i want to know where music took its birth?please dont go for spritual ok.there is some thing i heard abt that swaras took their birth from animals but what abt ragas?talas?which r the basic bricks for any music.if ur ansring this one means,that ans belongs for whole music in the world.

When did people start breathing?

When did birds first open their beaks?

Was anyone around to note the date, time and place?

Even if they did, they were careless about keeping records. After all, this is a section about the history of CM!

Well then, if it is specifically about Carnatic music, then I suppose I should feel rather foolish, but never mind, that often happens!

I had a French teacher once, who utterly failed to teach me any French --- but I do remember a saying of his, which was If you must try to be witty, take care that you do not only make it half way.

Anyway, it would be nice to think that it might be related to the ancient song of the birds, and some people say that birds are the remaining dinosaurs, which would make it very ancient indeed.

The amalgamation of myth and history which seems to occur in this culture must make any "real" answer to this sort of thing very difficult. How old are the oldest songs that are performed today? How old are the nearest-related fok traditions?

circa 1774 when the boy Thyagaraja at Thiruvaiyaru sang 'namO namO'
(according to a few

If you want to discount all the musical "mahAnubhAvulu" who came before him

CML - When the first three azhwars met at the sanctam sanctoram of tirukkOvilUr ulagaLanda perumAL. According to a few

more 'myths' thought up today:

the tambUra sound inspired by the buzzing of a bee.
The flute, by the sound of the wind passing through insect-made holes in the canes in a bamboo grove.
Rain drops falling on various surfaces.
Bird sounds, of course.
The human voice , cultivating itself by fine tuning it--by listening to Nature sounds and its own vocal expressions of laughter, love and so on.

sAs for percussion--thunder clap...

Krishnaa.
Knowing you, I can safely bet that you will bring us a few beautiful verses relating to this. How I wish I had your 'repertoire'!

The earliest musicians must have been hunters who mimicked their prey's call to draw them out.
Also, the string instuments are supposed to have originated from the bowstring and it's twang [sanskrit Jya = bowstring; Tamil yaazh = veena].

The flute is one of the most primeval instruments that has co-evolved with the human race. Archaeologists have found bone flutes from prehistoric sites.

Lullabies, war songs, funeral dirges and of course religious litanies must have been some early musical forms; common to all civilisations

arasi - was the pointer to me (ksrimech) or to the other krishnaa?

I had you in mind (AzhvArgaLukkaDiyAn). aDiyai (line) eDuttuttarubavarum kUDa-the one who can qoute in a breeze too!

Well this one is for you arasi.

madurakavi azhwar states he doesn't need the meanings of tiruvAymozhi. He will spend his life singing the music present in tiruvAymozhi.

mudalAyiram - kaNNinuNcchiruttAmbu - pAsuram # 2.

nAvinAl naviRRu inbameydinEn
mEvinEn avan ponnaDi mEymmeyE
dEvu maRRariyEn kurugUr nambi
pAvin innisai pADittirivanE.

madura morning for me. Thanks

Hello Anantha krishna,

Good question!. You are actually trying to know whether the swaras originated from any sounds in nature. Yes. it appears like that.
Rishabha is supposed to have been named after listening to the sound made by Vrishabha. The sound of a cuckoo comes closer to panchamam.
and birds' close to gandhara.. I read in some music texts but I do not remember its name. Probably, any musicologist can throw light on this.

Then varying the frequencies around its mean gave the different types of a swara; exception are prakriti swaras which are unchanged.

Then their combination gave different ragas.. refer the texts by Venkatamakhi.

my 2 cents

Kalyani

Kalyani

I do not have any comment on your statement that the swaras are named after sounds of cuckoo etc. But there is no way I can think of explaining the statement like the sound is closer to panchamam, gandhara etc. What panchamam is, gets defined by fixing something as shadjamam. The panchamam or any of the other swaras have no absolute position. They are going to be relative to the Shadjamam.

sramaswamy,

I think what Kalyani (and the pUrvAcharyas)meant to say is that the nature of a vikruthi swara can be clearly discerned by listening to the call of a particular creature.

Is it not possible to make out a pa/sapa from the cuckoo's song...? The bull's bellow can be made out to be sR;;;;S from the ambAAAAh sound. of course we can't identify a note in solitude, without the reference points of Sa and/or pa. But then most of the sounds heard in nature are not monotones.

Keerthi

That explanation is kind of convincing. If there are more than one note in these sounds, it makes sense. But, what with us living in cities, we cannot hear any of these animal and bird sounds. We might have to change the notes based on car and train sounds instead.

Of course, I used to go and get milk fresh from the buffalo in my childhood days. At some point the "paaalkaran" would have deftly added water to the milk! But then I did not bother to listen to the "Maa....." (in India) or "Moo........" (in Western world) sound. I was only cursing the chore I had to do.