Music, Instruments & Personalities

Music is built from a very small set of ideas, and once you see them, every raga and every instrument question becomes easier. The ideas are: a sound (nada), a tiny step between sounds (shruti), seven named notes (swaras), a melody-frame made from them (raga) and a rhythm-frame that holds time (tala). Everything else in this chapter, from Hindustani and Carnatic to gharanas, is a way of arranging these five.

There are seven shuddha (natural) notes: Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni. Sa and Pa are fixed (achala); they have no flat or sharp version. Re, Ga, Dha and Ni can be komal (flat), and Ma can be tivra (sharp). So 7 natural + 4 komal + 1 tivra = 12 notes in an octave. In written notation, a dot below a note shows the lower octave (Mandra), a dot above shows the higher octave (Taar), and no dot means the middle octave (Madhya).

In 1909 Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936) arranged the ragas of North India under ten thaats: Bilawal, Khamaj, Kafi, Asavari, Bhairav, Bhairavi, Kalyan, Marwa, Purvi and Todi. A raga belongs to the thaat whose notes it shares: Yaman comes from Kalyan, Bhairav from Bhairav, Jaunpuri from Asavari. Along with Bhatkhande, Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar made a lasting change by giving the music a systematic notation and by opening schools (Paluskar's Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in Lahore, 1901) so that classical music could move out of the courts and be learned by everyone.

Tala is the heartbeat. A tala is a repeating cycle of matras (beats) divided into sections called vibhags. The first beat is the sam, usually the strongest and the point where both singer and drummer meet. A taali is a clap, and a khali (empty) is a wave of the hand. The most famous tala is Teen Taal: 16 matras in four vibhags of four, with claps on matra 1 (sam), 5 and 13 and the khali on matra 9.

The two ancient streams are Marga and Desi. Marga sangita was the classical, ritual music rooted in Vedic tradition, while Desi sangita was the music of regions and people. Over time, Desi music grew into the classical forms we know. The major theory books to link with music are: the Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni, the Sangeet Ratnakara of Sharangadeva (13th century, a foundation for both Hindustani and Carnatic systems), the Sangita Sudhakara of Haripaladeva (14th century, where the terms Hindustani and Carnatic first appear) and the Chaturdandi Prakashika of Venkatamakhin (17th century, the base of the 72 Melakarta system).

Indian classical music has two great streams. Hindustani music flows in North India and Carnatic music in the South. Both start from the same roots: raga, tala and the seven notes, and both cite the Natya Shastra. They separated gradually from the 13th-14th centuries, when the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal courts brought Persian and Central Asian influences into the North, while the South kept its temple-and-court tradition largely unchanged.

Hindustani vocal forms start from the oldest and strictest and become lighter. Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form: grave, devotional, sung to the pakhawaj, with a slow alap before the composition (bandish). King Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior patronised it and Tansen and Swami Haridas made it famous. Khayal (Persian 'imagination') came later and is today's main concert form: it allows more freedom, with ornamental taans; tradition credits Amir Khusro with its beginnings and Sultan Husain Sharqi of Jaunpur and Sadarang with its development. Thumri is a romantic semi-classical form of Radha-Krishna love, with two famous styles, Lucknow (Nawab Wajid Ali Shah) and Banaras. Tappa is the fast, twisting folk-based form that began with the camel-riders of Punjab.

Carnatic forms also go from simple to grand. A beginner learns Gitam (the simplest, with an easy, melodious flow), then Swarajati and Jatiswaram, then Varnam (the training piece of a concert: it shows the raga fully), and then Kriti, the main item of a concert and the most important composition. A recital's lighter end has Padam and Javali (love songs) and the Tillana (a lively rhythmic piece, often the finale). A major concert item is also the Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi, an improvised raga alapana (without tala), followed by a rhythmic tanam and then a pallavi line.

Carnatic music's pillars. Purandara Dasa (1484-1564) of the Haridasa movement in Karnataka is called the Pitamaha (grandfather) of Carnatic music because he fixed the system of teaching: he composed the first lessons (Sarali varisai, Janta varisai, Alankaras) and thousands of devotional Kannada songs known as Devara Nama. Venkatamakhin (17th century, Chaturdandi Prakashika) built the Melakarta system, which later grew into the 72 Melakartas. The Trinity of Carnatic music, all born in Thiruvarur (Tamil Nadu) in the 18th century, are Tyagaraja (Telugu kritis on Rama; the five Pancharatna Kritis), Muthuswami Dikshitar (Sanskrit kritis; the Navavarana) and Syama Sastri (Telugu kritis on Goddess Kamakshi; the Swarajatis). They lifted the kriti to its highest form.

An orchestra of Indian instruments looks confusing until you sort it by how the sound is made. The Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni divided all instruments into four classes (chaturvidha vadya): Tata (strings), Sushira (wind), Avanaddha (skin-covered drums) and Ghana (solid instruments that are struck). The modern Western names for the same four are chordophones, aerophones, membranophones and idiophones. Ask yourself one question about any instrument: 'what vibrates?' A string, a column of air, a stretched skin or the solid body itself.

Every instrument has a name that becomes a household word. If you learn the pair 'instrument + maestro' as one unit, you will answer most such questions in two seconds. The big table below lists the maestros examiners usually ask about. Study it instrument by instrument, and for each instrument keep one headline name: Sitar - Ravi Shankar, Sarod - Amjad Ali Khan, Santoor - Shivkumar Sharma, Bansuri - Hariprasad Chaurasia, Shehnai - Bismillah Khan, Tabla - Zakir Hussain, Mandolin - U. Srinivas.

A gharana (from 'ghar', family or house) is a lineage of musicians, passed from guru to disciple, that has its own style of voice production, elaboration of the raga, use of taan and treatment of the bandish. Gharanas belong mainly to Khayal singing of Hindustani music; the older Dhrupad has 'banis' and families instead. Carnatic music has no gharanas in this sense; it has 'banis' of individual teachers. For exams, you need three things for every gharana: founder, place and a famous singer.

Folk music (Lok Sangeet) is the music of ordinary people. It is not taught in a formal school; it is learnt by listening, and it is tied to occasions (birth, marriage, harvest, festival, death), work (ploughing, grinding grain, rowing boats) and stories (ballads of heroes and gods). Classical music follows raga and tala; folk music follows the mood of the moment and the dialect of the region. Examiners ask one thing again and again: 'this folk form belongs to which state?' So the table below is your main weapon.

Behind every raga and every gharana stands a person, and the exam loves to ask 'who did what'. Keep the people in three groups: the medieval creators (Jayadeva, Amir Khusro, Annamacharya, Purandara Dasa, Tansen), the Carnatic Trinity (Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar, Syama Sastri), and the modern organisers (Bhatkhande and Paluskar), who gave music notation, textbooks and schools. Then add the six musicians who hold the Bharat Ratna.