Carnatic Music

More popularly known as “kesari” is a janya raga of 28th mela harikamboji.

The raga is portrayed by a graceful vakra sanchara scale as below:

S M1 G3 M1 R2 G3 M1 P D2 P S
S N2 D2 P M1 G3 R2 S

As is seen from Aarohana-avarohana, it is a vakra shadava sampoorna raga, with “ni” varjya in the aarohana.
It is a rare raga with only one known composition “Nannu kanna talli” brought to prominence by Saint Thygaraja.The deity receiving musical worship in this composition is Goddess Dharmambika -Parvathi at Thiruvayyar. Thanks to our Guru for introducing this rare raga to the audience at Ragigudda during this Navaratri season(22nd Sep,09 for the theme –Devi compositions of Thyagaraja)

The lyrics go as follows:
nannu kanna talli naa bhagyama, narayaṇi dharmambike
(Oh mother, the one who gave me birth, Oh my fortune, Oh Narayani, Oh Dharmambike)

Kanakaangi Rama-pati sodari,kaavave nannu kaathyayini
(Oh Mother, the one whose limbs are hued golden! Oh Sister of Vishnu!
Please protect me, Oh Katyayani!)

Kaavu kaavumani ne mora peṭṭagaa ,kamala-lochani karagucuṇḍagaa
neevu brovakuṇṭe evaru broturu , sadaa varamosagu tyagaraja nute
(I implore you more and more to give me refuge, but you don’t seem to thaw out, Oh Lotus Eyed! if you refuse to protect me, who else will? Oh Mother,you are always praised by this Thyagaraja – as the one who forever grants boons!)

Sumadyuti is a very nice name! Muttuswamy Dikshitar called the current Simhendramadyama as Sumadyuti.

In one song, ‘Kamakshi kamakoti peeta nivasini‘, Muttuswamy Dikshitar intelligently uses this word in the anupallavi as:
kaumaari kusumadyuti hemabharana bhushani.

Jul 26 2009

Flute recital by Vid. K V Madhura - Jul 26 2009

Vid. K V Madhura performed at our institution on Jul 26 2009. She was accompanied by Vid. Mattur R. Srinidhi (Violin), Vid. B.R. Srinivas (Mridangam), Vid. Smt Bhagyalakshmi Krishna (Morsing).

She started off with a atta-taala varnam in Kambodhi and later presented ’shri mahaganapathi’ in gowla. Haimavathi was the main piece for the evening. ’shri kanthimatheem’ (a Dikshitar’s composition) was rendered well. After this piece, it was time for Dharmavathi RTP in Khandanade Mishra taala.

It was a very well planned concert with nice tempo all through to keep the audience sailing in musical boat!

bhAnumathi is the 4th mELakartha raaga.

Aa: S R1 G1 M1 P D2 N2 S

Ava: S N2 D2 P M1 G1 R1 S

Singing the first half seems to be the toughest part here. With R, G and M being shuddha, it gives a very unique experience to sing these notes.

This raaga is also called vanaspathi. Note: both names adhere to the Ka-Ta-Pa-Ya sutra!

It is said that, bhAnunathi is the name given by Dikshithar in the asampurNa mELa system.

One song which comes to my mind with this raaga is ‘br-hadhambaa madambaa‘

When people come to know that I am into classical music, first thing they ask is, ‘how do I recognize a raag?’. If they know some form of music, I might start explaining them something. If they don’t know anything about music theory, I would start seeing the clock. Explaining from scratch takes a while and needs some patience from me and from the listener.

When I practise with people who know music, but not much of the classical style, it is very interesting to see how they start picking my explanation. With a few examples from the movie songs or by playing some notes on the keyboard or the guitar, it becomes a good proof to what I say. On some occasions, it turns out that the listener plays some of his own things coming out of his/her mind or the one which he/she composed. It is fascinating to realise that they really did a nice composition and they did not know the ‘raag’ or ‘melody’ of that. Then, I start asking myself, “do we need to know the term ‘raag’ to appreciate/compose music?”. Not really seeing this example. But, knowing it always an advantage. It is like really understanding a mathematical equation before implimenting a concept OR some oxidation equation in organic chemistry to get something obvious.

Next is the toughest part. What if the person doesn’t know ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ of music, but is a good listener and is enthusiastic in knowing how to recognize various raags? This question takes me back to MY days of starting to identify different raags. Gone are those days when I used to get confused with ‘kalyani’ and ’shankarabharana’! Oh man…, how could I ever have such a doubt? They are SO very different. But, NO. I could NOT distinguish them initially. Slowly, as time passed by, a real-time processor was developed in my brain to process voice data and recognise the raag. The processor is too good - it is fast, accurate, and matches the technology of google search - indexing and pattern recognition.

At one stage during my Master’s program, I almost planned to work on converting this brainy processor into real hardware - keywords of the project - audio DSP, VLSI, sound engineering. Only keyword missing there is “PhD”. ha ha ha. If I had done that project, mujhe MS mein PhD miltha, because, that project was THE most complex project ever thought.

Coming back to raaga recognition - First thing required is a database. Yes!!! This is anologous to software technology ;). You need a whole gamut of songs in your brain. Then, you need good indexing to search those songs. You know what??? - jo anthaakshari mein puntar hai, they will have good database and indexing. They can learn raaga recognition easier than others. OK, what next??? That database must be relational ;). Primary key for this is raaga. Indexing has to be based on this.

OK, enough of software. Now coming to reality and a few examples.
Most famous raag in Hindi movies is ‘yaman’, also known as ‘kalyani’. ‘yaman’ is what Hindustani musicians call, and ‘kalyani’ is the name what Carnatic musicians name it. Some songs in this raag… (sing all of them one by one… do you see similarity in the notes?)
1) Zindagi bhar nahin bhoolegi woh barsaath ki raath (movie: barsaath ki raath)
2) jab deep jale aana (movie: chitch chor)
3) ghar se nikalthe hee (movie: papa kehtein hain)

Now switch off your thinking processor. Restart it again because I will be taking you to the next raag ;).
Sing these songs first.
1) Pehla nasha … (movie: jo jeetha wohi sikandar)
2) piya bole piyu bole (movie: parineetha)
3) Happy birthday to you (birthday song yaar… )
4) kastu maza.. (movie: parineetha again)
5) mein koi aisa geet gaawon (movie: Yes Boss)

Anything similar????? NO???? forget it. YES??? good. This is ’shankarabharana’, which is also called the ‘major scale’ in Western Classical.

Enough of theory. ha ha ha. Music cannot be written. It has to be listened ;).

The topic seems simple for many, but not to me. It had been a long pending topic to write and one of my friends, S, encouraged me to share my music online. Many know that I sing. One thing that I don’t understand, “why is music special and a unique art?” I don’t understand this because, I have not faced it. I don’t find it special because I have been singing since… - I don’t even have an approximate date of when I started my first tone of music. I might want to ask my parents!

This is what music is - I sing from my mouth, but the origin is my heart. Without the expression or the impulse from within, music is tasteless. Whoever starts learning music will have this phase of ‘raw’ music. They themselves don’t like it. They ask the experts, “why am I not able to play/sing like you?” The answer is, “they can’t”. ‘Sangeeth’ is like growing a tree. You won’t see fruits untill you see the small plant grow big and then flowers, next fruits. It is a long process. Only thing one can appreciate is the taste of that fruit.

For me personally, music is my way of expression. I pray to God with full devotion using music as my medium, I sing to my friends to make them happy, I perform to the audience to make them understand music. Music is magic which touches people in an abtract form - it make the hair follicles raise. This is what people call, “touching music”.

It has been said that Dikshitar once visited Thyagaraja and composed ‘MAmava PattabhirAma‘ in Manirangu describing the idols worshiped by Thyagaraja.

Similarly, when Thyagaraja visited Dikshitar once, he saw an idol of Lord Muguran being worshiped by Dikshitar. Seeing this, Thyagaraja is said to have composed the song, ‘Varashikhi VAhana‘ in the raaga Supradeepa. This krithi is a rare one as we don’t have many krithis of Thyagaraja composed on Lord Murugan.

Supradeepa has the below Aa. and Av.
Aa: S R1 M1 P D2 N3 S
Av: S N3 D2 P M1 G3 M1 R1 S

It is SuryakAntham’s janya.

Complete lyrics of the above song can be found here.

(Originally posted on my personal blog http://silverythoughts-r.blogspot.com)

If we dig deep the origin of diverse genres of music, we will observe that each of it stalked out from a certain situation. Game music which is the talk of the day is based on this situational music. From the times of Super Mario to the now trend Counterstrike –all use music in interactive settings. Music played in the health spas, poojas, marriages have specific variants to suit the situation and ambience. Daniel J Levitin, the musicologist and author of “This is your brain on Music” quotes that the foremost origin of music dates back to Darwin himself who believed that Music had been the situational mode of communiqué in all human and paleohuman mating rituals.
Situational music makes use of the context of space or event to define characteristics of music and how people relate to it. Some musical works are created to allow contemplation and long periods of sustained listening. A classic exemplar to this simple criterion of situational music is Lullaby. It was originally designed as a composition intended to respite a child. A typical mind’s eye portrayal of the nativity of lullaby genre would be a person holding and swaying a baby, cajoling it in a sweet gentle tone; more of a monotone and mechanical than attention gathering.

Be it the telugu laali paatalu, tamizh thaalatu, kannada jojo haadu, hindi loriyan, the English versions of “Brahms’ Lullaby” all dole out the same rationale.
Ever wondered why lullabies quiet infants to sleep? Their constitution holds the key.
These musical pieces are constructed repetitive in nature. Since they form recurring rhyming patters, the brain will not have to exert much to recognize the sound and assimilate the pattern. The brain tunes to the lullaby track. The brain is convinced on its part that it is aware of what is being played at the milieu and this could probably induce nap since the brain is at rest. It is best proven by playing a song repeatedly, neednt be essentially of lullaby-nature to a child (preferably at bed time). The familiarity to the song affirms the above said logic and puts the baby to sleep.
“lu lu” “la la” “laa li” “jo jo” form the rich text of the lullaby vocabulary. The use of this kind of music is so demanding that almost every mother across the prefectures would have composed/ learnt at least one lullaby for her child. The intention behind lullabies to lull child to slumber demands soothing gentle ragas, softly paced and are usual sung with many melismas.
Indian lullabies in ragas like Nelambari ,senchuruti have been scientifically proven to have received conditioned response .The swaras in these ragas are structured beautifully with melismatic techniques to induce a hypnotic trance in the listener. So the above said concept of repetitive nature alone doesn’t suffice, but a soothing tune/tone in lullaby is preferred to promote sleep over hard rock and tough beats.
Lullaby has many other benefits to offer too .At the age of infancy the innocent minds cannot capture and appreciate the libretto of the lullaby. But as familiarity breeds, the little minds would seek to get deep into the niceties of the music they are acquainted with. This is where lullaby works as a civilizing interface between the veteran parents and the naive children. One can instill their cultural values, narrate the child traditional stories through lullabies. Also through this simple music genre, sound recognition in children develops well.

At the end of the day, the question still remains unanswered .Though we have happily coined out the term “situational music”-It still remains an unsolved mystery “Did situation define music, or did music transform the situation?

Music is one type of knowledge which doesn’t have shortcuts. One needs to cross all the stages to enjoy singing. I was sitting in my music class listening to my guru teaching a small kid. My guru was teaching one of the basic lessons in Kalyani. Kid’s mom was sitting too. This is what I thought….

Mom brings this kid to class so sincerely twice a week. This kid is learning the basics of music now. How do these kids understand the importance of music? Won’t these basic lessons bore them to quit? Is there a short cut to learning music? What incentive do these kids who learn music get?

Answers to these are found from my own experiences. Firstly, I realize now that music once taken in is as good as nectar. I enjoy it by knowing music. I am not answering the questions of a listener who is a music lover, rather, I am trying to see to find answers to questions based on my learning of music as a child.

As a kid, I did sing well to get lot of appreciation from people around. Apart from that incentive, I didn’t understand the soothing aspect of it. I didn’t know that music can be thrilling or that music can create joy within me. When my guru taught basic lessons, I learned them with ease. Few instances, I could not replicate what the teacher taught. At that point, I remember the teacher stressing that part again and again. My first reaction was to cry. Why cry??? That’s because I didn’t get the lesson right.

Did I feel like quitting? Oh yeah! Even now I feel it once a while. When we were in Hubli, my brother and I played cricket every evening. Our teacher came home for music lessons at 5:30pm. At that point, we had to cut down our game which frustrated me a lot. I had complained mom many times to tell the teacher to come after dusk :). If the teacher didn’t agree to this, I was even ready to quit music. ha ha ha.

Last week, one of my new friends at office was asking me complicated things in music. He is a beginner and I told him, “Please continue learning and keep practising. You will get to know the things you are asking pretty soon.”

The origin of Carnatic music , or the South Indian classical music can be traced back to the age of  vedas . Bharata’s Natya Sastra , from around the 5th century A.D. , and Saranga Deva’s Sangita Ratnakara , from the early13th century A.D. , are considered the to be the earliest recorded documents available on the theory and performance of Indian classical music . The history of Carnatic music is incomplete without stating about the contributions made by the saints Sri Purandharadasaru ( 15th century A.D.) , Sri Thyagarajar , Sri Shyama Sastri ( all of 18th century A.D.) , and left an enduring legacy of compositions. This tradition has a rich heritage and is perfectly attuned with Indian culture and religion. Carnatic music is based on a 22 scale note (swaras) on contrary to the earlier 12 note scale that is used in the western classical music. But in all its practical aspects and puposes, not more than 16 notes are generally used. A unique combination of these notes , or swara as they are said to evolves separate  ragas. The features and the constraints of a raga will be clearly defined in the arrangement of the notes in its arohanam ( ascending notes ) and avarohanam ( descending notes ). Thus , in Carnatic music , the raga connotes a mood or a route in which the music is supposed to travel. . Different combinations of the notes gives rise to different raga . Thus , there are thousands of unique raga as per theory though very few of them are being used for performances in the present day. gamaka and brighaa are the two most important features of the ragaa. The former refers to the modulation of the frequency of a particular swara and the latter refers to the speed with which the musician performs a set of swaras or notes. Both the gamaka and the brigha helps to improve the appeal of the composition that is rendered . Western music is often based ona pattern of flat notes, on the contrary, here , the swaras are performed using various modulations . The brigha could be often 8 , 16 or so on . Another very important aspect of the Carnatic music is the thalam or the rhythm. The thalam is the rhythm of the piece that is being performed . Today, there exists more than hundred thalams , but here also, very few of them are in use . The most popular thalam have three , four , five, seven or eight beats in them.