As India is vast and varied with many languages, regions, native traditions and outside influences, there are many shades to Indian music. There are classical and folk modes in every region from Kashmir in the north to Rameswaram in the south. Indians, be they of any religion, love to dress up, dance, act and sing. The cowherds, farmers and tribal folk have a base of simple folk songs and dances for any and every occasion.
Luckily, ‘conservative’ people, as the word itself indicates, have conserved our arts for posterity. Art as taught by the gurus to their disciples is passed on in the same personal mode of transmission as the oral tradition of the Vedas.
Here, in the sphere of music, traditionalists are to be thanked for fiercely preserving mores, history and compositions. It is the middle-class that gives music and vernacular language education to its progeny.
We have to thank the ancient kings, be it Akbar or Shah Jahan or Raja Raja Chola, or much later, the Mysore Maharaja, for consistently appointing court poets, musicians, artistes and dancers, and paying them handsomely.
A fallout was the exploitation of artistic women (devadasis) by the kings, noblemen and zamindars. The famed kothis (residential palaces) and dancing and singing courtesans of Delhi and Lucknow were legendary. They were the repositories of the classical arts, and sadly, the concubines of rich men.
They became the nautch girls unabashedly adored by the British rulers. In the Tanjore temple, one also finds 108 karanas or intricate dance poses carved in symmetry, setting the theory of dance forever in granite. Kings collected the cream of architects, artisans and pundits and created monuments in stone and bronze and palm- leaf manuscripts for posterity. King Serfoji of Tanjore set up the vast Saraswathi Mahal, a library of ancient manuscripts.
In ancient India, Akbar and his court singer Tansen disguised themselves to listen to Meerabai’s Krishna bhajans. Sufi saints in the dargahs (mosques), seamlessly included music and whirling dances in their worship. Persian instruments like the tambour morphed into the Indian tambura. India was and is truly a mosaic of amalgamated ideas from far-flung lands and conquerors.
Part of temple ritual: All over India, classical music and dance were part of temple ritual. While in most temples, sadir (Bharatanatyam) dancers performed their ritual dances six times a day, a temple priest Jayadev, composed the Gita Govindam in Sanskrit inspired by Lord Jagannath, the presiding deity of Puri. He also married the temple dancer Padmavathi and their joint artistic worship is the stuff of legend. The ashtapadis of Jayadev percolated south to Guruvayur as part of temple music and to the bhajanai sampradaya (male devotee’s choirs) of Tanjore. So also the abhangs of Tukaram and Gnandev from Maharashtra. Amazingly, music, dance, textiles, jewellery and songs criss-crossed the country, even during times when people had to walk or go on horseback from place to place. While armies of different kings were intent on destruction and acquisition, the subjects revelled in cross- country cultural exchanges. Even jewelers and architects exchanged ideas when armies and their entourages travelled far and wide.
Carnatic versus Hindustani music: In north and south music, we have common ragas and talas. The old style of dhrupad can be compared to our three-piece ragam thanam and pallavi, the khayal or main piece — to our slow-paced kritis, the thumris (romantic songs) to our padams and javalis (sringara songs used mainly in dance) and the tarana or lively rhythmic piece has our tillana as its counterpart.
The main difference is the abundance of songs here in the south — in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Sanskrit. In Hindustani, we have bandish (words) which are brief in content. In Carnatic, there is alaap or expansion of ragas without rhythm or tala, while they do raag expansion with tabla accompaniment; here the drum (mridangam) is loud; there the tabla sings along softly; here we have adapted the Western violin as a staple for all concerts; there they have the harmonium and the sarangi. Here, we make do with the electronic tambura; there they have two Miraj tamburas for every concert. In the gamakas or oscillations, we begin from the lower, whereas their gamaks traverse from the higher to the lower notes. Hindustani uses more pure, plain notes, Carnatic revels in microtonic curves.
Varied compositions and swara-singing with complex maths is Carnatic music. Simple words, less swaras and more taans or fast passages in three octaves are the hallmark of Hindustani.
As for voice production, our system advocates a full throated sound from the nabhi or lower abdomen. In Hindustani, lower notes are slow and heavy, while higher notes are tapered in volume and modulation. In Carnatic, loudness is essential and a virtue. In Hindustani, there are passages like thunder and sometimes, like a whispering cool spray from a river.
(The writer is a musician, guru and a writer)
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