North Indian Classical Vocal Music: Modernization Of A Great Tradition Irfan Zuberi Dedicated to Bharat Ratna Ust. Bismillah Khan (21 March 1916 – 21 August 2006) Without music, life would be a mistake. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) “Music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny majority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.” Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-) North Indian classical vocal music (henceforth Hindustani music) is one of the richest musical systems in the world. Understandably, there exists a plethora of writing on the subject varying from traditional treatises on music and aesthetics, autobiographies and biographies of musicians, historical analysis of various forms, academic work on genres and gharanas apart from a large corpus of writing which aims to ‘introduce’ Hindustani music to the uninitiated audiences. In what follows, I have tried to keep in mind the uninitiated listener as well as the connoisseurs in the hope that that the uninitiated might find the information useful and the connoisseur might find some points worthy of consideration. Whether I have succeeded in this endeavour is another point altogether! After a brief discussion about the structure of Hindustani music, there is a detailed analysis of the two of the most prominent forms which are visible (or rather, audible) on the performance stage today – dhrupad and khayal. It should be kept in mind while reading the following that I have attempted to analyze the period belonging to the departed greats of both these art forms since it is difficult (if not impossible) and premature to analyze the impact of the contemporary greats. The senior living practitioners of the art forms feature in this paper only as authenticating sources for the information provided below. Lastly, the final section broaches the various sociological, technological and economic factors influencing Hindustani music today with an intention of generating a debate around the points which have been mentioned briefly. Structure The music of India is perhaps one of the oldest in the world. It is also a major system of music that is essentially melodic and what is of great significance and interest is that it has retained this character to this day. Sounds follow one another expressing an emotional state and an aesthetic unity. This is in contrast to European culture where the early melodic music has changed into the current harmonic music. To my mind, this is the most basic and the most fundamental difference between the two musical systems which negates any attempt at a one-to-one comparison. Page 1 of 11 The earliest defined music that we know of is that of the Vedas. Rig Veda was recited and Sama Veda (which is the sung version of the Rig Veda) was chanted in a descending manner using seven notes. This was the ecclesiastical melody, the margi sangeet (music of the Path meant only for occultic function and purpose) which was highly symbolic in nature. There also existed gandharva sangeet and desi sangeet which were the secular art forms. The former was a highly grammatized form (considered to be the up-Veda) comprising songs set to tunes in defined scales with proper tala using necessary accompanying instruments. The latter, on the other hand, was perhaps laxer in grammatical restrictions and its nature varied from region to region. Centuries of history and cultural influences have moulded Hindustani music. In fact, till about the 15th century, musicological ideas and descriptions of the art show theoretical bases entirely different from that of today. Indeed the change is so great that we seem to have left an entirely different system of music and gradually moved into another! The earlier music was based on moorchhana paddhati (modal shift) whereas today’s music is founded on a universal tonic. In essence, Hindustani music revolves around a raga which is a melodic scheme governed by certain traditional rules, but providing a great freedom for improvisation. These rules define and determine the notes of a scale that should be used, their order, prominence and the necessary melodic idioms which give it a particular ‘colour’ and rasa (emotive and aesthetic appeal). Based on these more or less strict limitations, the musician is free to create and herein lies his/her genius. The following are some of the more important conventions with regard to raga which are adhered to by the musicians in varying degrees of strictness: 1. A minimum number of swaras (musical notes) are necessary. No melodic structure with less than 5 swaras has the status of a raga. However, it needs to be mentioned here that there are differences of opinion here as well and the Dagars claim to sing a version of raga Hindol which uses just 4 swaras. The raga Malashree also consists of just 4 swaras. 2. The nature of a swara in a raga has to be definite: shuddha (natural), komal (flat) or teevra (sharp). That is, the raga should be assignable to a determined scale. 3. There should be basic rules governing aaroh (ascent) and avroh (descent). These could be called basic melodic and tonal syntaxes. 4. Certain characteristic phrases have to be used to give the raga its character and shakal (individual identity). 5. Like the punctuation in a linguistic unity, a raga also has its points of stasis. Some of the punctuations are grah, nyas, apanyas, vinyas and sanyas. What this means is that there are swaras on which a melodic section or phrase can rest. A wrong pause may change the mood of the raga and introduce technical and aesthetic confusion. 6. Every raga has its melodic centre or nucleus such that all movements within it gravitate towards this swara called the vadi. A subsidiary center of gravity is samvadi; the other notes used in the raga are called anuvadi and the dissonant swara is the vivadi. However, it needs to be kept in mind that the aforementioned points are not rules laid down in any authoritative text; they are simply conventions which are broadly followed by musicians to grant a coherence and cogency to the ragas across the board. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the world of ragas in Hindustani music is their relation to time and seasons. The 24 hours of the day are divided into 8 praharas (sections) of equal duration with the first prahara starting at 6 in the morning. The concept of sandhi is important in this regard. It could be best understood through an approximate translation – junction – the passing of night into day and vice versa. In a diagrammatic understanding the horizontal line of sandhi connects 6am and 6pm. All the ragas performed between 6am and 6pm are uttarang-pradhan Page 2 of 11 (emphatic upper tetrachord) and the ones performed between 6pm and 6am are poorvang-pradhan (emphatic lower tetrachord). The ragas performed along the sandhi line are called sandhi-prakash ragas. The relation of ragas to seasons is best understood through stating a few examples such as Basant, Bahar and the Malhar group. It needs to be understood that these ragas have a strong correlation with the seasons but in no way can they be understood to be merely ‘seasonal’ and are heard from the performance stage throughout the year. Let me now turn to the system of classification of this vast world of ragas. The formation of mela or thaat (scales) completely replaced the functions of the moorchhana (as was mentioned earlier). It is interesting that both the systems of classification – mela and thaat – were first introduced in the 17th century. While the former was introduced for Carnatic classical music by Venkatamakhi, the latter was first propounded by Ahobal in his seminal treatise Sangeet Parijat. The present reference scale in Hindustani music is that of Bilaval thaat which is almost the same as the western major diatonic. All the notes of this thaat are considered shuddha; any sound higher is teevra and lower is komal. The most popular, thought not necessarily the most logical, system of grouping of the ragas is the one that was put forth by Pt. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande and it consists of 10 thaats: Bilaval, Khamaj, Kafi, Bhairav, Asavari, Bhairavi, Kalyan, Marwa, Poorvi and Todi. There exist quite a number of deficiencies and internal inconsistencies in this system (and the musicians are aware of them) but it is largely accepted and used as a tool for teaching. Rhythm in Hindustani music is characterized by the cyclic tala so that there is a ‘coming back’ to the origin before continuing. This cycle is divided into parts which may or may not be equal. Tempo or speed is recognized by the word laya (the concept of time as it gets incorporated into music) which is usually of three degrees: vilambit (slow), madhya (medium) and drut (fast). Of course, there are variations at the extremes in terms of ati vilambit (very slow) and ati drut (very fast). The importance of laya can be understood such that if swara is considered to be one of the two pillars of Hindustani music, laya has to be the other. If the swara being produced is not conditioned by laya, it loses its meaning; in fact, it is laya which reveals the inherent musicality of the swara.