There are so many kritis of tyagaraja in Desadi taalam. But no body practices. everyone practces aaadi taalam only-which is different-comments welcome No book available. the book of B M sundaram is unavailable in chennai, Also attempt should be made to put 108 taalams-some of which are available in Tirupugazh.

Please see viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6287 and
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=828

They say Nagaswara melam makes use of desadi taalam especially for the Tavil interludes.

As a small boy I remember to have listened to Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer singing the Jaavali 'Apadooru' (khamas) in Desaadi . I remember asking my father (who took me to the concert at VJT Hall in Trivandrum ,say about 45 years ago!) why the Talam is put in a peculiar way! He said it was called Desadi but basically Aadi talam.

I have never come across anybody handling it in concerts but only in a few lecture demonstrations. You must have lot of practice to employ it! More details would be welcome.

>You must have lot of practice to employ it!

I do not know why that is..

As the links posted above shows, the essence of the desadi thalam songs is that it starts at 1.5 beats after samam in the Adi thala format.

We have also heard that there is a different kriya that is shown for desadi thala. One such thing I have heard is that it starts at the veechu. Can someone explain what the kriyas for desadi thalam are?

But no matter what that kriya is, I do not think it is fundamentally more difficult than Adi or any other thala.

Mr.VK, it is said that the kriyas of a desadi tala are, it starts with a veechu, followed by three beats, just as in rupaka tala where we start with a veechu followed by two beats. Desadi talas are basically used in madyamakala kritis.
Harini.

Thanks Harini.. With respect to those kriyas, where does the song begin? Before the Veechu?

In the desadi tala compositions,the kriti begins 3/4 matra or 3 aksharas after the veechu. In the adi talam format, 1.5 beats after samam is right.
Harini.

ah.. OK. Thanks Harini.

So, in its essence, it is like a 2-kaLai chatusra eka except the kriya is different. A veechu followed by three beats instead of a tap followed by 3 finger counts. ( and they may and may not show the 2 kaLai-counts per beat ) Right?

This is how I have learned deshAdi as well, veechu, samam, plus two finger counts with the actual eduppu at 3/4 into the veechu.

dEshAdi is not a meaningless thing as one may presume -- if you sing a kriti such as say brovabhArama with deshAdi you can see that the emphasis of the words in the kriti fall neatly on the samam of the deshAdi e.g. broVabharamaraGHUrama where the emphasis is on the capitalized syllables here and both these fall on the deshAdi samam. If on the other hand you put Adi tALam as we do it these days for this kriti, the emphasis on the "GHU" syllable, while it occurs in the singing, is totally lost in the tAlam. And this pattern will repeat all through the kriti. At the beginning of the anuppallavi "shrI vAsudEva" the emphasis in the singing falls on the "I" vowel of the compound "shrI" which again is lost in the middle of the Adi tALam. And so on. deshAdi apparently comes to us from the bhajanai tradition. tyAgarAja has used it every effectively in his kritis whereas it seems virtually unknown to the other composers of that era or before. Except...

I learned the shyAmA shAstri kriti ninnuvinaga (pUrvikalyANi) in deshAdi with vilOma mishra nadai (common practice is to sing it in vilOma mishra chApu). I remember going nuts keeping track of two oddities simultaneously, putting deshAdi and viloma mishra chApu. Are there any (other) instances of usage of dEshAdi before or during tyAgaraja's time?

deshAdi may have the same relationship to Adi as mishrachApu has to (tisra) triputa in that the chApu's are said to be half the length of the original tALam. Thus mishrachApu is considered to be a 3.5 beat tAlam. deshAdi is similarly a 4 beat tALam. Also I have read (cannot remember the source) that chApu (and deshAdi) are meant to be put briskly and not slowly. However that convention has also become blurred in practice -- even slow tempo kritis are sung with mishra chApu rather than tisra triputa. Indeed it has not been clear to me what the intended difference is between kritis of MD that are indicated in formal sources as being in mishra chApu compared to those that are in tisra tripuTa -- these days everything in seven beats is done in mishra chApu anyway.

At that time I forgot to ask my teacher how madhyAdi would be shown. Does anyone know?

-Then Paanan

I agree that dEshAdi kriyas are meaningful with respect to alignment of stress points in the song to the thala kriyas.

BTW, with that alignment for brovabharama, it looks like it is 2 aksharams after veechu since in this scheme, the song line seems to take two avarthas of dEshAdis. If it is only one Avartha, then I can see it is 3 aksharams after veechu. Correct?

It is said that Madhyadi and Desadi talas are similar. I n both type of talas the kriti starts at the same place. One main difference between the 2 is that while in Desadi pallavi, anupallavi and charana start at the same eduppu, in Madyadi, anupallavi and charana start at the 2nd beat. It means that based the structure of the composition they are set either to desadi or madyadi tala!

Regarding Brovabaramma, I always thought that ithe kriti began after 2 beats in regular adi talam. I am not sure about it. Should learn more
Harini.

Harini, Brovabarama, as with all the desadi krithis, begins at 1.5 beats in regular adi.

Thenpanan, Harini: I am still a bit confused about the 3/4th eduppu and reconciling it with how Thenpanan arranged it for Brovabaramma, with two avarthanas per line of Brovabarama. As I wrote above, that will make it a single kaLai 1/2 eduppu after Veechu whereas to make it 3/4the duupu after veechu it has to be 2-Kalai with one avarthana per line.. Is the 3/4th eduppu a significant and defining characteristic of this way of keeping for desadi thala?

Desadi is a unique talam with its eDuppu after the veechu. Then the samam and two counts. Madhyadi is supposed to start on the veechu itself. The beauty of Desadi lies in the fact that the veechu is the most important aspect of it. The jAru gamakas that emanate from the veechu are the speciality. Once Desadi is changed to Adi, the song loses its original beauty. Many major songs have been changed mindlessly into Adi. Songs like sItAvara sangIta jnAnamu (dEvagAndhAri), gItArthamu (suruTTi), giripai(sahAnA) are but a few examples of Desadi turned into Adi. The classic originality of these kritis have been lost forever. I have a recording done by the Tillaistanam disciple parampara of Thyagaraja in the original Desadi. There are 2 songs in Desadi, srI nArasimhA (phalaranjani) and nenaruncharA nApai(simhavAhini).

There is a nice, brief explanation about the phalaranjani song. its actual raga and about the importance of singing in the original Desadi.

I have given the link. Hope it works.

http://www.downloads.nl/music/Disciples ... +Tyagaraja

Thanks RaviSri.. Very nice singing by the artist along with the explanations.

BTW, what is the kriya for Desadi in your mind? Is it the same as what Thenpanan and Harini state above.

Second, we think of madhyadi as 1/2 eduppu in the Adi pattern, but you say 'it starts on the veechu'. Can you reconcile the two please?

I am sorry but I will be the contrarian and claim it makes absolutely no difference if you put using the veechu+2 counts (starting 3/4) or put Adi and start half-way between pinky and ring finger. The emphasis etc. all built into the melody itself (i.e. gamakas for the swaras etc.) and has no bearing on how one keeps tala. The laya is built into the song and should be immune to how time is kept.

I will however not discount the possibility of tala slaps having an undue influence on people but that IMHO is a bad (and not inevitable, nor unavoidable) side effect of leaning heavily on tala to render a song. If laya of the melody is internalized as we all should aim for, and I am sure most musicians have, it should make no difference. The tala is there just as an external indicator - a speedometer to check once in a while to make sure you are still on right path. How much you look at it depends on your confidence level. If we lean so heavily that we keep our eyes locked on the speedometer, instead of on the road we travel on, we are sure to driver astray and worse !

Besides, by this token all violinists (tapping with feet the same way) should be playing desAdi different from all singers singing with veechu style, vs veena players using there fingers to pluck the tala strings vs. all ones keeping Adi style and that vs. those singers confident enough to not need to put much talam at all.

Also, it could be argued that the adi style actually even better alignment - (e.g. mA of brOvabhAramA which falls in the first slap of first drutam, as well as ghu (first slap on second drutham), as well as mA or raghurAma which falls on samam of second iteration. The veechu style has no corresponding emphasis for the 2 mAs - they fall at the samme place (falls on the ring finger), as the one emphasis that is claimed as "all lost" in Adi style.

I really think this is a red herring.

Arun

Arun, agreed to all your above points. And there has not been a satisfactory answer to the question 'What is the musical significance of tala angas?'

While agreeing with the points you made, I will go the other way for the desAdi and madyAdi tala songs, instead of fitting it in a 8 beat Adi tala. Invoking Occum's razor and 'as simple as possible but no simpler', they can be reduced to a two beat thala, say a Slap and a Veechu, a slap representing a stronger emphasis and a Veechu representing a weaker emphasis. In this simplified scheme, Desadi will start between the Veechu and the Slap and Madhyadi will start between the Slap and the Veechu.

I am still interested in knowing properly the traditional desadi way of keeping the thala and how many cycles of that constitute an Adi cycle.

Yes that would work too as we have discussed elsewhere. BTW, my earlier post had a mistake when I said veechu + 2counts, i meant veechu + samam + 2 counts. I also interpreted like you - i.e. sort of like catusra ekam like and thus 2 cycles of this map to one cycle of adi. But I dont know if that is how it actually is.

Arun

I agree with thenpaanan's views. I dont know whether I am right in my explanation of madyadhi. I just repeated what a daughter of Palakkad Rama Bhagavatar has told me. The Bhagavatar used to sing the dEshAdi kritis in dEshAdi only. That was how he learnt them from Umayalpuram Swaminatha Iyer. I have seen Maruthuvakkudi Rajagopala Iyer singing in this talam. There are many songs of Thyagaraja in this tala, more than a hundred of them. Some major songs are, sItAvara (dEvagAndhAri), giripai (sahAnA), gItArthamu (shuruTTi), etc.

My question is this: Why did Thyagaraja compose extensively in a distinct tala like dEshAdi? He has also composed extensively in Adi. There must be at least subtle differences. One explanation is by the artistes who sing srI nArasimhA and nenarunchara in the audio, the link of which I gave in my previous post. This was about the gambhIram of the veechu which is not there when sung in Adi. Many people including Kanchipuram Naina Pillai have changed dEshAdi to Adi just to suit their percussionists. They have also therefore changed the original bANi of singing the dEshAdi songs.

In the 4th part of Kriri Mani Malai of Rangaramanuja Iyengar we have a tillAnA in Sankarabharanam which he classifies as Adi but goes on to add that it is actually the dEshAdi 'with a visarjitam and three kAdai (taTTu)'. I have provided a link to a youtube video which has this tillana sung by Radha Viswanathan, MS's daughter, where she employs the dEshAdi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiWyZLKLCA8

RaviSri: Thanks for the link. That shows clearly what the desAdi kriya is and also answers my question 'how many cycles of desAdi' for an Adi cycle. Answer is 'One'. It is a two kaLai 4 beat thalam. If we want to map it to Chathusra Ekam, it will be a Chatusra Ekam with atIta eduppu ( with the veechu as the first beat ).

With respect to this point about 'gambhIram of the veechu', I can reconcile that in a similar fashion as how a western music conductor is supposed to communicate emphasis/aesthetics through changes in his hand motions.. That is, those kriyas can be artistically linked to musical qualities rather than being a mere beat keeping device. Veechu is interpreted as an indication of Gambiram and if it coincides with a major stress point, it fits better. Fine.

If that is the criteria, then in this thillana, the first 'Dheem' nicely falls on the veechu ( let us agree as given that it provides gambhIram ) and so is the 'tha..' of the second line.. But there is a cost. The other major stress point, 'Na..' is in the finger count and the usual gambIram that is associated with it is lost.

There are many ways to restore it.

1) Keep it as a single kaLai desAdi so all the major gambIram points fall on the Veechu.

2) The single kaLai Adi with aTita eduppu also suffices since those gambIram points fall on the first beat and the 5th beat which is usually the pada garbam/arudi/punch landing point. It also gives us the familiar Purvanga/Uttaranga distinction of a single line of the composition while mapping the Gambiram inherent in the composition with the 1st and 5th beat. ( I realize that this is not in line with my 'keep it simple but no simpler' thinking but keeping it with in familiar and existing themes has some benefit )

3) The 'keep it simple but no simpler' principle provides the best answer in my opinion. It is a two kaLai two beat thala with atIta eduppu. All gambirams and related aesthetics are preserved while keeping the complexity to the minimum. If we want to preserve the desAdi idea that Veechu needs to map to a strong stress point ( gambIram ), then the thala is a Veechu followed by a count ( in two kaLai ), whereby all the gambIram points fall on the Veechu. This one will take two cycles to come in sync with traditional desAdi cycle and 4 cycles to come in sync with single kAlai Adi cycle.

4) If the two kaLai feel is not important, then a simple 2 beat single kAlai thala works as well, with the song starting between the second and first beat.

Try all the four alternate methods and see which ones feels most satisfying to you.