style of the Bauls and the songs they perform are treasured in the Bengali language region and have become known across the world. Anyone may become a Baul by renouncing home life and social norms and following Baul ideals. The Bauls believe that the divine is to be found inside oneself and is cultivated through love. Men, women, and people of all castes and religions are equal in Baul philosophy. But one needs to actively practice methods that will lead to union with the divine. The only true teacher is the man of the heart. The unconventional practices of Bauls moving from place to place, singing and dancing ecstatic poetry, and behaving in eccentric ways, led to the origin of their name from a word meaning mad. Music is central to Bauls, who sing and dance poetry written by past and present-day Baul poets. Listening Example 5: BAUL SONG, EKDIN MATIR BHITAR HOBE GHAR This song is about how fleeting life is. Wealth, pride, and good looks are just temporary. The poet reminds himself to look beyond this to find what is permanent. One day your home will be inside the soil, O mind of mine why do you build this house of bricks on the surface? The bird of life will flee the cage, Everything else will stay on earth but you will vanish. Your friends and your family, your mother and father too, Will all become strangers to you. Your whole body, your skin and bones, will rot away And lie on the ground in bits. O mind of mine, why build this house of bricks In the pride of your beauty, you have decked yourself out You have put on gold, gems, and fancy clothes; When life leaves your body, all this will be left behind Your lifeless body will be covered in plain white cloth, O mind of mine (transl. By Dr. Sagaree Sengupta, personal communication) Baul musician Debdas Baul. The dotara, a plucked, fretless string instrument, opens this piece with a snatch of melody. Its skin-covered belly gives this instrument a distinctive percussive sound. We hear a duggi, the small one- or two-piece hand drum used in Baul music. And, we hear the shake of a set of bells called ghungur. The bells are tied to the Baul singer s ankle and are sounded by the shake of the foot. The instruments begin a rhythmic riff in a quick eight-beat pattern. The singer enters with the song. The dotara matches the melody and adds rhythm to the vocal line, playing short interludes between the verses. [You can see the Bengal countryside, the circling dance, and the orange-colored robes characteristic of Baul groups in the short video Looking for Debdas Baul : You will also see a few other Baul instruments. There is an ektara, the single-string drone, and a small singlepiece duggi.] Baul poetry, music, and philosophy came to be widely known through the writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore ( ), an early-twentieth century Bengali thinker and poet, was India s first Nobel Prize winner. He saw the Bauls as representing social equality and an inspired spirituality. In the later twentieth century, Baul musicians received worldwide exposure. Some Baul musicians travel on international concert tours and attract admirers around the world. USAD Music Resource Guide

36 Photograph of the shrine of the Sufi Hazrat Nizamuddin. SUFI POETRY If you go to Delhi, you might seek out the shrine of the Sufi Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, at the center of the busy neighborhood named after him. This fourteenthcentury saint belonged to the Chishti order of Sufi practitioners, who used poetry and music as an important part of their mystical practice. In Sufism, the goal is closeness to God through contemplation, recitation, and disciplined practices. The object of Sufi love is conceived of in terms of human love, and the divine object is often referred to as the Beloved. The Sufi suffers in separation from the Beloved, but feels that this suffering is the highest calling in life. Constantly recalling the Beloved s characteristics and practicing the disciplines of one s order are at the core of Sufi ritual. The spiritual teacher, called the sheikh or pir, is one s guide to the Beloved and may be seen to represent the Beloved himself. Amir Khusrau was one of Hazrat Nizamuddin s disciples, and a poet and musician at the royal court in Delhi in the fourteenth century. Khusrau is celebrated for his poems of Sufi devotion. He wrote: Every sect has a faith, a direction to which they turn. I have turned my face towards the crooked cap of my spiritual guide Nizamuddin Auliya. The whole world worships some place or other. Some look for God in Mecca; some go to Kashi (a Hindu place of pilgrimage). Why shouldn t I, Oh wise people, fall at my Beloved s feet? 11 Bulleh Shah was a Sufi whose songs are much loved for their simplicity and straightforward appeal. He was born around 1680 in Uch, Punjab, in Pakistan. The true Sufi, he says, is so intoxicated by love that he sings and dances without regard for rules. 36 USAD Music Resource Guide

37 handclaps along with the strong vocals and compelling rhythm. The goal of a qawwali performance in a Sufi context is to bring the audience to a state of spiritual excitement. Listeners, ideally, are drawn into spiritual states of mind called hal, and they express it by rocking, swaying, and sometimes standing up and circling in a slow ritual dance called raqs. A performance by the Warsi Brothers qawwali group. He who is stricken by Love Sings and dances out of tune. He who wears the garb of Love Gets blessings from above. Soon as he drinks from this cup No questions and no answers remain. He who is stricken by Love Sings and dances out of tune. He who has the Beloved in his heart, He is fulfilled with his Love. No need he has for formality, He just enjoys his ecstasy. He who is stricken by Love Sings and dances out of tune. 12 QAWWALI Certain hereditary musicians, like Amir Khusrau and Bulleh Shah, specialize in the songs of Sufi poets. Others from various backgrounds perform specialized drumming at Sufi shrines. Music performed in a Sufi ritual setting is called sama or listening. In this section you will be introduced to a few such genres. The best-known category of hereditary musician in Islamic contexts in India and Pakistan is qawwali. Qawwals are traditionally employed as singers at Sufi shrines. A qawwali group consists of as many as twelve men: a lead singer, sometimes a second lead singer, a tabla player, a harmonium player, and a chorus of backup singers. A qawwali performance in a shrine context consists of a formal sequence of songs. Beginning with a Quranic recitation, the leader will lead the group through one song after another: Persian verses, Sufi songs, local folk songs, and ghazal-s, a type of rhyming poetry in the Urdu language. The qawwali leader chooses the songs, but looks to the audience for hints as to the desired subject and mood. Qawwali lead singers are known for their strong voices and for the skill with which they vary the melodies and improvise variations. The chorus sings the refrain between each verse, which they accompany with vigorous handclaps. Qawwali music is recognizable by these Listening Example 6: QAWWALI, ALLAH HOO, WARSI BROTHERS: SUFI QAWWALI At the start of this qawwali performance, we hear a tabla, harmonium, and hand clapping. The pace picks up, then the sounds cease, and the lead singer intones the tonic note, with the group joining in. The lead singer sings a phrase introducing the melody and begins with a verse in Urdu: A cry comes from within the body: who is here in this place? The answer comes from the heart: there is nothing but Allah here in this place. The song s theme, Allah hoo, is a zikr, a chant, spoken repeatedly as a Sufi spiritual practice. This refrain, sung here at a stately pace with the backup singers clapping in a regular rhythm of fours, creates a dignified and elevated mood. The lead singer continues with verses from different Urdu poets on the theme of the omnipresence of Allah: Allah hoo Everything begins with you, and everything will surely end with you one day The world s hubbub surrounds us: without you, surely there is no world at all I am dependent in every way You are permanent; tell me, who will go first? The scent of every flower is because of you; your presence is in every breath When you wish, it will be my end Surely, everything exists in god s name (excerpts translated by Allyn Miner) USAD Music Resource Guide

38 In the 1980s, a qawwali singer from Pakistan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, came to the attention of audiences outside his native Punjab. His strong emotional voice and the stirring lyrics of his qawwali songs caught the ears of listeners all over Pakistan and eventually in Europe and the U.S. as well. By the time he passed away in 1997 at age forty-nine, he was a phenomenon, traveling worldwide and performing in concert and studio recordings and film scores. Today his nephew Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is an active concert and studio performer. Qawwali is now a familiar genre on the world music market. SUFI MUSIC Beginning in the 1970s, around the time that the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was becoming more widely known across Pakistan, other Sufi singers came to the attention of the public. Radio and TV in both Pakistan and India were major shapers of public tastes, and government-sponsored TV sought out representatives of folk culture. Through TV, a number of folk and Sufi musicians became national stars in Pakistan. One of them was Abida Parveen (b.1954). In the 1980s, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, she began to be promoted internationally, with tours and recordings. Gifted with a strong and emotion-filled voice, Abida Parveen specializes in solo singing of Sufi poems, usually accompanied by harmonium and tabla. She is the best-known female Sufi singer from the region. [You will see how charismatic a singer Abida Parveen is if you watch this video: youtube.com/watch?v=bep-c-w7ue8.] In recent decades, more and more Sufi styles of shrine singing have become known to a wider public. If you were to go to Lahore, in Punjab, Pakistan, you would see crowds of young urban people gathering to watch the exciting drumming of Pappu Sain at the Shrine of Shah Jamal. He spins as he plays the dhol, a large barrel drum played with sticks, in a style called dhamal. Dhamal drumming now has a fan base that extends far beyond the Sufi shrines where it began. [You can see a sample of Pappu Sain s drumming here: com/watch?v=lkecdlu7bdk.] Interest and enthusiasm for Sufi music genres has continued to grow in India and Pakistan, especially among the urban public. International interest is also surging. As you might have picked up from the previous paragraphs, there is no one genre of Sufi music, or even Sufi music from Pakistan or India. Rather, it is a catchall term for songs composed by Sufi poets, performed in any musical style. The term may have originally applied to qawwali and the singing of Sufi poetry, but it has come to include virtually any music inspired by Sufi thought, sound, or even looks. A passionate vocal style, driving rhythm, often a type of dress resembling Sufi robes, and the circling dance tend to be characteristics of Sufi music. Section II Summary Regional Music Traditions o Music and language may be local, regional, or pan-regional, that is, shared across narrower or wide areas. o Some instruments are widely shared across South Asia. Barrel-shaped drums, clappers, and the harmonium are ubiquitous. String and wind instruments are typically played by specialists. o In rural India, women s and men s groups sing distinctive types of music. o Musicians, male or female, are usefully characterized as non-specialist or specialist, and non-professional or professional. o Hereditary professionals have been important carriers of traditional Indian music. In any one region, caste names describe a great variety of musical specialists. o In Rajasthan, in Northwestern India, Manganiar and Langa are specialist professional groups which have become widely known outside their region. They sing songs suited to specific occasions and celebrations for traditional patrons families. The dholak, Sindhi sarangi, and kamaicha are among the instruments they use. o In Kerala, in Southwest India, drumming in temple and ritual settings is a distinctive tradition. A chenda group layers rhythms and tones to build a piece. o Bhang ra music originated in Punjab and has come to signify Punjabi identity and South Asian youth culture in international venues. Devotional Music o Bhakti is Hindu devotionalism. It is expressed in poems which, when sung, are called bhajans. Bhakti incorporates a wide range of emotional expression. o The sixteenth-century poet Mira is one of the prominent female bhakti figures. Her stories tell how she sacrificed worldly duties for a single-minded loving devotion to Krishna. o The medieval poet Kabir described a deity who was beyond description, in a type of devotionalism known as nirgun bhakti. o Bhajan s are sung in many types of musical styles and instrumentations regional, classical or popular. o Kirtan is a type of Hindu devotional chant. 38 USAD Music Resource Guide

39 o The Baul sect of Bengal uses music to express a philosophy of seeking union with the divine through love. Dotara and tabla are among the instruments they use. o Certain Sufi sects use music to express longing and separation from the divine Beloved. o Q aw wa l i is a genre of music traditionally sung by specialists at Sufi shrines. Its songs come from many poetic sources. Qawwali has become known outside shrine settings and is performed in concert halls all over South Asia and the world. o The term Sufi music is a catch-all term for music derived from or inspired by Sufi poetry. USAD Music Resource Guide

40 SECTION III What Is Classical? The term classical came to be applied to the art music of the courts and temples of the Indian subcontinent when it came to urban centers in the nineteenth century. The term implies a long history, sophisticated techniques, and refined theory. In practical terms, Indian Classical Music is a term for the music based on raga and tala. Hindustani and Carnatic (or Karnatak) are the terms for the classical music of North and South India, respectively, which developed distinctive systems by about the fifteenth century. The sections below will introduce you to the principles shared by both Hindustani and Carnatic music. Theory and Practice A long history of music theory is preserved in written texts in Sanskrit and other languages. The field is called sangita shastra ( music technical works ), and music historians study them to reconstruct the thought and practices of the ancient and medieval periods. The written texts reflect and represent a long-standing oral tradition. Formal rules were transmitted through memorization for many generations. A sixteenth-century scholar would be able to recite many verses on the definition of musical sound, or on the categories of ragas, or the virtues of a good vocalist. Even now, specialists in the shastra can recite appealing verses or definitions from medieval theory. The Natyashastra, compiled before 400 ce, is a compendium of theory on theater, dance, and music. It includes an elaborate theory of musical pitch (svara and shruti) that is still studied today. The Natyashastra, like other technical works, was composed in tightly condensed rhyming verses so that it could be memorized and handed down in oral traditions. Theory texts specifically on music were produced all over North and South India in the centuries that followed, often by court scholars who were also composing texts on philosophy, poetry, architecture, and many other Indian Classical Music arts and sciences. The ninth-century Brihaddesi contains the first extended treatment of raga, beginning with the definition of the word: A special sound, ornamented with specific pitches and syllables, which delights the minds of listeners, is called raga. The fourteenth-century Sangitaratnakara is the premier text of the medieval period. Its seven chapters became the basis for many later texts written in Persian and regional languages. The chapters cover pitch (svara), melody (raga), various techniques (prakiranaka), compositions (prabandha), rhythm (tala), instruments (vadya), and dance (nrtya). Traditional scholars memorize technical verses and call them up as necessary for teaching and in debates. Thus there is interplay between text and oral tradition. In the context of South Asia, theory and text should not be understood as being entirely dependent on written books. Modern Theory In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, musicians came to the growing cities where classical music was promoted as an urbane art. Some students sought out a professional musician and studied in an apprenticeship arrangement. But many more went to one of the schools for music that were founded on Western models. Educators saw the practices of traditional musicians generally as unsystematic and out of touch with modern education. They even accused professionals of not being grounded in the theory of the Sanskrit texts. They set out to create a standardized theory and notation, a project that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the North, two high-caste Hindus from western India were successful in creating curricula that are still used in many schools today. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar ( ) was a charismatic performer who attracted students with his focus on devotional sensibilities. Vish- 40 USAD Music Resource Guide

41 A Hindustani vocal performance. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande ( ) reinterpreted Sanskrit terms and presented classroom-friendly music curricula. nu Narayan Bhatkhande ( ) reinterpreted Sanskrit terms and presented classroom-friendly music curricula. If you were to study music in a classroom in North India, you would likely be taught the notation and theory terms standardized by either of these two men. In South India, the Madras Music Academy, founded in 1928 in present-day Chennai, was active in projects to standardize Carnatic music theory. Terms and concepts from certain Sanskrit works came to be generally accepted among the experts. The work of Purandara Dasa (fifteenth century) was adopted for teaching pedagogy and that of Venkatamakhin (seventeenth century) for raga classification. In both North and South, the newly standardized theories provided a teachable method, but they favored terms from the distant past over terms used by contemporary professionals. Outside the schools, professionals continued to learn within their family lines and to teach students in one-on-one traditional settings. While schools of music have created access for many, longterm apprenticeship with a teacher has continued to be the ideal model for learning music performance. This is called the guru-shishya or ustad-shagird relationship. (You will read more about this later.) What Is a Raga? Ragas are the melodies or, more precisely, the melodic structures of Indian classical music. Every raga is a set of melodic motifs used for playing both composed and improvised material. The concept of raga has excited musicians from all over the world for hundreds of years. So, what exactly is a raga? o Each raga uses specific pitches in a scale. For example, the Hindustani Raga Yaman uses the pitches of the natural or Western major scale but with a sharp 4 th. o Some pitches are resting notes, on which the melody often lingers. The main resting notes of Raga Yaman are the 3 rd and the 7 th. o The pitches of a raga are used in particular phrasings and contours. In Yaman, the phrasings and occur over and over. o Certain pitches and phrasing require delicate slides and microtones. The 7 th in Yaman is often delicately sharpened, and there is a slide between 2 and 3. The student learns all these musical-structural features of a raga in a long process of memorization and supervision by the teacher. Some teachers have students memorize composed pieces containing the raga s phrasings. Other teachers guide the student in moving freely around a raga, correcting any wrong turns. And there is more to a raga than its pitches and phrasings. Just as fundamental to a raga is its expressive quality. Each raga is thought to express particular moods, and some are thought to have curative powers or a relationship with the natural environment. In Hindustani music, each raga is associated with a particular time of day and is only performed at its proper time. Raga Yaman is a raga of the early evening, performed after dark. Some ragas are associated with a season. For example, Raga Megh ( cloud ) is played during the monsoon season and is thought to bring rain if played perfectly. These kinds of USAD Music Resource Guide

42 Table 2: The Hindustani Chromatic Scale Position Swara Short Name Notation 1 Shadja Sa S 2 Komal Rishabh Re R 3 Shuddh Rishabh Re R 4 Komal Gandhar Ga G 5 Shuddh Gandhar Ga G 6 Shuddh Madhyam Ma M 7 Tivra Madhyam Ma M 8 Pancham Pa P 9 Komal Dhaivat Dha D 10 Shuddh Dhaivat Dha D 11 Komal Nishad Ni N 12 Shuddh Nishad Ni N associations are essential to one s experience in listening to a raga. Each listener accumulates feelings and associations, which augment the pleasure of the performance. A raga is performed by a main vocalist or instrumentalist, or sometimes two, accompanied by a small ensemble. The main musician sits in the center. A drum accompanist sits to the musician s right. In Hindustani music, the drum will usually be a tabla, and in Carnatic music a mridangam and perhaps a kanjira. On the left there may be an accompanying melody player, a harmonium or sarangi player in Hindustani music and a violinist in Carnatic music. Behind all the musicians, on one or both sides, will be players of the tambura (or tanpura) drone. The main musician performs a raga in a sequence of composed and improvised sections. The violin, sarangi, or harmonium accompanist softly echoes the main melody, and the drummer keeps the tala rhythmic cycle. You may notice that the harmonium, sarangi, or violin accompanist plays in unison with the main performer in composed sections and drops behind in improvised sections. The tambura drones the tonic note throughout the performance. Though many pitches are heard at the same time, this is not considered harmony, but rather is seen as a melody line with accompaniment. In the sections that follow, you will be introduced to some of the formats in which ragas are performed. But first, let s have an overview of pitch and scale in the Indian classical system. Svara (Pitch) The Indian term for pitch or musical tone is svara, a Sanskrit term for sound. Seven svaras make up the scale, and their names are found in the very earliest texts. The full names denote ancient places, peoples, or a position in the scale: o Shadja, Rishabha, Gandhara, Madhyama, Panchama, Dhaivata, Nishada o They are more often designated by their first syllables. When the pitches are sung using their names, it is called singing svaras (Carnatic) or singing in sargam (Hindustani): Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. o In writing notation in the Roman alphabet, the first letter is used: S R G M P D N. o A sequence of seven svaras makes up a saptaka ( consisting of seven ), which would translate as octave. There are twelve possible pitches in the octave in both the Hindustani and the Carnatic systems, though they 42 USAD Music Resource Guide

43 Tab l e 3: Th e Ca r n at i c c h r o m at i c s c al e, i n c l u d i n g e n h ar mo n ic n o t e s (i.e., n o t e s w i t h m o r e t h a n o n e n a m e) 13 Position Swara Short Name Notation Mnemonic 1 Shadja Sa S sa 2 Shuddha Rishabha Ri R1 ra 3 Chatushruti Rishabha Ri R2 ri 3 Shuddha Gandhara Ga G1 ga 4 Shatshruti Rishabha Ri R3 ru 4 Sadharana Gandhara Ga G2 gi 5 Antara Gandhara Ga G3 gu 6 Shuddha Madhyama Ma M1 ma 7 Prati Madhyama Ma M2 mi 8 Panchama Pa P pa 9 Shuddha Dhaivata Dha D1 dha 10 Chatushruti Dhaivata Dha D2 dhi 10 Shuddha Nishada Ni N1 na 11 Shatshruti Dhaivata Dha D3 dhu 11 Kaisiki Nishada Ni N2 ni 12 Kakali Nishada Ni N3 nu are explained quite differently. Flattened and sharpened notes have different names in the two systems. The twelve steps in an octave correspond roughly to the twelve steps of the Western octave, but tuning is done by ear. The Indian system does not use the Western equally tempered scale. The Indian theory of intervals involves the idea of shruti, or microtone. Shruti and Gamaka (Microtone and Ornament) A svara is conceived of as not just a point, but as the interval between it and the adjacent pitch. The intervals that constitute svaras consist of microtonal divisions called shrutis. Shruti has been a subject of keen interest among musicologists and performers for generations. The term is used in three basic ways, but in all of its senses it connotes core concepts in Indian classical music. SHRUT IN SCALE THEORY The Natyashastra and other theory texts define shruti as the smallest interval that the ear can discern. These texts use shrutis in conjunction with ideas of consonance and dissonance to describe the svara pitches in an octave. 14 In the Natyashastra system, the octave consists of twenty-two shrutis. Each svara has a specific number of shrutis. The following configuration is the basic one Sa - - Re - Ga Ma Pa - - Dha - Ni Sa, Ma, and Pa have four shrutis, Re and Dha have USAD Music Resource Guide

44 Fi g u r e 3: Hin du s ta n i No tat i o n, Bh at k h a n d e St y le 15 three, and Ga and Ni have two. The Natyashastra descriptions of consonance and dissonance coincide generally with ideas in Western music. Svaras at intervals of nine or thirteen shrutis (fifths and fourths) are consonant; at intervals of two (half-steps) are dissonant; and at other intervals are neutral. In a configuration in which a particular svara has a different number of shrutis, the svara name will also change. A Pa which has only three shrutis, for example, is a three-shruti Panchama. It now comes into a consonant relationship with Re, being a nine-shruti interval, that is a fourth. It seems that shrutis had a practical application in the music of the ancient period. Scales were built from different tonic notes and thus had various patterns of consonance. Shruti intervals were used to explain this. The idea of the moveable tonic, however, died out in the medieval period. All raga scales now begin with Sa. Since the medieval period, the idea of twenty-two shrutis and of a certain number of shrutis for each svara has become purely theoretical. Today the shruti theory is taught in the abstract but is not used in practice. Musicians and theorists value it as a sophisticated contribution to the world history of musical scales. For practicing musicians, it is also a reminder that Indian tuning is not based on the Western equally tempered scale. SHRUTI AS NUANCE Musicians and listeners alike often use the term shruti to mean a delicate shading of pitch. When a svara is slightly sharpened or flattened for expressive purposes, a listener might say, listen to that shruti! A raga might require that note to be sung extra flat or sharp, in which case the teacher would say this is how the shruti should be played in this raga. In this usage, shrutis are not counted or measured. The core concept here is that shrutis, minute intervals, are at the heart of expression in a performance, and they give color and life to a raga. SHRUTI AS TONIC AND DRONE The term shruti is often used in Carnatic music to refer to the tuning of the Sa, that is, the note on which the scale begins. Like the Do of the Western solfege system, Sa is set to a pitch suited to the range of the singer s voice. An accompanist might ask the lead vocalist, what shruti 44 USAD Music Resource Guide

45 Fi g u r e 4: Ca r n at i c No tat i o n 16 will you be using tonight? and the vocalist might reply C or the first black key on the harmonium. This will also be the main pitch to which the tambura is tuned. Shruti is a subtle manipulation of a svara, but every raga performance is full of a profusion of slides, turns, and flourishes. These are collectively called gamaka. Sanskrit and other language texts contain lists of named gamakas, but names may or may not be used by presentday performers. In notation, signs are sometimes used, but gamakas cannot be notated precisely. They are applied fluidly and in the context of raga phrasings and are learned orally from a teacher. Gamaka is the shake of a note that brings pleasure to the mind of the listener. Sangitaratnakara Carnatic theory names ten basic gamakas. Hindustani music has no specific number, with traditions varying from teacher to teacher. Gamakas or ornaments such as andolan ( oscillation ), sphurita ( touch ) in Carnatic music, and meend ( slide ) or murki ( knot ) in Hindustani music are heard throughout the performance of a raga. In Hindustani usage, the term gamak came to be the name of one distinctive ornament, a forceful approach to a svara from above. THE USE OF NOTATION Syllabic svara notation has been used from the time of the earliest texts, though not as a score from which to perform. In the twentieth century, Indian music educators debated whether to adopt Western staff notation, but ended up agreeing that the notation of svara syllables is better suited to India s music. India s notation is not intended to convey all the nuances of performed music. Even if notational signs are added to indicate ornaments or techniques, the notation is not meant to be read as a prescription for performance. Rather it is a tool to trigger a student s memory for what has been orally learned or to record the basic outline of a piece. Tala (Rhythmic Cycles) When you go to a performance of Indian classical music, you will see listeners moving their heads in appreciation of the raga melody. You will also see people clapping softly and making other hand gestures as they follow the rhythms of the music. These hand actions are formal marks of tala cycles. The term tala itself means clap. Talas are the rhythmic cycles to which raga performances are set. Tala refers to an overall system of rhythmic cycles as well as to specific named cycles. Below is an introduction to the basics of tala, which are shared by both Carnatic and Hindustani music. o Each tala consists of a specific number of beats, called matra, or measure. Common talas range from six to sixteen matras. o A cycle is called an avartana (or avartan), a rotation, and it is tracked as the tala cycles throughout a performance. The first beat of the tala cycle is of special importance and may often be emphasized. o A tala is heard as groupings of beats, called anga (Carnatic) or vibhag (Hindustani), such as: or USAD Music Resource Guide

46 Fi g u r e 5: Ad i ta l a a n d acco m pa n y i n g hand actions 1 clap 2 little finger 3 ring finger 4 middle finger 5 clap 6 wave 7 clap 8 wave Fi g u r e 6: Ti n ta l w i t h acco m pa n y i n g hand actions 1 clap clap o The groupings are marked by hand actions, which are either emphasized or de-emphasized. So, a tala is heard as groups of beats with specific patterns of emphasis. In Carnatic music, the emphasized hand action is a clap or a slap on the knee. The de-emphasized actions are of two kinds: a wave, which may be a palm-up touch to the knee or to the other hand; and a touch of fingers, one after another, beginning with the pinky, to the knee or to the other palm. Singers, and some of the audience members, will do these actions through much of a performance. Aditala, a popular tala of Carnatic music, has eight matras. Claps are done on 1, 5, and 7, and the other actions are marked in f i g u r e 5. In Hindustani music, there are two types of hand actions: a clap and a silent wave or palm-up touch on the knee with the back of the hand. Tintal, a well-known tala of Hindustani music, has sixteen matras with the hand actions noted in f i g u r e 6. Audiences keep a close eye on the hand of the singer to stay in touch with the tala cycle, but they also listen to the melody and the drumming. The composed melody lines in a raga fit in the tala cycle in a repeating and recognizable way. Astute listeners catch where the main theme begins in the cycle and enjoy hearing how the singer, drummer, or instrumentalist returns to this precise point after each variation. In our discussion of the next listening examples, you will read more details wave clap about how the drummers help the performers and listeners keep track of the tala. Guru-Shishya / Ustad-Shagird: The Traditional Learning Relationship How do singers, instrumentalists, and drummers learn to negotiate the intricacies of raga and tala? Most performance techniques are learned orally from a teacher. The teacher-disciple relationship is at the heart of traditional learning in South Asia. Terms for the master and disciple from the Sanskrit are guru and shishya. In Urdu, from the Persian, the terms are ustad and shagird The teacher-disciple relationship is at the heart of traditional learning in South Asia USAD Music Resource Guide

47 Figure 7: Chauntal cycle hand actions 1 clap 2-3 wave 4-5 clap 6-7 wave 8-9 clap clap 12 - Figure 8: The theka of Chautal 1 dha 2 dha 3 din 4 ta 5 tete 6 dha 7 din 8 ta 9 tete 10 kata 11 gadi 12 gena The sensibilities of these relationships find their way into classroom environments as well. Guru means teacher, and the term has deep resonances. The guru is a teacher, but is also ideally a spiritual guide and a model for the student s life. A student who is accepted as a shishya ( taught ) is initiated with a formal ceremony and becomes a devotee of and an apprentice to the guru. The student eventually becomes a representative of the guru s artistic lineage. The guru is responsible for training the shishya, and the shishya is always humble and ready to serve the guru without question. As mentioned previously, in Urdu, the term for master or teacher is ustad, and the disciple is the shagird. An ustad guides the shagird through a long period of apprenticeship. A disciple holds a reverential attitude toward the teacher that lasts a lifetime. In North India, the term for one s stylistic lineage is gharana, or household. In both Carnatic and Hindustani music, the names of the teachers from whom a musician learned are the first and most prominent credentials in the musician s biography. Hindustani Music Three Examples We now turn to some examples of Hindustani music. Dhrupad Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 7: RAGA YAMAN, CHAUTAL (TWELVE BEATS), the GUNDECHA BROTHERS In l i s t e n i n g e x a m p l e 7, we hear a vocal performance of The Gundecha Brothers, performing at the Baha i Center in Bellevue, Washington. Left to right: Akhilesh Gundecha, Umakant Gundecha, Ramakant Gundecha. Raga Yaman in the genre called dhrupad. The performers are the Gundecha Brothers, and they are accompanied by a tambura drone and a pakhavaj drum. Let s learn about this performance. Yaman is a raga of the early evening. Every raga in the Hindustani system is associated with a time of day from dawn through noon, to sunset, and various stages of the night and each is performed at its appropriate time. Ragas are thought to have other connections with the natural world as well. Some are associated with a season, and some are said to have healing or other powers. Raga Yaman is thought to evoke delicate moods of love. Familiar in name and reputation to even casual lis- USAD Music Resource Guide

48 Figure 9: Pitches of the Raga Bhimpalasi in ascent Sa Ga(komal) Ma Pa Ni(komal) S Figure 10: Pitches of the Raga Bhimpalasi in descent S Ni(komal) Dha P M Ga(komal) Re S teners, it is a great audience favorite. Yaman uses all natural pitches, except for a sharp (tivra) instead of a natural 4 th : Sa Re Ga Ma(tivra) Pa Dha Ni. The 3 rd and 7 th (Ga and Ni) are resting notes, that is, notes on which phrases pause. Typically in ascent, the 1 st and 5 th (Sa and Pa) are passed over. In descent, they are often circled around before being resolved onto. Dhrupad singers were the most prestigious musicians in the pre-modern court centers of North India. The sixteenth-century Mughal Emperor Akbar, celebrated for his patronage of painting, architecture, literature, and music, employed the legendary dhrupad singer Tansen, who is said to have been able to light a fire when he sang Raga Dipak ( dipak means illuminating ). Many generations of dhrupad singers and instrumentalists have traced themselves, by bloodline or training, to Tansen. As this recording begins, we hear the Gundecha Brothers singing in unison. They are singing the first line, the sthai, of the dhrupad composition. It is a descending phrase of Raga Yaman. In the background we can hear a tambura drone. Long sustained notes and a strong voice mark the dhrupad style. Dhrupad is almost exclusively sung by men. At 0:22 the sthai repeats as the pakhavaj drum enters. Prathama sharira gyana First, there is the knowledge of the body The language is Hindi, and the subject of the song is the philosophy of meditation and the origin of sound in the human body as described in Sanskrit texts. The pakhavaj is the premier drum of pre-modern North Indian court music and is the ancestor of the modern tabla. It is a barrel drum held horizontally and played by both hands. The pakhavaj is characterized by its strong ringing sound and deep booming pitches. The job of a pakhavaj player is to complement the melody by alternating tastefully between simple and complex patterns. The Gundecha Brothers repeat the sthai two or three times. It is set to a tala cycle of twelve beats, called Chautal. If you were to see the performance, you would see the singers marking the Chautal cycle with the above hand actions given in f i g u r e 7. In Hindustani drumming, each tala is expressed not only with a fixed set of hand actions, but also with specific drum strokes, called the theka, or support. The drum strokes are spoken as syllables. Indeed, oral training requires that drummers learn to speak every pattern that they learn. The theka of Chautal is provided in f i g u r e 8. Listeners and singers listen to the theka to keep track of the tala cycle during a performance. While the singer is singing basic composed lines, the pakhavaj player may enliven it with improvised patterns; but when the singer improvises, he will play the theka. The song continues with the words: Nada bheda tin sthana primordial sound has three registers At about 2:20 the brothers begin the antara, the second and final line of the pre-composed part of the performance. In the antara, the melody reaches the higher octave. At 3:12 they finish the antara and return to the sthai, and at 3:30 the composition is complete. Each brother will now take turns singing variations on the composed lines. They will always use the pitches and the phrases of Raga Yaman. Improvisation in dhrupad is methodical and system- 48 USAD Music Resource Guide

49 Fi g u r e 11: Ti n ta l w i t h it s t h e k a, c o u n t s a n d hand actions clap 1 dha 2 dhin 3 dhin 4 dha clap 5 dha 6 dhin 7 dhin 8 dha wave 9 dha 10 tin 11 tin 12 ta clap 13 ta 14 dhin 15 dhin 16 dha atic. The first variations are slow and restrained. You can hear the singers beginning to add varying rhythms to the word prathama. They always end their variations just in time to return to the sthai on the first beat of the tala cycle, and they will gradually begin to use double speed and syncopated rhythms for variations. A dhrupad performance of a raga evokes a dignified and refined musical environment, reminding audiences of the great patrons and singers of the past and the long legacy of Hindustani music in the courts. Khyal Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 8: KHYAL, VANI: RAGA BHIMPALASI KHAYAL, VEENA SAHASRABUDDHE In l i s t e n i n g e x a m p l e 8 we hear a performance of Raga Bhimpalasi in the vocal genre called khyal. The performer is a well-known singer, Veena Sahasrabuddhe. Khyal music has many female singers, and in fact women professionals in pre-modern courts were important carriers of khyal and other genres. Khyal is the predominant vocal genre of Hindustani classical music today. The elaborate flourishes and flowing style of the voice that you hear in this recording are characteristic of it. Khyal means imagination, and its quick movements and free-flowing approach to improvisations immediately differentiate it from dhrupad. A full khyal performance consists of a slow-tempo composition and variations, called the bada ( big ) khyal, and a fast composition called the chota ( small ) khyal. This recording is of a chota khyal. Bhimpalasi is a late afternoon raga. The mood might be said to reflect the mellowness of the late afternoon sun. There is a touch of melancholy or yearning perhaps. Veena Sahasrabuddhe is a well-known singer of khyal and bhajan. Bhimpalasi uses the flat (komal) 3 rd and 7 th (Ga and Ni), and the other pitches are natural. In Bhimpalasi, the 2 nd and the 6 th (Re and Dha) must be skipped in the ascent. (See f i g u r e 9.) The 2 nd and 6 th are sung or played in descent, and a soft, gliding touch on them characterizes Bhimpalasi. (See f i g u r e 10.) Resting notes are the 4 th and 5 th (Ma and Pa). Against the background of the tambura drone, Ms. Sahasrabuddhe begins the sthai and is joined by a tabla USAD Music Resource Guide

50 The tabla is a pair of single-headed drums, propped in front of the player, who sits cross-legged and plays with both hands on the horizontal skin surfaces. drum. The lyrics are: Piya pasa le ja re ( Please take me to my beloved ). Khyal lyrics often speak of love, and allude to both human love and bhakti devotion. The melody is instantly recognizable as Bhimpalasi by the way it glides in a descending phrase and resolves onto the Sa. The Sa is also where sam, the first beat of the tala cycle, occurs in this composition. Tabla is the prevalent drum of Hindustani classical music. It is well known all over the world today, recognized for its bell-like tone and expressive intonations. Tabla players are stars, playing lightning-fast solos and brilliant accompaniment. The tabla is a pair of singleheaded drums, propped in front of the player, who sits cross-legged and plays with both hands on the horizontal skin surfaces. The right-hand drum has a ringing tone and is tuned precisely to the tonic Sa. The left-hand drum has a deep resonating sound. The tabla player presses on it with the heel of the hand as he hits the skin with his fingertips to make changes in pitch. Most tabla players are male, though there are a few women professionals in the performing circuits. The tal in this recording is tintal, the most common tala in Hindustani music. It is played in a medium tempo. You can hear how the tabla player alternates between playing the basic theka and making elaborate flourishes in double and quadruple-tempo. Like the pakhavaj, the role of the tabla is to keep the tala cycle but also to ornament and complement the singing. The theka of tintal the set of strokes played on the tabla are as follows: dha dhin dhin dha dha dhin dhin dha dha tin tin ta ta dhin dhin dha f i g u r e 11 shows the tintal with its theka, counts and hand actions. Members of the audience might be quietly clapping and waving in this pattern as they follow the performance. A khyal composition is short, consisting of only a couple of lines sthai and antara but the composition becomes the anchor for a long series of variations. The beginning of the sthai is used as the theme to which variations return. This phrase is called the mukhra, or face, of the khyal. You can hear the mukhra repeated many times, interspersed with short variations, in this recording. At 2:50 Veena begins a longer improvisation in a flowing style called vistar ( expansion ). In vistar, the singer sings long sustained notes and explores the raga with winding, delicate phrases. Around 4:40 Veena ascends to the high octave, where she continues to sing in vistar style. Later parts of a khyal performance will feature fast running improvisations called tans. For audiences in India, khyal represents the highly refined beauty and imaginative qualities of contemporary North Indian classical music. Developed by the great musicians of various gharanas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it thrives today as it continues to be developed by expert male and female singers. Hindustani Instrumental Music In the next recording, we will recognize many aspects of dhrupad and khyal which are used for instrumental performances of a raga in Hindustani music. Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 9: SITAR AND SAROD, RAGA MANJ KHAMMAJ, ALI AKBAR KHAN AND NIKHIL BANERJEE In l i s t e n i n g e x a m p l e 9 we hear two of North India s great instrumentalists, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan ( ) and Pandit Nikhil Banerjee ( ). They are playing Raga Manj Khamaj in a duet on the sarod and the sitar. Ustad is an Urdu term from the Persian for a teacher or master, as you read earlier, and Pandit is a term from the Sanskrit that means scholar or master. These terms are used as honorific titles and are given to senior artists, usually Muslim and Hindu respectively, by 50 USAD Music Resource Guide

51 Ali Akbar Khan was known for his masterful playing of the sarod, a plucked instrument held across the lap and played with a triangular plectrum. general consensus. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan lived in Kolkata and Mumbai, where he became one of the stars of Indian classical music in the twentieth century. He learned with his father, Allauddin Khan, who was also the guru of the internationally known sitar player Ravi Shankar. Ali Akbar Khan made his first trip to the U.S. in 1955 and founded a school in the San Francisco area in He lived there for much of the last forty years of his life. The sarod is a plucked instrument held across the lap and played with a triangular plectrum. Sarod means music in Arabic. The Indian sarod was a modification of the rabab, an instrument of similar shape, which is played in Central Asia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The sarod s wide neck is covered with a shiny chrome metal plate, and it has no frets. The player presses the fingernails of the left hand against the melody strings and can slide along the neck to sound many notes in one stroke. The deep wooden body is covered with a goatskin, giving the sarod a distinctive punchy sound. Nikhil Banerjee was a beloved sitar player of Kolkata. He studied with a series of great masters, including Allauddin Khan and Ali Akbar Khan, and became known for his profound touch and rigorous discipline. The sitar developed out of long-necked fretted instruments that came into India from Central Asia. In India, the neck was widened, and strings were added to produce the ringing sustain so necessary for Indian music. Arched metal frets on the Indian sitar allow the player to pull the melody string to the side, producing as many as five pitches on a single fret. The wooden face is backed by a resonator made of a half-gourd, on which the player rests his or her right forearm. The player strokes with a wire plectrum clamped to the right index finger. Both the sitar and the sarod have resonating strings that vibrate sympathetically, that is, they respond to the vibration created by the main melody string and ring out without being touched by the player. With their vibrant sound and their capability for sustained notes as well as virtuoso speed, the sitar and sarod are admired around the world. At the start of this recording, we hear a distinctive shimmer as Nikhil Banerjee runs his fingernail across his sitar s thirteen sympathetic strings. These strings run under the frets. Immediately, Ali Akbar Khan enters with lively phrases of Raga Manj Khamaj on the sarod. Nikhil Banerjee answers with phrases on the sitar. The sarod has a more muted sound, and the sitar a sharper twang. The players alternate in the free-rhythm section of the raga performance called alap. Alap, conversation, is the first part of a raga performance in the instrumental style. Developed originally by dhrupad musicians, it was later incorporated into other genres. Alap is improvised and played without drum accompaniment. The instrumentalist explores the phrases of a raga without rhythmic restraint. Alap is considered a challenging part of a raga performance, as it requires a thorough knowledge of the raga and precise intonation. A full-length alap may last for a half hour or more. In this recording, Ali Akbar Khan and Nikhil Banerjee exchange alap phrases for about three minutes, moving up and down the range of their instruments. Raga Manj Khamaj uses all natural pitches plus the flat 7 th (komal Ni). The 4 th (Ma) is a resting note, used so prominently as to sound sometimes like the tonic. This evening raga is known for its catchy, sweet phrasings. It was probably derived from folk melodies. At 3:25 the performers begin the gat. The gat is the composed section of an instrumental performance. A gat is short, as is a chota khyal composition. It consists of two lines sthai and antara and is followed by variations. This gat begins with a five-beat mukhra, and the tabla enters on sam (the first beat of the tala cycle). This gat is set to a medium-slow tempo tintal. Its mukhra will always begin on the twelfth beat of the cycle. For the first few cycles of tintal, the tabla player plays an elaborate solo while the instrumentalists continue to repeat the gat. Tabla players draw on a large repertoire of composed and improvised material. Composed pieces for tabla are treasured inheritances from one s teacher, and many have been carried for generations. One of the improvised items in the tabla repertoire is the qaida ( foundation ). A qaida is a pattern with a fixed set of strokes, such as those shown in f i g u r e 12. The player expands on this by multiplying the internal patterns, such as the following: dha dha tira kita dha dha tira kita dha dha tira kita dha dha tun na USAD Music Resource Guide

52 Figure 12: An example of a qaida 1 dha 2 dha 3 tira 4 kita 5 dha 6 dha 7 tun 8 na 9 ta 10 ta 11 tira 12 kita 13 dha 14 dha 15 dhin 16 na Nikhil Banerjee was a beloved sitar player of Kolkata. He became known for his profound touch and rigorous discipline. ta ta tira kita ta ta tira kita dha dha tirakita dha dha dhin na After the tabla player expands the patterns, he creates longer and more elaborate variations in double and quadruple time. Throughout a tabla solo, the underlying tala cycle remains constant. A tabla solo culminates in a tihai, or group of three, a phrase repeated three times with a gap of equal duration between each repetition. A tihai ends precisely at the intended point of the tala cycle. In this recording, the tihai begins at 4:14 and ends at 4:30 on sam. The tabla player returns to the theka, and Ali Akbar Khan begins melodious flowing melodic improvisations called vistar. (We heard vistars in the khyal vocal recording.) Vistars float around and across the beats of the tala, as beautiful combinations of the raga s pitches. After several sets of vistars, the performance will continue with the sitar and sarod players improvising in fast and complex patterns, returning to the gat periodically. The faster rhythmic improvisations in instrumental music, as in khyal, are called tans. Large audiences pack concert halls to hear hours of ghazal singing by such greats as Ghulam Ali of Pakistan (b. 1940). Semi-Classical Genres Thumri and Ghazal We have listened to examples of dhrupad, khyal, and instrumental music. These genres are sometimes referred to as pure classical. If you were to attend many concerts in Mumbai, Delhi, or Kolkata, you would surely hear semi-classical music as well. Semi-classical refers to song styles that use specific light ragas and focus on the poetry of the song. Two important semi-classical genres are thumri and ghazal. Thumri (probably from thumak, the sound of a dancer s ankle bells) are songs in poetic Hindi about love. In pre-modern court environments, elite patrons employed large numbers of female singers and dancers and their male accompanists. The women sang and performed many types of songs for male patrons. Some were specialists in thumri and acted out the lyrics of seductive love with great skill and delicacy, using hand gestures and facial expressions. Some thumri singers were famous and were richly compensated for their alluring skills. Thumri is sung in light ragas and in talas, which can be improvised on more freely than pure classical ragas. A thumri in Raga Pilu or Raga Bhairavi will elicit moans of enjoyment from the audience. Thumris are sung in melodious style with a focus on interpreting the words of the poem. To hear a thumri by a female specialist with roots in 52 USAD Music Resource Guide

53 the world of courtly entertainment, listen to Girija Devi: As she sings this simple line Oh, your eyes, my beloved, filled with love over and over with various beautiful phrasings, listeners savor the nuances of each word and the various moods that they evoke. Ghazal is a type of rhyming poetry composed in a series of couplets. The ghazal form originated in Arabic and Persian, but in South Asia, Urdu became its preeminent language. Ghazals are composed in other languages of North India and Pakistan as well, however, and you can even find ghazals in English. 17 The Urdu language developed as Persian and Arabic intermingled with the colloquial languages of North India, where it developed a rich literature of its own. Urdu is written in the Persian script, called nastaliq. In the twentieth century, Urdu came to represent South Asian Muslim cultural identity. It is the national language of Pakistan. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the ghazal became a celebrated form in Urdu literature. A ghazal couplet consists of two short lines, composed in a specific poetic meter, ending in a rhyme. The same end-rhyme is used in the other couplets in a sequence. Each two-line couplet is called a she r, and each is a complete poem that can stand alone. Ghazal poetry speaks in the male voice about the agony of love. The agony can be separation from the divine Beloved, or about human love, and is often about both. Ghazal poets celebrate the irony that the suffering of a lover is the highest calling in life. They specialize in imaginative and surprising expressions of suffering. Consider the following example: Tumhari saath bhi tanha hun tum na samjhoge Main apne khwab ka sayan hun tum na samjhoge I am alone even with you next to me you won t understand I am the shadow of my own fantasy you won t understand Tumhare pyar men jo mujh se ajnabi thahri Main woh khushi ki tamanna hum tum na samjhoge The distance that I always felt in your love, I desire that you won t understand Ghazal poetry is recited in special mehfil-s (Urdu for gathering ) or is sung as semi-classical music. The sung ghazal is one of the major song types of North India. People without specialized training can sing ghazals, and it is common for a talented young person, man or woman, to entertain friends with ghazal songs. Specialist ghazal singers are great stars in India and Pakistan. Large audiences pack concert halls to hear hours of ghazal singing by such greats as Ghulam Ali of Pakistan (b. 1940) or Pankaj Udhas of Gujarat (b. 1951). Ghazals appeal to audiences who savor the poetic content and think of the refined history that ghazals represent. If you explore YouTube videos of ghazals, you will notice that they are sung in many different styles. A more classical ghazal style will have minimal instrumentation, perhaps a harmonium and a tabla. A raga may be used to set a ghazal melody, but a ghazal singer will often mix ragas or create new melody lines. A pop ghazal will be backed up by a synthesizer or a studio orchestra, and a pop ghazal singer may create new tunes or use ones that others have composed. Carnatic Music Two Examples Carnatic musicians in the twentieth century adopted a system of organizing ragas from a seventeenth-century treatise by the theorist Venkatamakhin. In this system, called the melakarta system, permutations of seven svaras in the twelve-note chromatic octave are arranged systematically and given names and numbers. There are seventy-two of them, and they are called janaka ( parent ) ragas. Other ragas that employ only some of the seven pitches, or use pitches in a non-linear order, are grouped under the parent scale whose pitches they use. They are called janya ( derived ) ragas, and there are an unlimited number of them. Here we will consider a couple examples of Carnatic music one a kriti and the other an example of ragam-tanam-pallavi. Listening Example 10: KRITI, SADHINCHANE, SAINT TYAGARAJ GHANARAGA, PANCHARATNA KRITIS, SANJAY Subrahmanyan & and P. Unni Krishnan In l i s t e n i n g e x a m p l e 10 we hear a performance of Raga Arabhi in the genre called kriti. The performers, Sanjay Subrahmanyan (b. 1968) and P. Unni Krishnan (b. 1964), are current stars of Carnatic vocal music. Arabhi is a janya, or derived, raga, and its parent is Sankarabharanam, which uses notes equivalent to the Western major scale. When singing Arabhi, one must skip over the 3 rd and 7 th (Ga and Ni) while ascending, but include them in descent. Arabhi is said to use relatively few gamaka ornaments and have a cheerful mood. At the beginning of this recording, we hear the sound of the tambura briefly before two male voices enter, singing in unison. The kriti ( creation) form makes up a large part of the Carnatic music repertoire. At a concert of Carnatic music, which typically lasts about three hours, USAD Music Resource Guide

54 Figure 13: The aditala cycle hand actions 1 clap 2 little finger 3 ring finger 4 middle finger 5 clap 6 wave 7 clap 8 wave Acclaimed Carnatic vocalist Sanjay Subrahmanyan performing. you will hear a series of pieces, as many as twelve, sung in different ragas. The largest number of them will be kritis, elaborate compositions that can be sung on their own or interspersed with sequences of improvisations. The bulk of kritis performed today were composed by celebrated musicians of South India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Three composer-musicians who lived between about 1750 and 1850 are known as the Trinity. They are Tyagaraja, Mutthuswami Diksitar, and Syama Sastri. Celebrated as geniuses of raga interpretation, and inspired poets, they are revered as spiritually accomplished figures as well. Most of their lyrics express bhakti devotionalism, but the kriti and other forms in which they set their poetry use the highly specialized techniques of raga and tala and are categorized as classical concert music. There are said to be about 1500 kritis and other composition types composed by the Trinity that are still performed today. Tyagaraja, the composer of the kriti on this recording, lived in the Tamil-language area of South India but composed in the Telugu language. Tyagaraja is said to have shunned the patronage of wealthy elites to live as an ascetic, performing his songs for the common folk of the region. There are estimated to be seven hundred of Tyagaraja s kritis still performed today. Every year, thousands of musicians and avid listeners travel to the small Painting of the great Carnatic music composer Tyagaraja. town of Thiruvaiyaru in Tamil Nadu, where Tyagaraja died, to honor him and sing his compositions. Yearly celebrations are held elsewhere as well. In the U.S., the Cleveland Tyagaraja Festival of 2014 was held for the thirty-seventh year and attracted more than eight thousand visitors. A kriti has three main sections, called pallavi, anupallavi, and charanam. In this recording, we first hear Subrahmanyan and P. Unni Krishnan sing the theme line, called the pallavi ( bud ). Sadinchane O Manasa Oh mind, he achieved his objective The speaker in the poem is a devotee, who is ironi- 54 USAD Music Resource Guide

55 Fi g u r e 14: An e x a m p l e o f a m r i d a n g a m pat t e r n 19 Here is a mridangam pattern that begins with supporting patterns called time flow patterns and ends in a phase repeated three times, called a mora. cally telling himself that though Krisha promised that he would be always be near, he really had other plans. Krishna, he says, was determined to remain distant from his devotee. The singers repeat the line of the pallavi several times, and the melody varies slightly at each repetition. At 1:00 they begin the next line, called the anupallavi ( following the bud ). They sing the first half of the line four times and then the second half once, before returning to the pallavi. Bodinchina SanMargava chana mula He belied his own teachings... Bongu gesi thabattina pattu He spoke opportunistically. 18 A lively mridangam drum accompanies the singers. The tala is Aditala, the most common cycle of Carnatic music, to which you were introduced in the section above on tala. We can imagine the two singers visibly keeping the eight-beat Aditala cycle: The mridangam is the premier drum of Carnatic music. Like many other drums of South Asia, it is a barrel drum, held horizontally across the lap and played with both hands. Each barrel drum that we have encoun- The mridangam is the premier drum of Carnatic music. Like many other drums of South Asia, it is a barrel drum, held horizontally across the lap and played with both hands. USAD Music Resource Guide

56 The kanjira is a small frame drum held in the left hand and played with the right. A small set of metal plates inset in the frame jingles as the player hits the drum s skin head. tered in our study of Indian music is constructed differently and has a unique sound. The dry, slightly buzzy sound of the mridangam is distinctive. The player carefully tunes the right side to the tonic Sa by tapping on the rim with a polished stone. The mridangam is considered the king of drums in Carnatic music. A percussionist may play other drums, but will always have learned the mridangam first. Part of a mridangam player s skill is to create patterns that enhance the flow of the song. The player often knows every nuance of the kriti composition and can echo it precisely with delicate skilled strokes. The other part of the mridangam player s repertoire consists of complex calculated patterns that provide exciting interludes to a song. All the patterns fit precisely inside the tala cycle. In this recording, the mridangam provides a driving complement to the singing throughout. If you listen closely, you will also hear a kanjira. The kanjira is a small frame drum, like a tambourine, held in the left hand and played with the right. A small set of metal plates inset in the frame jingles as the player hits the drum s skin head. Kanjira players are able to produce an amazing variety of sounds. At 1:45 the singers begin the next section, called the charanam. The charanam melody is used for the remaining verses of the kriti poem. Oh Lord of Tirupati! Self-Illuminating! The greatest of great! Dweller in the hearts of good people. This worshipper of yours sings the praise of the king of the human race. 20 Between each verse, the singers intersperse svara in which they sing the notes of the raga pitches. Listen, for example, at 2:24 when you will hear the interlude Pa, Ma Ga Re, Ma Ga Re Re Sa Sa, Sa Dha Dha Pa, Dha Sa Sa Re Ma Pa. Tyagaraja is said to have composed his kritis with a Ravikiran plays the chitravina. perfect balance of lyrics, melody, and rhythm. He captured the emotions of the raga in innovative ways that continue to thrill singers, instrumentalists, and listeners. Listening Example 11: RAGAM TANAM PALLAVI ON CHITRAVINA AND VIOLIN, Chitravina N. RAVIKIRAN l i s t e n i n g e x a m p l e 11 is a performance of Raga Mukhari by Chitravina N. Ravikiran on the chitravina, accompanied by a violin. This performance is not composed, but is an improvised piece called ragam-tanam-pallavi, often shortened to RTP. At the start of this recording, we hear the tambura drone followed by the sound of Ravikiran plucking the melodious sympathetic strings of his chitravina. Ravikiran (b.1967) is a premier player of this instrument. The chitravina has a long fretless wooden neck attached to a round wooden body and a gourd resonator at each end. It sits horizontally in front of the player, who plucks the strings with two fingers of the right hand and slides a wood or horn piece along the strings, like a slide guitar. Ravikiran follows each pluck on the instrument with long elaborate slides. A violin player shadows him, echoing the final parts of his phrases. It is characteristic of improvised sections of music that an accompanying melody player cannot play in unison, but will follow behind the main soloist. The players begin to explore the pitches and ornaments svaras and gamakas of Raga Mukhari. Mukhari is a janya raga, derivative of Raga Kharaharapriya, which has flat 3 rd and 7 th (Ga and Ni) pitches. In Mukhari, one 56 USAD Music Resource Guide

57 must skip the 3 rd in ascent and play a zig-zag phrase when ascending to the Sa. A flat 6 th (Dha) is also added. In this segment, Ravikiran begins around the middle of the scale and descends to the tonic Sa and below. He will gradually ascend up the middle octave to the higher register. Listeners follow this abstract exploration of a raga with great concentration and thrill to the musician s imaginative and varied phrasings. The RTP, like the alap of Hindustani music, is considered challenging and aesthetically satisfying. In a full-length concert, the RTP is usually played around the middle and is considered a high point of the performance. A full RTP will build in tempo and conclude with a composed line called the pallavi, which is set to a tala and is used as a basis for elaborate rhythmic improvisations. A Carnatic concert, with its sequence of elaborately composed and profound kritis and improvised pieces, such as ragam-tanam-pallavi, demonstrates the great legacy of hundreds of years of court and temple music in South India. Section III Summary Principles of Indian Classical Music o Classical Indian music is the art music of urban India and reflects a long history and systematic theory. Classical music is based on the concepts of raga and tala. o Hindustani (North India) and Carnatic music (South India) are the two classical systems of Indian music. o Music theory, called sangita shastra, is found in written texts and is transmitted orally as well. o Modern music theory in Hindustani and Carnatic music was standardized by educators in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for classroom teaching. o R aga s are the melodic structures of Indian classical music. They are defined in terms of scale and pitch and also in terms of expressive quality and other associations. o A raga is performed in the format of a main melody player or singer and accompanists. o A raga performance consists of a sequence of composed and improvised sections. o Sva ra is the term for pitch or musical tone. There are seven svaras in Indian music. The Indian octave has twelve half steps. The twelve tones have different names in the Hindustani and Carnatic systems. o The ancient theory of shruti divided the scale into twenty-two microtonal divisions. Svaras were defined in terms of the number of shrutis that they contained. o Other uses of the term shruti are nuances of pitch and the tuning of the tonic. o Gamaka is the term for ornaments, which are essential to raga performances. o Notation in Indian classical music is a system using the svara syllables. It is not used as a score from which to read, but as a tool to trigger the memory of a learned piece or to outline a piece of music. o Ta l a is the Indian classical system of rhythmic cycles. A cycle is divided into groupings, which are marked by hand actions. o The traditional teacher-student relationship is one of long-term apprenticeship. It is basic to one s musical identity. Guru-shishya are terms from Sanskrit and ustad-shagird are terms from Persian that describe the relationship. Ustad and Pandit are honorific titles for master musician. Hindustani Music Three Examples o Raga Yaman is one of the most well-known ragas of Hindustani music. o D h r u pa d is a genre cultivated in the pre-modern courts of North India. Its legendary sixteenth-century performer was Tansen. The style and instrumentation of dhrupad are specific to it and evoke for listeners earlier eras of music. o The two parts of a classical composition in Hindustani music are the sthai and antara. o The pakhavaj is the predecessor of the modern tabla drum. It maintains the tala cycle with a theka, a fixed sequence of strokes. Chautal is a twelve-beat cycle used commonly in dhrupad. o K h ya l is the predominant vocal genre of Hindustani music today. It is performed in slow and fast composed sections and variations called bada khyal and chota khyal. o Bhimpalasi is an afternoon raga. o A khyal ensemble includes the main singer, tambura drone, tabla drum, and harmonium accompanists. o The composed theme begins with a phrase called the mukhra, to which the performer returns between each other line or variation. Slow fluid variations are called vistar, and fast running rhythmic variations are called tans. o Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was a prominent player of the sarod. Pandit Nikhil Banerjee was a famous player of the sitar. Sitar and sarod are prominent plucked string concert instruments in Hindustani music. USAD Music Resource Guide

58 o R aga s are played in the Hindustani instrumental genre beginning with alap, a free-rhythm noncomposed section. The composed part of an instrumental performance is the gat accompanied by a tabla. o The tabla repertoire includes qaida, which is a theme on which the drummer expands. A tabla solo section culminates in a tihai, a phrase repeated three times. o Semi-classical genres in Hindustani music are thumri and ghazal. Carnatic Music Two Examples o Carnatic raga theory classifies janaka, or parent, and janya, i.e., derivative, ragas. o K r it i is a prominent genre for Carnatic raga performance. o A large repertoire of kritis and other types of Carnatic musical forms were composed by three revered musicians, called the Trinity, who lived between 1750 and o A kriti has three main sections, called pallavi, anupallavi, and charanam. o Mridangam is the main drum played in accompaniment to Carnatic music. The kanjira is another. o Ragam-tanam-pallavi is an improvised raga performance in a Carnatic concert. o A chitravina is a plucked instrument played with a slide. Ravikiran is a prominent chitravina player. 58 USAD Music Resource Guide

59 SECTION IV Renowned sitar player and composer Ravi Shankar composed the soundtrack for the film Pather Panchali, which is counted among the greatest films of all times. Introduction Mainstream films are musicals in India, and film songs dominate popular music. The Hindi-language film music of Bollywood is loved across South Asia and has a following all over the world. Since the 1930s, the styles of Bollywood have profoundly influenced and reflected popular tastes. Film industries thrive in other language regions as well. In 2012 the Film Federation of India reported that it certified feature films in thirty-five different languages. Indian films have been shown in international film festivals since the 1950s, and many have won awards. Pather Panchali, the 1955 Bengali-language film by director Satyajit Ray, is just one of the Indian films counted among the greatest films of all time. The South Indian film industry, with its biggest center in Chennai, produces films in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. The Indian film industry has rapidly adjusted to wider economic, social, and musical contexts over the decades, and Indian film is considered an important expression of popular culture and social history. The sections that follow will outline aspects of film Film and Popular Music music and introduce you to some examples. For an introduction to film dance and to the plots and characters of Indian films, seek out some Hindi, Tamil, or other films. You will likely be intrigued by the catchy music and spectacular productions of Indian cinema. Indian popular music outside of the film-based mainstream consists of a full range of rock and fusion genres. We will offer an overview of Indian rock following our discussion of film music. Bollywood: Hindi Film Music General Characteristics In March 1931, the first Indian sound film, Alam Ara, attracted excited crowds to the Majestic Theatre in Mumbai. The film, whose title translates as Ornament of the World, was a love story of a prince and a gypsy and was full of music and dance. The impact of this film continues to be felt to this day, as mainstream movies in India continue to feature music and dance. The language of Hindi film songs is typically a mix of Hindi and Urdu. The standard urban Hindi of North India is itself a mix, made up of various longstanding Indic vernaculars, with loan words from Sanskrit, Persian, and European sources. Lyricists write in a range of styles, from spoken colloquial to high literary, to ironic or humorous. The poetic vocabulary of Urdu is especially favored, but the language of songs also reflects modern spoken usage. Lyricists are considered contemporary poets in their own right. Feature films usually contain five to seven song sequences, some backed by spectacular choreographed group dances. Indian mainstream films are known for their quality of exuberant spectacle, that is, for their non-realistic or heightened styles of plot line, music, dance, and costume. Scholars point to long traditions of musical theater and storytelling as the sources for these characteristics. For centuries, hereditary performers throughout South Asia have recited and acted out epic stories with long interludes of song and dance. In the early decades of film, a film s actors would USAD Music Resource Guide

60 A poster for the film Alam Ara, from 1931, the first Indian sound film. also be its singers, though the songs were recorded separately in the studio. Since the early 1950s, however, songs have been lip-synced by actors and recorded by playback singers. Playback singers are not seen in the films but are stars well known to the public, attracting thousands of people to stadium-sized concert events. Generally speaking, film songs derive from traditional song genres in that they feature a main solo singer or two, with vocal and instrumental accompaniment. The vocal line may have some of the melisma (a flow of several notes over a single syllable) of traditional music. It will surely have distinctive touches of ornamentation. A film song may use the phrases of a raga, or several ragas, or have melody lines created by the composer. Chords and harmony are used, sometimes in familiar Western progressions, though for the most part film song melodies are not based on the chord-based tonalities of the Western system, but rather on melodic phrases. You will remember that a raga uses specific pitches in phrasings that are distinctive to it. Film songs may or may not use recognizable phrases from ragas, but they center on melody. In general, chords are used in Indian film music to color and fill melody line rather than to act as the structure behind it. 21 Instrumentation in Indian film music is famously eclectic. Early film song ensembles consisted of traditional instruments such as tabla, harmonium, sarangi, The legendary singer and actor K. L. Saigal, who played the title character in the 1936 Hindi film Devdas. and flute. Even now, the distinctive sounds of Indian drums is often pronounced. But from the 1940s to the 1990s, large studio ensembles came to be standard in film music. They included violin sections, clarinets, saxophones, xylophones, keyboards, and all kinds of percussion. Instruments from all over the world are used to create the ambience and messages that the composer wishes to convey. Bollywood Style in 1936 and 1955 K. L. Saigal ( ) was a legendary singer and actor. In the 1936 Hindi film Devdas, he played the title character. In the film clip, Devdas is seated under a tree alone, singing of his beloved. She approaches from behind, and he does not see her until she tickles his ear with a flower. He is embarrassed that she has heard him singing. [To better follow this description, seek out the YouTube link Balam Aaye Baso More Man Mein Kundan Lal Saigal Devdas watch?v=_wdc6qhocyy.] A distinctive staccato melody introduces the song. The ensemble includes the sarod, violins, and a flute. The music director is Timir Baran, a sarod player and wellknown student of Allauddin Khan, Ali Akbar Khan s father. The sound is Western, or perhaps traceable to theatrical style, in its lack of melisma and unison playing. The refrain is accompanied by a tabla in an eight-beat tala cycle called kaharva, well known in semi-classical music. The melody is a version of Ragas Kafi and Pilu. For listeners who know ragas, Kafi immediately evokes the spring season and perhaps the playful festival of Holi that celebrates love. The words were composed by the lyricist and poet 60 USAD Music Resource Guide

61 The playback singer Mukesh helped define the male voice of classic Bollywood song. Kidar Sharma. They are reminiscent of devotional poetry. The lyrics, the visuals, the melody, the instrumentation, all come together in this clip to create a love scene that is contemporary while evoking sweet memories of the past and shades of devotionalism. Come my beloved and dwell in my heart The spring has come, but you are still far Without you, nothing pleases me My heart sighs for you I hear the cuckoo sing in the forest After the 1940s, the Hindi film industry received increased financing from various sources and was transformed into a much larger corporate entity. 22 Producers followed standard blueprints to create hit songs, using stars and formulaic plots that would be sure to appeal to large audiences. The standardized formulas of Indian film are well recognized and enjoyed by film fans. Films are categorized as romance, social movies, action, or comedy. Character types fulfill roles of hero, antagonist, heroine, mother-in-law, jokester, and the like. Movies that bring in various types of plot lines, mixing them all up for mass audience appeal, have come to be called masala ( spice ) films. Social films commented on and critiqued contemporary urban life. Historical and religious films appealed to traditionalist audiences. Romances featured melodrama and fantasy against rich backdrops, where glamorous stars expressed the aspirations of a young India. The 1955 film Shree 420 ( Mr. Cheat ) contained the hit song Mera juta hai jaapaani ( My shoes, they re Japanese ). [If you can access it, watch this YouTube clip of Mera Joota Hai Jaapaani : watch?v=tdqwpwmsuc0.] Let s look at the people who created this song. The playback singer is the star Mukesh ( ) who helped define the male voice of classic Bollywood song. In this film Mukesh sings for the legendary actor Raj Kapoor. This acting star would leave a family legacy in Hindi cinema. He is sometimes called the Charlie Chaplin of Indian cinema for the part he plays in this movie, that of a happy vagabond. The melody was composed by Shankar Jaikishan, a duo known for their immortal film songs of the 1950s and 60s. The lyricist is Shailendra who often worked with Raj Kapoor and Shankar Jaikishan. The movie and the song are a gentle commentary on India in the post- Independence era. Mera juta hai jaapaani My shoes, they re Japanese, these pants are English, on my head is a red Russian hat, nevertheless my heart is Hindustani. I set out on the open road, my chest held high. Where I m going and where I ll stop, only god knows. We forge ahead relentlessly like a river during a hurricane. On my head is a red Russian hat, nevertheless my heart is Hindustani. Up and down, down and up, the waves of life flow. Those who wait on the bank are naïve, asking the way home. To move is the story of life; to stop is the mark of death. On my head is a red Russian hat, nevertheless my heart is Hindustani I will become the prince of those with confused hearts. I will sit on the throne whenever I want to. My familiar face will be a surprise to the world. On my head is a red Russian hat, nevertheless my heart is Hindustani. 23 In the film clip, Raj Kapoor skips along in the countryside with carefree smile. He passes smiling village women and later joins a group of bearded turbaned men on camelback. At the end of the clip, the scene fades to an aerial view of a big city s streets and apartment buildings and to a street crowded with cars, buses, and pedestrians. An ensemble of violins, tablas, and various percussion instruments introduces a cheerful melody line. We hear the prominent rhythmic jingling of a tambourine. Mukesh s voice is mellow and cheerful. The melody is not a raga, but a catchy repeating tune. USAD Music Resource Guide

62 The Hindi film music composers Shankar Jaikishan were a duo known for their immortal film songs of the 1950s and 60s. The ensemble plays interludes between the stanzas. The ensemble phrases evoke a pleasantly exotic atmosphere, while Mukesh s sung lines sound modern or Western. At different times the Indian banjo, a plucked electric instrument played like a slide guitar, is featured. In later interludes, a chorus of female singers adds an additional layer to the orchestrated sounds. Mukesh s melody lines move higher in the register, and snatches of melody remind listeners of folk song. For a few phrases we may hear raga Pilu. This is a wonderful example of how composers created music, text, and visuals out of both familiar and new material. They found a winning formula! Two Bollywood Romance Songs of 1976 and 2004 The Melody Queen of Indian film song, Lata Mangeshkar (b. 1929), is India s single most famous playback singer. When she began to record in the late 1940s, at least one producer was not enamored with her high thin voice. But her distinctive sound, described as innocent and girl-like, soon came to dominate Bollywood female vocal style. She has recorded for more than a thousand Hindi films and for many in other languages. She received the Indian government s highest civilian honor in Her sister, Asha Bhosle, is equally prolific. In 2011, Guinness World Records awarded Asha Bhosle the title for the most studio singles ever recorded, up to 11, Li s t e n i n g Ex a m p l e 12: KABHI KABHI MERE DIL MEIN KHAYAL AATA HAI, LATA MANGESHKAR AND MUKESH The film Kabhi Kabhi ( Sometimes ) of 1976 included a song sung by Lata Mangeshkar. Let s listen to it and find out what made up a classic Bollywood romantic song. [You can see the film clip here on YouTube: Hindi Romantic Song Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayal aata hay In the movie plot, the heroine has a past love, whom her family has not permitted her to marry. The song begins with the hero singing to her when they were together some years before. The playback singer for the opening line is Mukesh, whose smooth, mellow voice, as we know, epitomizes the 62 USAD Music Resource Guide

63 India s most famous playback singer, Lata Mangeshkar, photographed during a recording session early in her career. classic Bollywood male vocal sound. The song continues in Lata s voice. The scene shifts to the present, set in a bridal chamber, where the heroine sits after her wedding. Her new husband caresses her with devotion as she sings to herself with tears in her eyes, thinking of her past love. Sahir Ludhianvi ( ) was the poet and lyricist for this song, and he uses a poetic but colloquial Urdu- Hindi vocabulary that draws on familiar themes of pensive longing. Sometimes, in my heart a feeling emerges... Sometimes, in my heart a feeling emerges That it s like you have been created just for me. Before, you dwelled among the stars somewhere And now, you have been called down to the earth just for me Sometimes, in my heart a feeling emerges That this body, these eyes, are mine to treasure As if the shade beneath these tresses is meant for me And these lips and these arms are mine to treasure Sometimes, in my heart a feeling emerges That it seems like wedding instruments are trumpeting around us. As if it s our wedding night and I m lifting your veil And you are shyly surrendering yourself in my embrace. Sometimes, in my heart a feeling emerges That it s like you will love me forever like this That in my direction, this loving gaze will always look up like this, I know that you are not meant for me, but still, just like this. Sometimes, in my heart a feeling emerges A bansuri flute enters playing a melody. The sound of the flute evokes sweet associations of folk music in the listener. Bongo drums, bells, and rhythmic shakers accompany it. The rhythm is the eight-beat lilting kaharva, a standard tala for light and devotional music. Lata s signature voice is clear and high. Her quick orna- USAD Music Resource Guide

64 ments and slides are distinctive to Indian vocals, but the melody line is clear, and the ornaments are not as profuse as they would be in classical or semi-classical music. The melody is based on Raga Yaman, the well-known raga, which audiences know to be associated with romantic love. The regular repetitions of the melody lines, the orchestrated interludes, and the distinctive voice production, are all marks of the Bollywood sound. An ensemble of keyboards, flute, glockenspiel and bells, Indian drums, and perhaps a bongo drum introduces the voices and accompanies them. A violin section plays short fixed interludes in soft unison. The violin sections are particularly characteristic of Indian film sound. A bansuri flute plays short melismatic snatches over the orchestra. The double-reed shehnai is featured momentarily as it is mentioned in the song. The shehnai and its sound are associated with wedding ceremonies. The composer of the melody, Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi, won three awards for this song in He managed to trigger listeners thoughts of classical or semi-classical romantic themes while at the same time creating a novel and catchy contemporary sound. The Romantic song has continued to be the largest category of Indian film song. Madan Mohan, beloved composer from the classic Bollywood era, with playback singer Lata Mangeshkar. Mai n Ya h a n Ho o n Let s now consider a romantic song composed twenty-eight years after Kabhi Kabhi Mere Dil Mein Khayal Aata Hai. Main Yahan Hoon ( I Am Here ) from the 2004 movie Veer-Zaara has had more than twenty-three and a half million views on YouTube. [You can find this song and the film clip here: Main Yahaan Hoon-Veer Zaara Song Full [HD] [ watch?v=3b47vuvadwo.] The hero is the superstar Shah Rukh Khan (b.1965), who plays Veer. He plays a romantic hero here, but he has done humorous and action roles as well and has a huge fan base. Priety Zinta (b. 1975) is the lead female in the role of Zaara. Priety played in several successful films before this one. Veer-Zaara is a love drama that takes place across the India-Pakistan divide and across social classes. There are special appearances in the film by two great stars of the past, Amitabh Bacchan and Hema Malini. The song s melody was composed by Madan Mohan ( ), a beloved composer from the classic Bollywood era. The melody was retrieved from a family collection and recreated for this film by his son. The singer is Udit Narayan (b. 1955), who has been well known since the late 1980s and has recorded more than 25,000 songs in his career. The lyrics were composed by Javed Akhtar (b.1945), a noted poet and script writer. In the video, the hero appears in a fantasy to the teary heroine who is dressed for her wedding celebration to another. Bells and ethereal synthesized sounds set a dream-like mood. As dancers celebrate the wedding, the heroine appears detached and has only thoughts for her past lover. As the wedding celebrations proceed, he appears visible only to her. The main song begins. They are surrounded by dancers, but she is unhappy and distant, seeing only him. Suddenly she is in her bedroom and he appears to embrace her. Then she is seated on a grand veranda overlooking a lavish Italian garden. She emerges from a huge white mansion and runs down the wide steps to embrace her lover by a fountain. Shots cut to the wedding and then back to him. They embrace in the pouring rain. She runs back inside to her room. She awakens confused it was all a fantasy. The singer s voice is whispery, and the melody is nonmetered. Then, we hear high-pitched violins and a synthesized symphonic melody. The song has a soft tone but a catchy four-beat rhythm perhaps a Latin-sounding rhythm. The melody is simple and repeating. The intervals include a flat 3 rd and flat 7 th, giving it a wistful sound. Guitar sounds seem to reinforce the vaguely Latin mood. Instrumental interludes are quick and rhythmic during the wedding scenes and more restrained during intimate scenes. The voice and melody are soothing throughout. The instrumentation is international, but the sentiments are familiar and dramatic. Luxurious outdoor scenes and orchestral music cut suddenly to softer instrumentation and indoor intimacy. There is a ghazal-like intensity in the Urdu-Hindi lyrics, which portray drama and sadness. What elements of this song can you note that are shared with the 1976 song Kabhi Kabhi? What ele- 64 USAD Music Resource Guide

65 ments differ? You might notice that with the more recent song, the studio orchestra ensemble has been replaced by a wider palette of electronic sounds. However, while the deep echo and sound mix of highs and lows are done with contemporary studio digital technology, many elements of the music are shared. Orchestral interludes featuring different solo instruments alternate with vocals. The Latin-like rhythm and guitar riffs give it an international quality. The soaring violin sounds are those that have been used in Bollywood for decades. The formula for hit songs consists of a complicated and layered mix of familiar and contemporary. Main Yahan Hoon Dearest behold, the distances between us have gone I am here Beyond all borders and obstacles I am here I am the secret you can never hide I am the gesture you can never forget Why are you surprised at these vibrations Because I am the sound of your heart Listen if you can, to the rhythms of your heart I am here Beyond all borders and obstacles I am here I and only I am now in your thoughts I am in all your questions and your answers I am at the center of your dreams I m the light that shines from your eyes You can see me wherever your vision goes I am here Dearest behold, the distances between us have gone I am here Beyond all borders and obstacles I am here 26 Tamil Film and A. R. Rahman Less than a year after the release of Alam Ara in Mumbai in 1931, the first sound film produced by the Tamillanguage industry was shown in Chennai. The industry is centered in Chennai, but films are produced in other centers as well, serving the Tamil-speaking population of India, Sri Lanka, and the diaspora. Tamil films also have a wide following. Some have been dubbed and others produced in collaboration with Hindi and other language films. Like Bollywood, Tamil film style is derived from theater and dance traditions and is generally characterized by high drama and spectacle. Tamil film music fans, like Bollywood fans, categorize films by era and style. [To get a sense of some older sounds, you might browse YouTube for Tamil old songs. To see some new examples, take a look at two recent hit comedy songs: A. R. Rahman is a star composer of Tamil film music and is India s most celebrated film music composer today. Why this Kolavari di from the 2012 movie and Pistah from the 2013 film Neram. com/watch?v=suuypjzzqrw.] A. R. Rahman (b. 1967) is a star composer of Tamil film music and is India s most celebrated film music composer today. Tracks produced in his state-of-the-art recording studio in Chennai have come to define the modern sound of Indian film music, and indeed contemporary Indian music outside of film. Rahman s father was a composer for Malayalam and Tamil films. The young Rahman, born as A. S. Dileep Kumar, worked with various rock and fusion musicians, and produced scores for TV and radio. He is a multiinstrumentalist and has a diploma in music from Trinity College London. Beginning in the early 1990s, his film scores for Tamil films won him many awards, and he has gone on to work in various language films and outside the industry. He is particularly known for his use of Indian classical, regional, and Sufi-inspired music, around which he layers electronic sounds and eclectic world music in a highly sophisticated mix. Listening Example 13: ENNA SOLLA POGIRAI, Performed by Shankar Mahadevan, Music by A.R. RAHMAN, FROM KANDUKONDAIN KANDUKONDAIN Let s consider one of A. R. Rahman s songs. Enna Solla Pogirai from the 2000 film Kandukondain Kandukondain ( I Have Seen It ). Playback singer Shankar Mahadevan won a national award for singing it. Listen to the track, then watch the video if you can, or visualize the actions and scenes as described below [ Enna solla pogirai : USAD Music Resource Guide

66 Lyricist Vairamuthu (b. 1953) is a Tamil poet and a frequent collaborator with A.R. Rahman. watch?v=kl3i65a1ar8.] The video opens inside a car, with the hero singing to the girl. As the song begins, the scene changes. A group of village women are walking on train tracks in a broad desert. The heroine is among them. The hero begins the song, one of a separate group of rural men, who dance a short distance away. The heroine stops to watch the hero who dances close to her. Her father and other women run up from behind and knock the hero unconscious. Suddenly, the boy and girl are alone in the desert. She awakens him with a bucket of water, and they are in the ruins of a desert palace. Pyramids and sphinxes are in the background. Camel riders and a circle of rural drummers make an appearance. The lovers move playfully among the columns and walls of the ruins. They clasp hands, but the girl s family reappears. She breaks away to rejoin them. They drive away in a horse-drawn carriage. Synthesized sounds and bells back Shankar Mahadevan s smooth voice, and he sings a soft unmetered melody. A harmonium-like keyboard enters with quick repetitive runs, perhaps an echo of a moving train. A mid-tempo rural-sounding beat starts. We hear what may be dholaks as well as cymbals and clappers. A fantasy ensues as the song begins. The male voice is full-throated, reminiscent of rural professional style. The melody is intense and sincere, and the melody lines are immediately engaging. During the singing, the instrumental background is minimal. Some instrumental interludes are rich, synthesized orchestral sounds. At certain points we hear the soaring sound of a violin section, so familiar in Indian film music. Other interludes feature a particular instrument. At one point we hear a bansuri bamboo flute, playing in ornate Carnatic style. Percussive melody riffs echo the theme as they usher in each song stanza. At the end of the song, a male chorus softly backs up the main voice. A.R. Rahman has managed to evoke rural music, classical music, old Bollywood, and Western orchestration, and present it all with a contemporary world music feel, while matching it to the film s story line. Lyricist Vairamuthu (b. 1953) is a Tamil poet and a frequent collaborator with A.R. Rahman. He has drawn on poetic and devotional imagery from Sanskrit ( fragrance of sandalwood ), Persian ( Is silence the reply of the eyes to my question of love ), and Tamil ( the world is plunged in darkness ) literature. Enna Solla Pogirai It just takes a moment to say No To actually come to terms with it I need another birth So what are you going to say? Isn t it unfair of the windows to punish the breeze that carries the fragrance of sandalwood? Is silence the reply of the eyes to my question of love? My love, it would just take a moment to express my love But to actually prove it, I need a lifetime. The heart is a mirror Your image fell on it She is the one for you!, said my heart! To tie that image There is no rope available The image is therefore swaying in the glass swing Just utter one word, my girl! Or just wait and kill me! My entire life is hanging by the edges of your eyes Don t drive me away, my life would remain unfulfilled! Even after it has dawned Which is the night that is yet to dawn? Your tresses that carry the fragrance of flowers Even after the world is plunged in darkness Which is the part that is still bright? Your radiant eyes of course! Several great beauties could come together And painstakingly wash your feet My young blossom, why hesitate still? Haven t you yet understood me? Is this life or death? 27 The Bollywood sound has influenced all film music, but regional film songs show some stylistic preferences. Some songs may have distinctive local instrumentation. Vocal ornaments might also be reflective of a region s styles. Plots, character types, language, and costumes may all carry various degrees of inflections that identify 66 USAD Music Resource Guide

67 a region. [For a sample of songs from other regions, here are links to examples from recent Bengali, Gujarati, and Punjabi-language films: Bengali Bela Boye Jae from the movie Buno Haansh (2014) com/watch?v=ufs5igdxjpq ; Gujarati Anhkon Maa Tu from Janmdaataa (2010) watch?v=ezrqzch2gws; and Punjabi Kharku from Back to Basics (2012) com/watch?v=ma1ccxzo7mm.] Indian Popular Music Outside of Film Rock Indian rock bands from the 1960s to the 1990s worked largely outside the popular mainstream, receiving relatively small-scale financing and distribution. Indian bands from those decades followed world rock trends, but created their own identities through topical songs in English or regional languages. Many hard and alternative rock bands stayed away from using traditional Indian instruments, considering their use to be clichéd. 28 More recently, fusion and especially Sufi rock bands have used a mix of rock and traditional instruments. You will read about Sufi rock in the final section below. One successful band in India in the 1980s and 90s was Rock Machine, which was considered to be the face of rock and roll in India during their time. Later renamed Indus Creed, the band released the music video, Pretty Child, which won the best Asian music video award in It has a folk-rock sound, with soft instrumentation. The sound of a tabla is heard in parts of the song. Otherwise, there is no obvious Indian sound. Jazz riffs are used at points. The lyrics, in English, speak with intense emotion to a child living on the street. [See, Indus Creed, Pretty Child : watch?v=biscvwowifq.] Pretty Child Pretty child They re cheering away as you ride through your kingdom of sand lovely child you re a hero today you re a magical mystery man like a bird on the wing you soar through your dreams let your fantasies sweep the skies but you know it s unreal the pain is so clear like the tears in a baby s eyes holy child you fly through the night on your faithful and glorious steed lonely child Members of the Indian rock band Indus Creed. wake up to the light get back to your tatters, your home on the street like a bird on the wing you soar through your dreams let your fantasies sweep the skies but you know it s unreal the pain is so clear like the tears in a baby s eyes tears in a baby s eyes 29 After about 2000, international rock bands began to tour India more frequently, and Indian bands had the opportunity to perform as opening acts in large stadium venues. Parikrama ( circumambulation ) is a successful touring band at this time. Their song But it Rained is about political kidnappings in the state of Kashmir, whose border is disputed between India and Pakistan. [See Parikrama But It Rained : com/watch?v=hnl3vh0-0wo.] Indian Kashmir is the site of violent confrontations. Murders, kidnappings, and police actions against people suspected of supporting separatist causes have been frequent. In the opening, the synthesized orchestration and mountainous setting remind the viewer of Bollywood. This is an ironic reminder that classic Bollywood videos often featured heroes and heroines dancing in the beautiful Kashmir hills, which are now racked by violence. One can hear the occasional sound of a tabla. A violin is heard, and the video shows a band member playing an electric violin. The violin melody is ornate, a brief reference to classical Indian music. But It Rained Wrapped in a polythene tucked away safe in my mind A little goodbye maybe or just a passing smile The clouds are all beside me to see me through all USAD Music Resource Guide

68 The band Parikrama performs live. the good times Maybe he ll come back again, make up for the forsaken time The birds fly away to the southern sky searching for a home A bunch of paper flowers or a little boy left all alone Can somebody hear me, I m screaming from so far away Morning who will calm you now, the evening is eclipsed again Well does life get any better More yesterday than today How I thought the sun would shine tomorrow But it rained... They justified the cause for which Daddy might give up his life It s been so long, so long a time, but still I miss Daddy at night The ache is long gone but the never keeps staring along The waters in the seas are high and all the sand castles have drowned Well does life get any better More yesterday than today How I thought the sun would shine tomorrow But it rained Live rock and other genres have a healthy life in India, if nowhere near the scale and mass distribution of film music. Music clubs in Mumbai and other big cities are venues for jazz, rock, Sufi pop, electronica, indie, metal, and world genres. In a 2012 article for The Guardian, Amit Gurbaxani, who writes for Rolling Stone India, reviewed ten of the best venues for live music in Mumbai. Blue Frog is at the top of the list. A club for live performances and a consulting organization, it helps promote independent bands. Since it opened in 2007, Blue Frog has revolutionized the live music scene in Mumbai. It now has branches in Delhi and Pune. Indeed, almost all of the country s biggest indie and electronica acts frequently perform here, from electro-pop duo Shaai ir + Func and blues rockers Soulmate to electronica duo Midival Punditz. 31 The duo Shaa ir + Func exemplifies the boundarycrossing nature of contemporary rock and alternative music in India. The founder and lead singer, Monica Dogra, was born in Baltimore and graduated from NYU with a degree in music. Now based in Mumbai, she works with guitarist and producer Randolph Correia. The duo has released three albums and has been noted as an important up-and-coming band in India. Listening Example 14: FREEDOM, SHAA IR + FUNC, FROM RE:COVER Listen to Freedom from the 2014 album Re:cover, which is this year s final selected listening example. An electronic and a harmonium-like sound is the backdrop for the duo vocals, which alternate with sung and spoken word and with echoing electronic and syncopated patterns. The music of Shaa ir + Func is characterized by a heavy dose of experimentation within the popular and cutting edge genres of dance/funk/electronic/and rock music. 32 The electronic sounds and rhythms increase in volume and intensity. A sound of tabla-like drums is heard briefly at the end. Otherwise, there are no obvious uses of Indian instrumentation or style. New musicians like this in India are participating in and experimenting with music across borders. Ignorance is out of fashion our weapons are loud; our weapon is sound from Freedom Shaa ir + Func. re:cover Sufi Rock The band Junoon, formed in 1990 and based in Lahore, Pakistan, is credited with pioneering the genre Sufi rock. Founded by singer Salman Ahmad, who returned to Pakistan after living in New York during the 1970s, the band built a reputation through the mid 1990s in Pakistan. It toured more widely in the late 1990s and became known as one of South Asia s most successful rock acts. The band is celebrated for its stance against political corruption and social injustice and for its Sufi-inspired 68 USAD Music Resource Guide

69 Sufi rock singer Salman Ahmad. The duo Shaa ir + Func exemplifies the boundary-crossing nature of contemporary rock and alternative music in India. lyrics. The song Sayonee became a phenomenal hit in [See Sayonee Oh my friend no peace for a moment and there is no solution Oh my friend who will turn the gold coin No jeweler to do it no peace for a moment and there is no solution Oh my friend what is man s worth here today, tomorrow gone no peace for a moment and there is no solution Oh my friend Let s not talk about my mistake you at least are not mad no peace for a moment 33 The 2013 song Naya Pakistan ( A New Pakistan ) by Salman Ahmad is a plea for change in Pakistan. It is generating some discussion, as it is seen as a patriotic song but also as a nod to the Pakistani opposition leader, Imran Khan, who is campaigning for a change in government leadership. [See Inshallah Naya Pakistan : May the voice of justice rise, and the walls of injustice fall; may truth overcome falseness. Raise your hands and pray. God willing, a new Pakistan. May our dream come true, and become the falcon s flight. God willing, a new Pakistan. (transl. Mustafa Menai, personal communication) Sufi rock has become a prominent part of India s urban music scene. A 2012 Times of India article reported that it was becoming more popular than even Bollywood music in Delhi s nightclubs. More Dilliwallahs [Delhi people] are choosing to attend Sufi nights at nightclubs over grooving to hip-hop, house and even Bollywood music. You think of clubbing in the city, and the thumping beats of house, rock and trance music pop up in your head. However, a fun night out with friends isn t synonymous with all that headbanging and grooving to the dhik-chak music anymore. With Sufi music slowly becoming the popular choice among the Delhi partygoers, more and more Sufi music events are being organised at clubs and lounges in the city. Says Sagar Bhatia, lead singer of The Soul band, Aaj-kal Bollywood ka craze nahi hai. [ There s not the craze for Bollywood these days. ] Today Sufi rock music is popular in the nightclubs. There is a sudden demand of listening to good soulful music. It s refreshing to see that various clubs and USAD Music Resource Guide