AN OVERVIEW OF HINDUSTANI MUSIC IN THE CONTEXT OF COMPUTATIONAL MUSICOLOGY Suvarnalata Rao* and Preeti RaoŦ National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai 400021, India * Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, IndiaŦ [email protected], [email protected] [This is an Author’s Original Manuscript of an Article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in the Journal of New Music Research, Volume 43, Issue 1, 31 Mar 2014, available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2013.831109 [dx.doi.org]] ABSTRACT ludes any key changes, which are so characteristic of Western music. Indian film music is of course an excep- With its origin in the Samveda, composed between 1500 - tion to this norm as it freely uses Western instruments 900 BC, the art music of India has evolved through ages and techniques including harmonization, chords etc. and come to be regarded as one of the oldest surviving music systems in the world today. This paper aims to Art music (sometimes inappropriately described as clas- provide an overview of the fundamentals governing Hin- sical music) is one of the six categories of music that dustani music (also known as North Indian music) as have flourished side by side: primitive, folk, religious, practiced today. The deliberation will mainly focus on the art, popular and confluence. The patently aesthetic inten- melodic aspect of music making and will attempt to pro- tion of the art music sets it apart from other categories. It vide a musicological base for the main features associated is governed by two main elements: raga and tala. It is with the melody: intonation and improvisation; thus cov- primarily a tradition of solo performance, affording scope ering the soundscape on the micro as well as macro level. to innovate and interpret, and hence methods and tech- The larger objective of this endeavor is to identify rele- niques are developed to this end. Consequently, this leads vant directions for the application of computational ap- to emergence of various musical ideologies and family proaches to Hindustani music. traditions (gharana /bani). There is an abundance of musical genres and 1. INTRODUCTION forms with specific structures based on patterning of musical elements (notes, rhythms, tempi etc.). Certain The term ‘Indian music’ refers to the music system of the forms are regarded more prestigious because of the de- Indian subcontinent including seven nations - India, Pa- mands they make on performers in terms of the skill and kistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal and Bhu- techniques required. tan. The extraordinary variety of musical types available In India, there are two recognized streams of art in this region is probably unparalleled in any other part of music. Hindustani (or north Indian) music represents the the world. Music has a vital role in the religious, social tradition for the region where Indo-Aryan languages are and artistic lives of the people. A great deal of it could be spoken, that is, the Indo-Gangetic plain with the north- termed functional, as it is an indispensable part of the west quadrant of the peninsula. In the Dravidian-speaking activities of everyday life ranging from work and agrarian areas (that is most of peninsular India) the tradition is songs, festivities, to the music which accompanies life represented by Carnatic (or south Indian) art music. Hin- cycle events such as birth, initiation, marriage and death dustani and Carnatic music are the same in essential ab- [1]. There is also a strong sense of spirituality attached to stract features but different in detail. The basic structure Indian music, the realization of which is essential for its of typical ensembles is common to both: in addition to a study and practice. The immediate goal of music is sen- drone1 there are three separate and independent musical sory pleasure but its ultimate goal is regarded as the spiri- roles. The primary melody is carried by a singer (in vocal tual release. music performance) or an instrumentalist (in an instru- Indian music, like the other great traditions of mental music performance), the secondary melody is the South Asian classical music, is regarded as pre- carried by the accompanying melodic instruments (either eminently vocal; instrumental music of whatever degree bowed or reed) and the drums provide the rhythm. How- of virtuosity is looked upon as tangential, whether re- ever, the basic characteristics of these three roles differ, garded as accompaniment to the voice, or as an imitation and even vocal production is strikingly dissimilar in two / extension of the voice, or as a secondary tradition paral- styles. Adherence to raga and tala and their basic prin- lel to the vocal tradition. Indian music is based on melody ciples is common to both the systems, and many raga and and rhythm; harmony and polyphony, as known in the West, have no part in the music. Much of the music is 1 modal in character and is often accompanied by a drone, Provided usually by a tanpura /tambura, an open-stringed instrument, which establishes a fixed frame of reference and prec- the special bridge curvature of which gives rise to an envelope that is rich in overtones and harmonics. tala names are identical, although the actual pitch content terjections and / or non-verbal expressions such as facial of the raga and the measure of the tala are usually differ- or hand gestures. A knowledgeable audience knows how ent. There is also considerable difference in the preferred and when to appreciate while the performer is expected to expository techniques, ornamental styles and use of tem- have the sensitivity to respond to the audience-reaction. po. A performer of classical music (shastriya sangit, i.e. Scientific enquiry into the organization of music based on scientifically and systematically formu- music in pitch and time, in the context of scales and me- lated norms) presents one or more raga-s (depending on ter, has been a part of ancient Indian texts and more re- the availability of time). The three main vocal genres of cently revisited by prominent musicologists such as Hindustani music are: dhrupad, khayal and thumri. These Bhatkande [29] and Jairazbhoy [7]. On the other hand, terms designate both, the composition as such and the computational approaches to music have lagged far be- genre as a whole. Whilst dhrupad is considered to be the hind those in Western music. This may be partly attri- oldest and the most disciplined (in terms of the purity of buted to the fact that Indian music remains a predomi- raga and rigidity of the composition structure) of the nantly oral tradition. With growing research on digital Hindustani genres heard today, thumri is the lightest and audio processing tools, the potential of computational the most ornamented genre. Khayal stands in between approaches in Indian music may now be realized. In this these two extremes. paper, we review the musicological bases of Hindustani music leading up to contemporary performance practice. A review of recent research initiatives in music computa- tion is presented together with a discussion of promising new directions. 2. HINDUSTANI MUSIC PERFORMANCE Hindustani music is essentially structured around the soloist. The ensemble includes one main artist, either vocalist or instrumentalist and the accompanists (their number varies depending on the type of concert- vocal / instrumental). For vocal music, there are either one or two tanpura (drone) players, a sarangi player (nowadays often replaced by a harmonium) to provide melodic ac- Fig. 1. A Hindustani vocal concert setting. The singer is flanked companiment and a percussionist (either tabla or pakha- by two tanpura players. The tabla player is seen on the right vaj). In instrumental solo, the instrumentalist receives above, and a sarangi player on the left. support from the percussionist and a tanpura player (no- wadays many instrumentalists even prefer to replace this 3. TONAL SYSTEM by an electronic tanpura). The soloist occupies the central position on the stage as depicted in the photo in Fig. 1, 3.1 Tonal Material and has the main responsibility of music-making. Tanpu- ra players provide the tonic. They occupy the position Indian music uses seven notes or scale degrees (svara), behind the main artist on either side and often, they may which are known as Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni. be disciples of the soloist. The percussionist and the sa- Together they are referred to as SARGAM. Each symbol rangi (or harmonium) player sit on either sides of the used to represent these notes is an abbreviated form of the soloist (usually, the percussionist on the right and the real note names, which are Shadj, Rishabh, Gandhar, melody instrumentalist on the left). Some vocalists them- Madhyam, Pancham, Dhaivat and Nishad. selves play one of the tanpura or even prefer to strum The natural form of notes corresponding to the svaramandal (for occasional reinforcement). The sarangi Western major scale is called shuddh (natural, lit. pure). (or harmonium) follows the vocalist and is only occasio- In notation, they are represented as S R G m P D N. Fur- nally allowed to play solo phrases. The percussionist is ther, Re, Ga, Dha and Ni can be flattened by a semitone expected to keep the rhythmic (tala) cycle going in speci- and are then called komal (flat, lit. soft). They are notated fied tempo (laya). Occasionally, the soloist might let him as r, g, d & n. Ma can be sharpened by a semitone and is improvise while he himself or the melody instrument then called tivra Ma (lit. sharp), notated as M. Thus the keeps the time. In appropriate measure, such interludes 12 tones within an octave are notated as: S r R g G m M can be aesthetically satisfying.