04. Listening to Hindustani music - and enjoying it!

So you are into the music: you can recognise a few ragas, a few performers, a few instruments, and are ready to persist with it. You need to keep listening: over the years (!), it will gradually become more clear and less mystifying.

If you are beyond the stage of  trying to locate ragas in film songs, you will probably be able to take longer performances of raga music for its own sake. But I suspect that one cannot really do much of that type of listening without bringing in the left brain at some point. I feel this is because all raga music will end up sounding the same unless one makes the effort to understand the framework within which the performer is doing his thing. The left brain analyses: raga, tala (rhythm or beat) are the two basics. The right brain experiences the whole, but one’s enjoyment is doubled when it is informed. If one only uses the right brain, then probably one will be satisfied with semi-classical genres; buy some of the recent issues of music for relaxation or meditation; listen to them till they wear out, buy a couple more. If one develops curiosity about the music, however, then one can go on to building up a collection of recorded music on a sustained basis: and they never wear out!

A Hindustani performance starts in a grandly dignified, very edifying manner. The raga maybe be presented briefly in a few phrases, without percussion (drum) accompaniment, and then the compositions started in slow tempo (vilambit laya), followed by another composition in a faster tempo (drut laya). In full-blown performances, however, it is normal for the initial unfolding of the raga (without rhythm accompaniment) to be a protracted affair: the alap. My Karnatik friends would like to call this a vilap (lamentation), since it is often quite sombre. Many minutes may be spent on just a couple of notes around the base sa, caressing the note and establishing its divine presence. Then a second note is added with reluctance, almost, and further phrases developed within these 3-4 notes. After this, the tempo may pick up, with the audience letting out a collective sigh of voluptious indulgence, and the scale is extended above and below in sequence, and the full range of the raga in 2 or more octaves is expounded, in faster and yet faster tempos, culminating in a brilliant flurry of fast sargam or solfege passages. In the course of this exposition, different tempos and rhythmic themes are explored, although the percussion accompaniment has not yet been added (the table player may, however, add a few rhythmic taps on the edge of his instrument when the jiving just gets too jolly!) . These faster and more rhythmic stages are called the jod (different groupings into phrases with the main notes), and the jhala (groups of main note followed by rapidly repeated drone notes), mainly in reference to instrumental music, however.

After this initial exposition the cycle starts again, with the accompaniment (usually tabla, a twin kettle drum, or the more deep-voiced side drum pakhawaj used in dhrupad  to emphasise the solemnity of the style). The listener now has a second performer to appreciate, and the tabla often is given time to show off a little in the beginning itself. There is a parallelism between the unaccompanied alap development and the accompanied bandish (in the case of instrumental music, gat) development. The more proficient the performer, the more variations he can expound.

All these are part of what is known as khayal singing (khayal gayaki), reflecting the prominence given to improvisation and development of the theme by the performer (the Persian or Hindustani word khayal signifies “thought”, “imagination”). The older, traditional Hindu genres were in general more “fixed” in terms of composition, iterations, and variations, characters that are found to this day in the dhrupad genre (or dhruvapada, literally fixed metre or verse). The less constrained khayal style developed in the courts of the Mughal emperors and their tributaries during the 16^th century. Some scholars have, however, held that the innovations were already present in the Hindu music, and need not be ascribed to influences from outside the tradition, although the whole cause of classical music (including dhrupad) was undoubtedly advanced by court patronage.

Other styles of vocal music, generally less formalised and less heavy, are known as thumri (associated with dancing), ghazal (poetry expounded in singing), and various folk forms. However, one has never heard of a ghazal being sung in a khayal based performance, although a thumri, a hori (song accompanying the revels of Holi, the spring festival)or a dhun (an “air”) may frequently have a place as a filler or a postscript in a classical performance. The serious listener may not like to divert his attention with these “lesser” forms, but to the average listener they may give some relief, being more lively and dealing with better-understandable emotions in comparison with the austere dedication to pure musical sound in the more rigorous classical genre.

Instrumental music may be easier to get pleasure from, perhaps because the distractions of indistinct words in a strange language are absent. The sitar has been the king of instruments in Hindustani music, with the sarod (a fretless instrument, the strings stopped with the tips of the fingers - or the edges of the nails, ouch!) a close second. The traditional veena or been has been displaced in the North and is now a speciality instrument, although the South Indian veena is the reigning instrument in Karnatic music. The bamboo flute (bansuri) and the santoor (a Kashmiri dulcimer) have also become very popular, for the magical and soothing quality of their sound (good for sleeping off to!). The western violin has also been taken up of late in Hindustani (it became a regular instrument in the Karnatik world earlier), perhaps to the detriment of the traditional  esraj and sarangi, which have a dirge-like sound exploited to the fullest extent by our government broadcasting media during times of national mourning! The western guitar has also been adapted and developed to our music, giving a vibrant, lively sound like a sitar.

It is often true to say that many of these instruments have become identified with individual performances who have developed distinct styles and even modified and developed the instruments themselves. Once again, we need to recognise this as a living, changing genre, not set in stone by some savant in the hoary past. In fact, as Bhatkande has written, the existing books on music that have come down to us from past centuries are more or less unintelligible to us, because the system has moved so far in practice. For example, although some of the raga names may sound familiar, it is difficult to say what notes they used. Even in the contemporary world, there are many disagreements (and sometimes heated arguments!) on questions of ragas, notes allowed or prohibited, and so on. All this may drive the taxonomist to distraction, but they are the delight of the dilettante and may give opportunities to surprise others by one’s erudition (even if one cannot perform continuously for five minutes!).

03. More about Hindustani ragas and melodic scales

One has to be aware that Indian music generally discourages (if not completely prohibiting) transition from one scale to another in a performance; that would usually amount to changing the raga. As our old masters (ustads) say, “if you lose the beat, you lose a breath (literally, a hair); if you lose the raga, you lose your life”!  But there are experiments with what is known as raga-mala, or a chain of ragas, where the singer adroitly moves into other ragas and comes back to the main raga without missing a beat or making the jointing unpleasant.

The base raga is one that uses a sub-set, usually 7, of the standard notes, but innovation is allowed by convention; these ragas are often termed mixed, (mishra) ragas, as opposed to their pure, shuddha, parent of the same name. Another sub-genre or specialisation in Hindustani music is murchhana, scale-transposition. Here the singer shifts his “tonic” or base note, sa, from note to note of his base raga, thereby generating successively different ragas. He has to also change the names of the notes when he sings his sargam, solfege, giving the name sa to each base note in turn. Pandit Jasraj has even developed this into a performance  genre for two voices, called Jasrangi jugalbandhi, where each sings a different raga, but both use the same notes, by the mechanism of using different notes as their basic sa.  These are the beginnings of the use of harmonisation in Indian classical music. But it would still be true to say that Indian music is ‘monophonic’ (for one main voice) and unimodal (sticking to one scale, i.e. raga), and does not really use harmony of many voices or key-shifts to produce effects. Perhaps this is what makes it sound repetitive and monotonous (literally – a tonal system is like a raga) to the Western ear. A basic shift in approach is required when listening to such a different system of music.

Having started off recognising a few ragas or melodic themes in this fashion, one can then listen more carefully to performances by classical singers to catch the names of the notes – the sargam (from the names of the notes, sa re ga ma pa dha ni SA). All would have been well if only our forebears had given a unique name to each note; but with the usual perverseness of the scholarly, they have ensured an amount of confusion by giving the same name to more than one note. The octave consists of the notes sa re ga ma pa dha ni SA; like do re mi fa so la ti DO. If one keeps the first sa and the middle pa fixed, there is a choice of two re, flat (komal) and the ‘normal’ (shuddha); two ga, komal and shuddha; two ma, the normal (shuddha) and the higher or sharp (tivra); two dha, komal and shuddha; and two ni, komal and shuddha. This makes for a total of 12 notes (swara) in an octave, excluding the higher “tonic”, SA. 

Our ancient musicologists, however, maintained that there were at least 22 clearly discernible notes, which we call shruti, “that which is heard”, as against swara, that which is sounded or used in practice. It is a moot point whether any one can actually work with more than 12 notes and still remain musical. It is maintained that in some cases the same note (say, a flat re) has a distinctly different frequency or pitch in different ragas. Perhaps one effect is of the influence of the neighbouring notes in a sequence. But whether one can actually distinguish and use two such closely placed shruti or “microtones” is uncertain: Kishori Amonkar, an outstanding and erudite vocalist of the Jaipur-Atrauli school or gharana, is credited with this ability because of her deep study and contemplation of the notes in the context of different ragas. Bhatkande, writing in the 1930’s, has his own doubts whether such traditions reflect either past practice or present reality. This is the case with many other traditions in Indian music, like the belief that a great singer can produce fire by singing raga Deepak, or rain by singing raga Megh (one has to be forearmed with the latter to douse any conflagration started by the former!). Myths and traditions reflect a theme or a sentiment, rather than a scientific or objective fact.

The consequence of this for us is that we have to distinguish the flat notes from the sharp ones of the same name. One could call the higher note of each pair tivra, ‘sharp’, as in Western terminology, and the lower komal, equivalent to ‘flat’; it is a matter of convention that one of each pair is considered the normal, literally ‘pure’, shuddha. One point to be made here is that the names of the notes are not applied in an identical manner in the Karnatik system, and one has to work out the equivalents (this holds true for ragas as well).

While it is broadly correct to say that the Hindustani system avoids sequences with closely spaced notes (called ‘chromatism’ in Western music), it is not a rule. Thus there are ragas which use both the flat (normal) and the sharp ma or both the ni, for instance. There are also ragas which use most of the notes in the octave, though not in a straight up-and-down sequence, thereby avoiding the taint of chromatism. Often one of the pair of notes is touched very occasionally or in passing, giving a different air to a raga; it may even be a variant of the shuddha, ‘pure’, raga, and be denoted by the prefix mishra, ‘mixed’, or a descriptive compound name may be in vogue. Bhatkande has written somewhere that he suspects many such variants have come about because a singer made a mistake in a concert, and had to cover it up as a creative sally! Even an ustad can make mistakes!

This is a good place to explore the distinction between a melodic theme, raga, and a melodic scale. While it is true that a raga is based on a melodic scale, the realisation of that scale may be done in many ways. A straight up-and-down movement becomes quite monotonous: in fact all ragas end up sounding the same, as can be seen in certain styles of singing which rely too heavily on the scale, on the notes themselves, as it were (I will not venture an example of a singer in this style!). There are, however, other traditions and rules which emphasise certain non-linear sequences and sudden “sallies” and variations, which serve to generate different ragas from the same notes. This is especially associated with what is known as ustadi singing: traditions based on innovative prodigies (ustad’s) of the past, who have given their names to new ragas and styles.

The musical scale itself may be approximated by the term thaat  or “base”. Bhatkande has put all the 250 or more Hindustani ragas under just 10 such thaat or melodic scales: but the Karnatik tradition has settled on an older system of 72 parent scales which, according to one Western writer, reflects the Oriental’s love of numerology and esoterism! If one uses all the combinations of 7,6,and 5 notes out of 12 swaras, of course, the total number of possible melodic scales will run into the tens of thousands; only a tiny proportion of them have been developed into working ragas, but experimentation is going on. This is to emphasise that Indian classical music is a living, evolving, stream, and not a fixed, ossified, relic.