Indian Music

Indian music is most unlike that concept of music in the West. It is very difficult for a Westerner to appreciate it without a lengthy introduction and much time spend in listening.

The two main forms of Indian music are the southern Carnatic and the northern Hindustani traditions. The basic difficulty is that there is no harmony in the Western sense. The music has two basic elements, the tala and the raga. Tala is the rhythm and is characterised by the number of beats. Teental is a tala of 16 beats. The audience follows the tala by clapping at the appropriate beat which in teental is at one, five and 13. There is no clap at the beat of nine since that is the Khali or ‘empty section’ indicated by a wave of the hand.

Just as tala is the rhythm, so is raga the melody; just as there are a number of basic talas so there are many set ragas. The classical Indian music group consists of three musicians is impossible since there is not the harmony that a Western orchestra provides-each musician selects their own tala and raga. The players then zoom off in their chosen directions, as dictated by the tala and the raga selected, and, to the audience’s delight, meet every one in a while before again diverging.

Yehudi Menuhin, who has devoted much time and energy to understanding Indian music, suggests that it is much like Indian society; a group of individuals not working together but every once in a while meeting at some common point. Western music is analogous to Western democratic societies, a group of individuals 9the orchestra) who each surrender part of their freedom to the harmony of the whole.

Although Indian classical music has one of the longest continuous histories of any musical form, the music had never, until quite recently, been recorded in any written notation. Furthermore, within the basic framework set by the tala and the raga, the musicians improvise-providing variations on the basic melody and rhythm.

Best known of the Indian instruments are the sitar and the tabla. The sitar is the large stringed instrument popularised by Ravi Shankar in the West-and which more than a few Westerners have discovered is more than just slightly difficult to tune. This is the instrument with which the soloist plays the raga. Other stringed instruments are the sarod (which is plucked) or the sarangi (which is played with a bow). The tabla, a twin drum rather like a Western bongo, provides the tala. The drone, which runs on two basic notes, is provided by the oboe-like shehnai or the tampura.