‘Carnatic music’ (known also as karnAtaka sangItam) is a form of Indian classical music, which primarily enjoys a following in Southern India, the other classical music variety being Hindustani Music, which is more popular in Northern India. The term ‘Carnatic Music’ is an anglicized form of Karnataka Sangeetham, the traditional name of the music of South India.

Carnatic music is of a Melodic music form and is typically a monophonic song with improvised variations. It is one of the world’s oldest and richest musical traditions. It is primarily a vocal form of music; most compositions are written to be sung, and even when played on instruments, they are meant to be performed in a singing style. Almost all songs are devotional in nature, being addressed to one of the many Hindu deities.

As with all Indian classical music, the two main components of Carnatic music are raga, the melodic modes, and tala, the rhythmic pattern. There are 72 basic scales of the octave, known as melakarta ragas. On the rhythmic patterns, there are many classical systems like the suladi saptha talas and ashtottara shata talas. The former consists of 35 possible rhymic patterns and the latter 108 possible rhythmic patterns. A subset of the suladi saptha tala system is in common practice today.

History of Carnatic music

Carnatic music developed gradually from the ancient musical traditions of South India, upon which Vedic learning from the Sama Veda (literally, The Divine Song, one of the four Vedas) had an important influence. The Yajur-Veda, which mainly consists of sacrificial procedures, mentions the veena as an accompaniment to vocal recitations during the sacrifices. The chants evolved into two main notes with two accents forming the first concept of the tetrachord (four notes). Three more notes were added to the original tetrachord resulting in the first full scale of seven notes. There is also a long tradition of music in ancient Tamil literature, which followed the Pann system, a precursor to the Raga system. From the thirteenth century Carnatic music began to evolve into its current form. Unlike Hindustani music, Carnatic music was not deeply influenced by the Islamic invasions of North India, instead, it assimilated the centuries old traditions of Ancient Tamil music.

The great composer Purandara Dasa is known as the ‘Sangita Pitamaha’ or ‘Patriarch of Carnatic music’. Carnatic music saw renewed growth during Vijayanagar Empire by the Kannada Haridasa movement of Vyasatirtha, Purandara Dasa, Kanakadasa and others. Purandara Dasa laid out the fundamental tenets and framework for teaching Carnatic music. The learning structure is arranged in the increasing order of the complexity. The lessons start with the learning of the Solfege (sarali varisai).

Great composers

One of the earliest and prominent composers in South India was Purandara Dasa (1480 - 1564), who was a wandering singer. Purandara Dasa is said to have composed around 475,000 compositions. Most of these songs, written in Kannada, have been lost. Purandara Dasa’s compositions were a source of inspiration to the later composers such as Tyagaraja. Purandara Dasa defined the basic lessons of Carnatic music by structuring Swaravalis (graded exercises), Alankaras (exercises based on the seven talas) and composed several Gitams or simple songs for novice students. He introduced the Raga Mayamalavagowla as the first scale to be learnt by a beginner. However, the original tunes of his compositions are currently unavailable. Owing to his contribution to Carnatic Music he is referred to as the Patriarch of Carnatic Music or ‘Karnataka Sangeetha Pitamaha’.

Muthu Thandavar (1525-1625), Arunachala Kavi (1712-1779) and Marimuttha Pillai (1717-1787) are referred to as the Tamil Trinity and authored some of the earliest composition in Carnatic music. Muthu Thandavar was an early architect of the Carnatic Kriti format, which is in vogue today. Tyagaraja (1759? - 1847), Muthuswami Dikshitar (1776 - 1827) and Syama Sastri (1762 - 1827) are regarded as the Trinity of Carnatic music. Prominent composers prior to the trinity include Vyasatirtha, Purandaradasa, Kanakadasa, Gopaladasa. Other prominent composers are Annamacharya, Oottukkadu Venkata Kavi, Swathi Thirunal, Narayana Teertha, Mysore Sadashiva Rao, Patnam Subramania Iyer, Poochi Srinivasa Iyengar, Mysore Vasudevacharya, Muthiah Bhagavathar, Kotiswara Iyer, Gopalakrishna Bharathi, the Tanjore Quartet, Papanasam Sivan and Subramania Bharathiyar.

Composers of Carnatic music were often inspired by religious devotion and were usually scholars proficient in one or more of the following languages: Kannada, Sanskrit, Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu. They usually included a signature, called a ‘mudra‘, in their compositions. For example, all songs by Tyagaraja have the word ‘tyAgarāja’ in them, all songs by Muthuswami Dikshitar (who composed mostly in Sanskrit) have the words ‘guru guha’ in them, songs by Syama Sastri have the words ‘Syama Krishna’ in them, Purandaradasa, who composed in Kannada, used ‘purandara vitala’, Gopalakrishna Bharathi used the signature “Gopalakrishnan” and Papanasam Sivan used ‘Ramadasan’.

Nature of Carnatic music

Sruti

Sruti in Indian music is used in two different contexts. The first use of Sruti is the approximate equivalent of a tonic (or less precisely a key) in Western music; it is the note from which all the others are derived. The second use of the word Sruti is in the sense of graded pitches in an octave. Traditionally, there were twenty-two srutis in Carnatic music which are used in the context of specific ragas, but over the years several of them have converged.

Swara

The swaras (solfege) of Carnatic music is “sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-da-ni” (compare with the Hindustani sargam: sa-re-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni). These names are abbreviations of the longer names shadja, rishabha, gandhara, madhyama, panchama, dhaivata and nishada. Unlike other music systems, every member of the solfege, may have many variants, now upto three values. The exceptions are shadja and panchama (the tonic and the dominant in Western music), which have only one form, and ‘madhyama’ (the subdominant), which has only two forms. In one scale, or raga, there is usually only one variant of each note present, except in light ragas, such as Behag, in which, for artistic effect, there may be two, one ascending (in the arohana) and another descending (in the avarohana). A raga can usually have five, six or seven notes on the ascent, and five, six or seven notes on the descent.

Raga system

A raga in Carnatic music prescribes a set of rules for building a melody. It specifies rules for movements up (arohana) and down (avarohana), the musical scale, which notes should figure more and which notes should be used more sparingly, which notes may be sung with gamaka, phrases to be used, phrases to be avoided, and so on.

In Carnatic music, the sampurna ragas (those with all seven notes in their scales) are classified into a system called the melakarta system, which groups them according to the kinds of notes present in them and the sequence of the notes. There are seventy two melakarta ragas, thirty six of whose subdominant is a perfect fourth from the tonic, thirty six of whose subdominant is an augmented fourth from the tonic. The ragas are grouped into sets of six, called chakras (”wheels”, though actually segments in the conventional representation) grouped according to the supertonic and mediant scale degrees. There is a system known as the Katapayadi sankhya to determine the name of Melakarta Raga and its numerical position in the system.

Ragas may be divided into two classes: janaka ragas (”parent ragas”) and janya ragas (”child ragas”). Janaka raga is synonymous with melakarta (because the melakarta ragas each have seven notes in their scale, and use each note only once). Janya ragas are subclassified into various categories themselves.

Tala system

Tala is an aesthetic partitioning of time, usually in rhythmical patterns which have an artistic relation to the rhythmical structure of a composition. It is considered to be an integral part of a musical composition. Each composition of Carnatic music is set to a specific tala.

Carnatic music singers usually keep the beat by moving their hands in specified patterns to keep time. Tala is formed with three basic parts called laghu, dhrta, and anudhrta, where laghu is a pattern with the first akshara (a basic unit of time) marked with the palm face down, followed by a variable number of aksharas marked with successive fingers starting with the little finger. A dhruta is a pattern of two aksharas, with the first akshara marked with the palm face down, and the second with the face up. This is notated ‘O’ (i.e. tapping once with your palm facing down and once with it facing up.). An anudhrta is a single aksharam, marked with the palm face down and notated ‘U’ (i.e. tapping once with your palm facing down). Only these units are commonly used.

There are seven kinds of talas which can be formed from the laghu, dhrta, and anudhrta:

* Dhruva tala 1 0 1 1 * Matya tala 1 0 1 * Rupaka tala 0 1 * Jhampa tala 1 U 0 * Triputa tala 1 0 0 * Ata tala 1 1 0 0 * Eka tala 1

The laghu can be set to 5 different jathis or variations, called tisra (three), chatusra (four), khanda (five), misra (seven) and sankeerna (nine), the most common being chatusra.

How many fingers must be lowered in a laghu is determined by the jathi, a number showing how many fingers to lower. For numbers greater than five, the sixth finger is the same as the little finger. Five jathis times seven kinds gives thirty-five basic talas.

Apart from the three basic units of the tala such as laghu, dhrta and anudhrta, there are other units which can also be used to enhance the complexity of the tala structure.

Compositions

Compositions in Carnatic Music are of different types:

Improvisation

There are four main types of improvisation in Carnatic music:

* Raga Alapana: This is usually performed before a song. It is, as you may expect, always sung in the raga of the song. It is a slow improvisation with no rhythm, and is supposed to tune the listener’s mind to the appropriate ragam by reminding him/her of the specific nuances, before the singer plunges into the song. Theoretically, this ought to be the easiest type of improvisation, since the rules are so few, but in fact, it takes much skill to sing a pleasing, comprehensive (in the sense of giving a “feel for the raga”) and, most importantly, original ragam.

* Niraval: This is usually performed by the more advanced concert artists and consists of singing one or two lines of a song repeatedly, but with improvised elaborations.

*Kalpanaswaram The most elementary type of improvisation, usually taught before any other form of improvisation. It consists of singing a pattern of notes which finishes on the beat and the note just before the beat and the note on which the song starts. The swara pattern should adhere to the original raga’s swara pattern, which is called as “arohana-avarohana”

*Taanam: This form of improvisation was originally developed for the veena and consists of repeating the word anantham (”endless”) in an improvised tune. The name ‘thaanam’ comes from a false splitting of ‘anantham’ repeated. When the word ‘anantham’ is repeated, i.e. ‘anantham-anantham’, the laws of sandhi dictate that the consonant at the end of the first word be dropped, hence “ananthaanantham” When the rule is applied to a long string of ananthams, you get ‘ananthaananthaananthaananthaa...’ which got falsely split as “thaananthaananthaanan...”, or ‘thaanamthaanamthaanam...’.

*Ragam Tanam Pallavi: This is a composite form of improvisation. It consists of Raga, Thana, then a line sung twice, and Niraval. After Niraval, the line is sung again, twice, then sung once at half the speed, then twice at regular speed, then four times at twice the speed.

Concerts

Carnatic music concerts are usually performed by a small ensemble of musicians. The group usually has a vocalist, a primary instrumentalist, and a percussionist. Primary instruments are usually string instruments, such as the ‘veena’ and the violin, although wind instruments such the flute may also be used. Although Carnatic music concerts have been traditionally vocal recitals, in recent years, purely instrumental concerts have become popular.

The vocalist is supported by many instruments. The tambura, the most common kind of drone instrument, is traditionally used at concerts to remind the singer of the tonic, so that the singer may stay in tune throughout the performance. Tambura is increasingly being replaced by the more compact Sruti box.

The usual interacting and active accompaniments are Violin (first adopted into Carnatic music in the early 19th century by Baluswami Dikshitar, a brother of Muthuswami Dikshitar and Vadivelu of the Tanjore Quartet). Mridangam, a two-sided percussion instrument, and Ghatam, a hollow ceramic pot or a Kanjira, an instrument resembling a tambourine. One other possible accompaniment is the Morsing (Jew’s harp). Besides playing along with the main vocalist, the violinist also gets the opportunity to take part in the improvisation. The violinist is expected to play both the melody and the mathematical aspects of the vocalist. The vocalist and the violinist take turns while elaborating or while exhibiting creativity in sections like Niraval or Kalpana swara.

Percussion instruments, such as the mridangam, ghatam, kanjira are used to help the singer in keeping the beat, but they may also improvise. The morsing is also seen in some concerts and it accompanies the main percussion instrument.

Concert content

Contemporary Carnatic concerts (called a kutcheri) last approximately three hours. In the concert hall, the performers sit on a slightly elevated stage. Accompanists like violin and veena sit to the main performer’s left, and percussion instruments sit on the other side of the main performer facing the instrumentalist.

Carnatic concerts comprise of a number of varied compositions. Carnatic songs are composed in a particular raga, which means that they do not deviate from the notes in the raga. Each composition is set with specific notes and beats, but performers improvise extensively. Improvisation occurs in the melody of the composition as well as in using the notes to expound the beauty of the raga. Concerts usually begin with a varnam. This piece is composed with an emphasis on swaras of the raga. It is lively and fast to get the audience’s attention. Varnams also have lyrics, the sahityam. Immediately following the Varnam, there is usually a song in praise of the god Ganesha.

After the varnam and the Ganesha kriti, the artist sings longer compositions called kritis. Without exception, these compositions are devotional in nature. Each Kriti stick to one specific raga, although some kritis are composed with more than one ragas; these are known as ragamalika (a garland of ragas).

Performers begin the main compositions with a section called raga alapana exploring the raga. In this, they use akAram (essentially, using the words aa, ri, na, ta, etc. instead of swaras) to slowly elaborate the notes and flow of the raga. This begins slowly and builds to a crescendo, and finally establishes a complicated exposition of the raga that shows the performer’s skill. All of this is done without any rhythmic accompaniment. Then the melodic accompaniment (violin or veena), expounds the raga. Experienced listeners can identify many ragas after they hear just a few notes. With the raga thus established, the song begins, sung usually with lyrics. In this, the accompaniment (usually violin, sometimes veena) performs along with the main performer and the percussion (such as a mridangam). In the next stage of the song, the performer sings the swaras of the raga separately (as sa ri ga, etc.) to the beat. The performer must improvise a string of swaras in any octave according to the rules of the raga and return to beginning of the cycle of beats smoothly, joining the swaras with a phrase selected from the kriti. The violin performs these alternately with the main performer. In very long strings of swara, the performers must calculate their notes accurately to ensure that they stick to the raga, have no awkward pauses and lapses in the beat of the song, and create a complex pattern of notes that an experienced audience can follow. The main composition of any concert has a section at this time for the percussion to perform solo (called the tani aavartanam). The percussion performers perform complex patterns of rhythm and display their skill. If multiple percussion instruments are employed, they engage in a beautiful rhythmic dialogue until the main performer picks up the melody once again.

Some experienced artists may do a Ragam Thanam Pallavi instead of a Kriti as the main song of the concert. A Ragam Thanam Pallavi sometimes comprises of what is called a koraipu where the vocalist changes a few swarasthanas in the scale of the raga and elucidates other ragas in the vicinity of this raga scale.

Following the main composition, the concert continues with shorter and lighter songs. Some of the types of songs performed towards the end of the concerts are tillanas, bhajans. Every concert that is the last of the day ends with a mangalam, a thankful prayer and conclusion to the musical event.

Audience

The audience of a typical concert, generally called “Rasikas“, usually have a decent understanding of Carnatic music. It is also typical to see the audience tapping out the tala, in sync with the artist’s performance. As and when the artist exhibits creativity, the audience acknowledge it by clapping their hands. With experienced artists, towards the middle of the concert, requests start flowing in. The artist usually plays the request and it helps in exhibiting the artist’s broad knowledge of the several thousand kritis that are in existence.

Learning Carnatic music

Carnatic music is traditionally taught according to the system formulated by Purandara Dasa. This involves Swaravalis (graded exercises), Alankaras (exercises based on the seven talas) and Gitas or simple songs. The student then continues to learn Kritis. It typically takes several years of learning before a student is adept enough to perform at a concert.

Since the late 20th century, there has been some attempts to create Carnatic music grades by music conservatories, which provide standardized tests between different Carnatic teachers. Although such attempts have not met with great popularity in India, standardized exams are often used in countries, like Canada, Great Britain, and France, where there is a high concentration of South Asian expatriates. One of the most widely recognized conservatories of music, is the Toronto-based Thamil Isai Kalaamanram which was formed in 1992. In 2005, it held exams for over 2000 applicants ranging from grades 1 to 7.

Notations

Notation is not a new concept in Indian music. However, Carnatic music continued to be transmitted orally for centuries without being written down. The disadvantage with this system was that if one wanted to learn about a kīrtanam composed, for example, by Purandara Dasa, it involved the difficult task of finding a person from Purandara Dasa’s lineage of students.

Written notation of Carnatic music was revived in the late 17th century and early 18th century, which coincided with rule of Shahaji II in Tanjore. Copies of Shahaji’s musical manuscripts are still available at the Saraswati Mahal Library in Tanjore and they give us an idea of the music and its form. They contain snippets of solfege to be used when performing the mentioned ragas.

Modern artists

Vocalists

Three of the art’s greatest living (albeit ageing) performers are Mangalampalli Balamurali Krishna (known for his amazing voice and style), D.K.Pattammal (also known as Pallavi Pattammal, for being the first female to render a Ragam Tanam Pallavi and Ragamalika Swaras sequence on stage) and Madurai T.N.Seshagopalan. M.S.Subbulakshmi, who enthralled audiences across language barriers, is usually credited with popularizing the Carnatic tradition outside South India. M.L.Vasantakumari, who belonged to the G.N.Balasubramaniam school (popular for specialising bruga sangathis), is especially famous for effortlessly and speedily rendering manodharma elements, without losing the beauty of her own voice, or music. It so happened that M.L.Vasanthakumari, M.S.Subbulakshmi and D.K.Pattammal were referred to as the female trinity of the time, signifying the quality and popularity of their Carnatic music, throughout the world. Legendary singer belonging to the Dhanammal school of music T.Brinda was known for her gamaka laden interpretations of core carnatic ragams. Doyens like Alathur Venkatesa Iyer, Mysore Vasudevachar, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar, Mysore Tirumakudalu Chowdiah, and Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer, Madurai Mani Iyer, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Prof. Mysore V.Ramarathnam, S.Ramanathan, T.K.Rangachari, Sirkazhi Govindarajan, K.J.Yesudas, M.D.Ramanathan, Vairamangalam Lakshmi Narayanan, Manakkal Rangarajan and Thanjavur Sankara Iyer created a golden era for Carnatic Music. Jon B Higgins (”Higgins bhagavatar”) was one of the few Westerners to have learnt and excelled in Carnatic music.

There are many contemporary vocalists. Vocalists who belong to both this category and the above category include; M.Balamuralikrishna , Manakkal Rangarajan, P.S. Narayanaswamy, R.Vedavalli, Nedunuri Krishnamoorthy, T.N.Seshagopalan and K.J.Yesudas. Other contemporary vocalists include; Pantula Rama, Nithyashree Mahadevan (grand-daughter of D.K.Pattammal and Palghat Mani Iyer), Maharajapuram Ramachandran (son of Maharajapuram Sanathanam), Sirkazhi Sivachidambaram(son of Sirkazhi Govindarajan), Rajkumar Bharathi (great grandson of Subramania Bharathi), T.V.Sankaranarayanan (nephew of Madurai Mani Iyer), Trichur V. Ramachandran & Charumathi Ramachandran, T.M.Krishna & Sangeetha Sivakumar, O.S.Arun (also a Hindusthani Music artist), O.S.Thyagarajan, Sudha Raghunathan, Neyveli Santhanagopalan, Aruna Sairam, S.Sowmya, Vijay Siva, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, R.Ganesh, Bombay Jayashree andUnni Krishnan.

Instrumentalists

Mangalampalli Balamurali Krishna is a multifaceted musician and instrumentalist equipped with great talent in playing instruments like violin, viola, mridangam, ghatam, kanjira, harmonium, flute, etc.

Palghat Mani Iyer, Umayalpuram Sivaraman, T.K.Murthy, Kamalakar Rao, Mannargudi Easwaran, Kolanka Venkataraju, Mavelikkara Velukkutty Nair, Guruvayur Dorai and Karaikkudi Mani excel in the art of Mridangam playing .

E Gayathri is a prominent performer on the Veena. T.H.Vinayakram, T.H.Subhashchandran and N. Govindarajan are world-renowned Ghatam players. Among violinists, T.N.Krishnan, M.S.Gopalakrishnan, Lalgudi G Jayaraman, M. Chandrasekharan, M S N Murthy, Mysore Manjunath, Mysore Nagaraj belong to the classical tradition. Virtuosos like Kunnakkudi Vaidyanathan, L.Shankar, L.Athira Krishna, A Kanyakumari and V.S.Narasimhan have internationalised the Carnatic violin music while relying on the native South Indian classical idiom. Maestros like N.Ramani, S Shashank, Thyagarajan and Mala Chandhrashekharan are some of the famous flute players. Ravi Kiran is the premier performer on the Chitra Veena which is also known as “Gottu Vadhyam”. Recent additions to the plethora of instruments used in Carnatic music were the Mandolin, the Saxophone and the Electric Guitar. These were pioneered by U Srinivas, known for his skills on the Mandolin, Kadri Gopalnath, known for his skills on the Saxophone and R Prasanna, known for his adaptation of the electric guitar to Carnatic music.


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