A Bit of Basic Stuff

People often ask, how do you identify the raga a song or a piece of music is based on? We will try to
answer this question by going into a bit of music theory in this blog post and others that follow. In
upcoming blog posts, we will take examples of classical compositions sung or played by classical
musicians, and film songs based on the raga and try to spot their similarities and differences in the
way the raga is used. What follows is a brief summary of the terminology and concepts that are
fundamental to ICM. This is not intended to be an exhaustive or in-depth treatment of the subject. I
would urge you to view the videos on RagaQuest, where the fundamental concepts are explained in
greater detail using animated videos. Here is one, explaining the basic concept of raga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AhlneXRgxo

If you are already well versed with the terminology and essential concepts of ICM and can easily
recognize the raga or scale of a song, you may skip this section, but I would earnestly invite you to go
through it anyway and share your feedback as a comment to this post. Those readers that are new
to these concepts can use this blog post as reference material and come back to it to refresh their
understaning when needed.

Raga (राग, also spelt raag) is a term that is so central to Indian Classical Music (ICM) that ICM is often
referred to as Raga Music, especially in the West. Almost all genres of music in the world use 12
swara (notes). In Indian music they are: 7 shuddha or pure swara which we will write in upper case
(Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, and Ni, i.e., सा, रे , ग, म, प, ध, नी), 4 komal or flats which we will write in
lower case (re, ga, dha and ni, for which there are various notations used by different authors in the
Hindi and Marathi script, e.g. रे l, गl , धl , नीl) and one teevra or sharp, which we willl write with an
apostrophe (Ma’, generally written as म’ ) A raga is basically a melodic theme which has a definite
set of rules about which of the 12 notes are used and which are omitted in the ascending and
descending order (aroha and avaroha) in the raga. The other important defining feature of every
raga is called its chalan (चलन) or pakad (पकड) which is a set of melodic phrases that define the
“tune” of the raga. Ragas were not conceptualised or designed in a vacuum but originated in tunes
of Vedic chants recited in temples, and in folk music from the mountains and rivers that celebrate
nature and the seasons of the year and so on. There are ragas that are performed in the rainy season
(the Malhar series of ragas) and others that are performed in spring (raga Basant and Bahar etc.)
Many ragas got modified along the way because of Moghul cultural influences during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Karnatak music has also had a great deal of influence on North Indian
Classical music, and in fact quite a few ragas have been taken from Karnatak music and modified a
little to suit the ICM genre.There are hundreds of ragas in existence – I have seen a list containing
over 600 raga names, many of which are jod ragas, i.e., combinations of 2 (or in a few cases, more)
ragas. To my knowledge less than 100 are performed in the present day.

A bit about the difference in the way a raga is presented in a classical music concert as opposed to in
a film song. The duration of a classical presentation of a raga can range from 3 minutes to over an
hour. The 3 minute format goes back to the age of vinyl records before the coming of CDs and now
digitally recorded music, where the “Standard Play” records were restricted to a 3 minute duration.
In a classical presentation the artist ususally presents 2 or sometimes 3 compositions in the chosen
raga, the second and third compositions rendered in a faster tempo than the first. The composition
is used as a sort of a seed to improvise, expand and develop the raga and show its many facets. A
film song, on the other hand is ususally from 3 minutes to 6 minutes long, and is fully pre-composed
and rendered exactly as the composer composed it. For a more detailed description of a typical
classical concert, do refer to the videos in RagaQuest in the chapters that deal with vocal and
instrumental performance. Here is a concept video explaining the structure of a typical classical
music performance.

Chandrakantha.com/raga_raag/film_song_raga/kalyan1.shtml

The defining features of the raga (the notes used in ascending/descending order and the chalan of
the raga) are religiously adhered to in a classical concert, and a performer breaking any of the rules
would draw severe disapproval from kowledgeable listeners and critics, and would never be taken
seriously. No artist who has been trained under a knowledgeable guru would ever be caught doing
this.

On the other hand film music composers, even when they intend to compose a song in a particular
raga, adhere to the rules of the raga in large part but use a “creative musical license” to break the
chalan of the raga, and often add notes not permitted in the raga to embellish the melody. Some of
the greatest film music composers who have in fact been classically trained have done that and
gifted film music with some unforgettable masterpieces. We will take examples of such
masterpieces in this blog.

I should mention in passing that another concept called thaat (थाट) is sometimes confused with the
term raga. Thaat is a system of classification of ragas proposed by the musicologist V.N.Bhatkhande
in the early twentieth century, in which ragas are slotted into one of the 10 thaats depending upon
the combination of shuddha, komal, and teevra notes used in the raga. The system is used more by
academicians than practitioners, and its use is often questioned by many. A thaat is never, indeed it
cannot be performed as it is only a system of classification.Another system of classification based on
the chalan of ragas is called the ragang (रागाांग) system and is considered to be more useful as
compared to the thaat system. We need not bother ourselves too much with these terms for our
purpose.

The other two important “dimensions” of ICM are laya written as लय (tempo) and tala written as
ताल (loosely translated, rhythm). As mentioned above, a classical concert typically starts with the
artist performing a composition in the chosen raga in a slow tempo (vilambit laya, विलांवित लय in
Hindi) ususally following it up with one or sometimes two compositions in faster tempos (drut or
jalad, द्रुत or जलद) How slow is slow, depends upn factors like the raga being presented, the artist’s
temperament and even the Gharana of the artist (more about gharanas below).

Rhythm is an inseparable part of any music in the world, and ICM is no exception. We will take
examples of the pure magic created with rhythm by composers in the songs they composed for
films, in upcoming posts, but first a bit about the concept of tala. The concept of tala is as central to
ICM as raga. A classical music performance, whether it is vocal or instrumental is almost always
accompanied by a rhythm instrument, generally a tabla (तिला) or pakhavaj (पखिाज or sometimes
pronounced as पखािज). A tala is a rhythmic pattern consisting of a fixed number of beats (मात्रा)
played on a rhythm instrument. The tabla and pakhavaj both have their own “language” consisting
of syllables called bol (िोल) like Dha, Dhin, Ta, Tin (धा, वधन, ता, वतन) etc. Like ragas, talas have evolved
over centuries and the tabla and pakhavaj are used not just as an accompanying instrument, but are
performed solo as well. There are dozens of talas, each with its own pattern and number of beats
(16, 12, 6, 10, 14 or 7 beats being the most common). Film music, and other forms of light and folk
music use rhythm instruments like dholak, duf, khanjira, etc. (ढोलक, डफ, खांवजरा) and many others with
variations of talas used in classical music. They tend to be more lively and faster than the ones used
in classical music. The most common talas used in film music are keherwa and its variations (8
beats), dadra and its variations (6 beats), rupak (7 beats), teentaal (16 beats) and rarely jhaptaal (10
beats). We will take examples of film songs in all these different talas, and see how musicans
embellish the rhythm with laggis, todas etc. (लग्गी, तोडा).

Finally, a very brief note on gharanas (घराना) since it is a term that is peculiar to Indian classical music
and heard often, and a lot of people are curious about it. As mentioned earlier, our music has
evoved over several centuries, and there were influential musicians who evolved their own style of
performing, and had students who adopted the vocal or instrumental styles of their gurus. These
styles came to represent the gharana, or school founded by that guru. Gharanas are typically named
after the village or town that the founder of the gharana lived and taught in. Examples of the most
popular gharana are Gwalior, Agra, Jaipur, Kirana, Mewati, etc. The style of the gharana is
recognisable to the trained ear even today even though there has been a great deal of give and take
between gharanas. And gharanas have spawned other gharanas when a stalwart from one gharana
would evolve his own style, a little different from the orginal. I like to think of this as a “fork”, to
borrow a term used in software for a branch or offshoot coming out of a root.

This should suffice as an introduction to Indian Classical Music for our purpose of looking at ICM in
film songs. Hope you found this useful.

Notations:

Wherever we look at the notation of a piece of music, we will use the following conventions:

1. A swara in upper case (e.g. Re) denotes a shuddha (शुद्ध) swara, and a swara in lower case
(e.g. re) denotes a komal (कोमल) swara. “ma” means shuddha ma and Ma means teevra Ma.
2. A dot below a swara (e.g. Nị) means that it is in the lower octave (Mandra Saptak). A dot
above a swara (e.g. Sa͘) means that it is in the higher octave (Taar saptak).
3. A double breve ( ͜ ) between 2 swaras denotes a glide (मींड) between the two swaras. A Ϩ
indicates a sustain on the note. A swara in brackets () means that it is touched (कण स्िर)
before or after the main note.