Indian Classical Music: Hindustani, Carnatic, Ragas and Talas

Indian classical music is one of the oldest unbroken traditions of art music anywhere, and the Art and Culture section of a general awareness paper almost always takes something from it. The questions are never about listening. They ask who wrote a treatise, how many beats a tala carries, which gharana a singer belonged to, and which of the two systems a form belongs to. These notes set the subject out in exactly that shape: the origins, the split into the Hindustani and Carnatic systems, the grammar of swara, raga and tala, the vocal forms, the gharanas, and the composers whose names fill the options.

Where the tradition comes from

The Samaveda is treated as the fountainhead of Indian music. Its verses are drawn largely from the Rigveda, but they were meant to be sung rather than recited, and that singing is called Samagana. The first systematic writing on music survives inside the Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni, a treatise on drama that already describes the seven swaras, the twenty-two shrutis or microtones into which the octave was divided, and the older jati system out of which ragas grew. Matanga's Brihaddeshi is the first text to use the word raga in something close to its present sense. In the thirteenth century Sarangadeva, who served the Yadava court at Devagiri, wrote the Sangeeta Ratnakara, a work in seven chapters and therefore also called Saptadhyayi; it is the last great treatise that both the northern and the southern traditions accept as their own.

Hindustani and Carnatic: the two systems

From about the fourteenth century the music of the north absorbed Persian and Central Asian elements through the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal court, while the south stayed closer to the older devotional and textual tradition. The result is two systems that share one theory and differ in practice.

Swara, raga and tala

The octave holds seven swaras: Shadja, Rishabh, Gandhar, Madhyam, Pancham, Dhaivat and Nishad, shortened to Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni. Shadja and Pancham do not move and are called achal; the other five have altered forms, which gives the twelve notes of the practical octave against the twenty-two shrutis of theory. A raga is not a scale but a melodic personality with rules: it must use at least five swaras, it must contain Sa, and it cannot leave out both Ma and Pa. Each raga has an ascent and a descent, called aroha and avaroha, a most prominent note called the vadi and a second called the samvadi, and is classed as audava, shadava or sampurna according to whether it uses five, six or seven notes. Hindustani ragas are also fixed to a time of day, so Bhairav belongs to the early morning and Darbari Kanada to the late night, while Malhar is sung in the rains and Basant in spring.

Tala is the cycle of beats. A single beat is a matra, a group of beats a vibhag, the whole cycle an avartan, the stressed first beat the sam, a clapped division a tali and a silent one a khali.

Carnatic music counts with seven basic talas, the suladi sapta talas: Dhruva, Matya, Rupaka, Jhampa, Triputa, Ata and Eka. The commonest of all in concert is Adi tala of eight beats, which is the chatusra jati form of Triputa.

The vocal forms

Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form of Hindustani vocal music. It is austere, sung in four sections called sthayi, antara, sanchari and abhog, accompanied by the pakhawaj, and kept alive in modern times chiefly by the Dagar family; Raja Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior is remembered for its patronage. Khayal, from the Persian word for imagination, allows far more ornament and improvisation and has been the dominant form for two centuries; it is sung in a slow bada khayal and a fast chhota khayal. Dhamar is sung to the fourteen-beat dhamar tala and is tied to Holi. Thumri is semi-classical and romantic, with Lucknow and Benares as its centres and Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh as its most famous patron. Tappa is quick and full of short runs and grew out of the songs of the camel drivers of Punjab. Tarana uses rhythmic syllables in place of words. In the Carnatic concert, called a kacheri, a varnam opens the evening, kritis fill the middle, the ragam-tanam-pallavi is the improvisatory peak and a tillana closes.

Gharanas and the names that fill the options

A gharana is a school of music carried down a family or a line of teaching. In khayal, Gwalior is the oldest, and the others examiners ask about are Agra, Kirana, Jaipur-Atrauli, Patiala, Rampur-Sahaswan, Mewati and Indore. Abdul Karim Khan, Bhimsen Joshi and Gangubai Hangal belong to Kirana, Alladiya Khan and Kesarbai Kerkar to Jaipur-Atrauli, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan to Patiala and Pandit Jasraj to Mewati. The tabla has its own gharanas: Delhi, Ajrara, Lucknow, Farrukhabad, Benares and Punjab. Tansen, one of the navratnas of Akbar's court and a disciple of Swami Haridas, is credited with Miyan ki Malhar, Miyan ki Todi and Darbari Kanada, and the Tansen Samaroh is held every year at Gwalior, where he is buried. In the south, Purandara Dasa is called the Pitamaha of Carnatic music for shaping its graded exercises, and the Carnatic Trinity of Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri were all born in the town of Tiruvarur in Tamil Nadu; the Tyagaraja Aradhana at Thiruvaiyaru still draws thousands of singers each year.