vallath@ucbcad.UUCP (05/03/85)
This article is in response to the request for information about tala, or rhythm, in Indian music. Raga or "mode", tala or metre, and bhava or emotion are the three elements in Indian music. As in the case of raga, tala ideas have parallelisms in North Indian (Hindusthani) music and South Indian (Karnatak) music. There are both metred and unmetred kinds of music. The unmetred variety serves to focus atention on the raga, and sometimes in a performance, a rhythm slowly creeps in until a full metre is established. The unmetred "free rhythm" part is called alap or alapana. The length of the metre can be three, six, seven, eight, fourteen etc. beats long. This is frequently subdivided into smaller units, and into main beats and subsidiary beats. The most important beat in N. Indian music is beat 1. All important musical phrases as well as the final composition end on beat 1. In Karnatak music, beat one is still an ending beat, but more for important sections and the whole piece than for all important phrases. What is important is the beginning point of important phrases and sections, or eduppu, which may fall anywhere within the tala cycle, but remains the same in a piece when the metre remains the same. (The metre may, in certain kinds of compositions, vary from section to section of a piece.) During improvisation, all important in Indian music, the musician must keep track of the metre and all the important points in the rhythmic cycle and use them appropriately. Techniques for increasing the speed of a piece vary form North to South. While a gradual increase in tempo is very common in the North, changes in speed are achieved in the South by doubling, trebling, halving etc.; i.e. by changing the rhythmic density by integral ratios. The musician can keep track of where he is in the tala cycle with the help of the drum which is always present in metred sections. The type of drum used varies depending on the instrument or type of music it accompanies. Drumming is a highly complex art, and drummers beat out bewildering patterns on their drums; they use the different areas of the drum to get sounds of different timbres, though the drum(s) is (are) tuned to the "tonic" or highly consonant intervals thereof. There are drumming compositions frequently based on taking a basic kind of pattern within a certain metre and modifying it by degrees until the final pattern is totally different from the beginning. Mrdangam players of South India are very skilled at this, and usually have a section all to themselves in music concerts. If you know of classical types of Indian music composed with western-type harmony ideas, I would be grateful if you would direct me to recordings. Non-Ravi-Shankar stuff would be interesting, since his name is too often heard in this context. Vallath Nandakumar, Dept. of EE, UC Berkeley. ucbesvax.vallath@berkeley.arpa, ucbvax!ucbesvax!vallath
ravi@crystal.UUCP (05/05/85)
The two articles on the notions of "raga" and "tala" give the general idea
behind these crucial notions in Indian classical music. For those who are
interested, here are some more details:
Firstly, the scale in Indian music is both untempered and microtonic: Properly,
there are 22 "shrutis" or intervals (as opposed to the 12 in the western scale).
Such fine intervals are not present in the system simply for pedantic reasons:
There are ragas played/sung commonly in which these shruti distinctions are
very important. However, these shrutis are not always given distinct names;
they may roughly (and somewhat reasonably) be viewed as variations on a named
note in the scale.
The notion of "raga" corresponds only very loosely to the notion of "mode" as
used by western musicologists. There are eastern musics (that of Iran, for
instance) that are built primarily around modal ideas, and it is tempting to
view ragas in the same terms. However, that turns out to be both
inappropriate and incorrect. There are ragas, for instance, with the same
notes, but the style of presentation (interpretation) makes all the
difference. Melodic phrasing, accent/intonation, manner of ascent/descent in
the scale, patterns of graces/embellishments, and even the manner of transition
into certain notes from others define the raga. (Strange as it may seem, all
these are very important.)
Ragas are classified and grouped according to the notes that constitute them.
The South-Indian system of classification (far more advanced than the one in
the North), recognizes 72 classes ("melakartas"). Theoretically, the number of
ragas is countably infinite, but in practice, about 300 or so are recognized.
Estimates are that one actually encounters about 100 or so; a good musician
may be able to do some justice to about five or six dozen, and have mastered
about two dozen.
A raga creates a certain ambience; it is the experience (or aesthesis, to be
pedantic) of this ambience that may crudely called "rasa". It is the purpose
of the musician to maintain this ambience and lead the listener through the
various aspects of the rasa he is trying to elaborate, and the musician's skill
and the effectiveness of his performance is determined entirely by how well
this goal is acheived. This is the reason why rapport with the audience
is so important in Indian classical music, and why so much of it is improvised.
It is also the main reason why the music sounds needlessly repetitious to the
casual western listener: Repetition serves to establish the principal mood
in the minds of the audience (or re-establish it after a variation on it);
western audiences are not at all familiar or at ease with this technique.
A western musician may shift to a different key (variation/create tension);
he then returns to the original key (repetition). The Indian musician
strives to do the same with "bhava" ("bhava" is roughly the reaction in
emotional terms to the "rasa"). This may involve repeating melodic phrases
or certain kinds of embellishments.
"Tala" is the rhythmic component of Indian music. The idea of rhythm
in western music is a rather simple one (caveat: I am not a musicologist,
so all this is to be taken E&OE -- Errors & Omissions Excepted): The rhythm
consists of sections (bars) or groupings repeated through the piece of music.
In Indian music, there are higher-level groupings of these elementary groups.
For instance, one 10-beat tala may be grouped as (2-3)-(2-3) and another as
2-2-2-2-2: These would be distinct talas. What is more, the stress-values
of the beats within a group are not equal. Two talas with the same groupings
but different stress-values would be different.
There are a large variety of talas: There are literally hundreds of them
(although most musicians and audiences can generally cope with only about
a couple of dozen or so of them). There are talas with eight-and-a-half beats
or thirteen-and-a-half beats per cycle, for instance. North-Indian classical
music generally recognizes 108 different talas (although, of course, one can
invent and play any number of them). Master musicians will occassionally
play compositions in a complicated tala just for variety. Thirty five talas
are generally recognized in South-Indian classical music.
As was also pointed out in the earlier articles, it is possible to play a
percussion solo and develop a tala just as a singer may develop a raga.
(In Indian music, "percussion" generally refers to drums.) Just as with the
"raga" notion, there is also much theory and tradition behind the tala concept.
Indian drums are capable of a wide variety of tones; these tones are
generally given names: It is therefore possible to transcribe compositions for
various percussion instruments just like it is possible to transcribe music.
Percussion solos generally begin by establishing the basic character of the
tala being played and then playing compositions and variations on the basic
cycle. One may, for instance, introduce a composition (that fits the tala)
and then proceed to play variations using the phrases and sounds that
consitute the composition. This is analogous to what one generally does with
a musical composition. Here is another simple example: If one is playing a
16-beat rhythm (a very common one), one may create a rhythmic composition of
21 beats (that has the sub-structure, say, 6-5-5-5), and then repeat this
composition three times with a beat skipped before each repetition (this
creates emphasis). This would span 3 x 21 + 2 (skipped) = 65 beats, and
since the 65th beat is the start of the 5th cycle of the tala (16 x 4 = 64),
one is back to the proper place in the cycle.
One very interesting aspect of Indian drums is that they are true musical
instruments (unlike their western counterparts). That is to say, their
overtones are perfect harmonics. (While kettledrums are generally regarded
as producing harmonic overtones, it is only the dominant overtones that are
harmonic because of the effects of membrane stiffness and air-loading.)
The reason why the Indian drums are different is that their membrane
characteristics are altered by loading them with a black coating.
(For those who are more technical minded: The reason that drums do not
generally produce harmonic overtones is that the solution of the wave-equation
in two dimensions for a circular membrane may be expressed in terms of Bessel
fuctions of the first kind. The zeroes of this function are not regularly
spaced on the x-axis, and hence the membrane's vibration does not give rise to
harmonic overtones. The black loading on the Indian drums causes the membrane
density to vary with the radius and hence changes the solution of the
wave-equation. Work on this was first done by C. V. Raman: A report appears
in "Nature", around 1932 or so.)med@astrovax.UUCP (Mark Dickinson) (05/06/85)
Again, thank you for the informative discussion. Could you be persuaded to discuss the third element, "bhava"? Also, could you perhaps recommend any texts that might be available in this country from which one might learn more about formal structure in Indian music. Finally, a specific question about tala. What is meant when it is said that a piece is based on a tala cycle of a non-integral number of beats, e.g. 4 1/2 ? Would this be the same as a nine beat cycle with the basic rhythmic unit half as long (i.e. 4.5/4 time versus 9/8 time)? Thanks again, Mark Dickinson