The tradition of music is ages old.
Mentions have been made about it in the Vedas.

There have been several legends about the development of the Indian music. However, till now, the exact origin of Indian music is not really known, but it is definite that singing has been a cultural tradition of the past. Since how long it is being practiced is still a mystery. The legends are evocative of the fact that music has a lot of importance in the culture of India. In India, music is a way to express the devotion and the unconditional love for God.

Indian Music forms and styles

Dhrupad is a vocal genre in Hindustani classical music, said to be the oldest still in use in that musical tradition. Its name is derived from the words "dhruva" (fixed) and "pada" (words). The term may denote both the verse form of the poetry and the style in which it is sung.

Tansen - pioneer of Indian Classical Music

Dhrupad Maestro : Ustad Dagarji

However the musical background of dhrupad is commonly thought to have a long history, traceable back to the Vedas themselves. The Yugala Shataka of Shri Shribhatta in the Nimbarka Sampradaya, written in 1294 CE, contains lyrics of similar fashion. Swami Haridas (also in the Nimbarka Sampradaya), the guru of Tansen, was a well known dhrupad singer.

Khayal
Khyal is the modern genre of classical singing in North India. Its name comes from an Arabic word meaning "imagination". It is thought to have developed out of the qawwal singing style. It appeared more recently than dhrupad, is a more free and flexible form, and it provides greater scope for improvisation. Like all Indian classical music, khyal is modal, with a single melodic line and no harmonic parts. The modes are called raga, and each raga is a complicated framework of melodic rules.

Khyal bases itself on a repertoire of short songs (two to eight lines); a khyal song is called a bandish. Every singer generally renders the same bandish differently, with only the text and the raga remaining the same. Khyal bandishes are typically composed in a variant of Urdu/Hindi, and sometimes in Persian, Marathi or Punjabi, and these compositions cover diverse topics, such as romantic or divine love, praise of kings or gods, the seasons, dawn and dusk, and the pranks of Krishna, and they can have symbolism and imagery . The bandish is divided into two parts — the sthayi (or asthayi) and the antara. The sthayi often uses notes from the lower octave and the lower half of the middle octave, while the antara ascends to the tonic of the upper octave and beyond before descending and linking back to the sthayi . The singer uses the composition as raw material for improvisation, accompanied by a harmonium or bowed string instrument such as the sarangi or violin playing off the singer's melody line, a set of two hand drums (the tabla), and adrone in the background. The role of the accompanist playing the melody-producing instrument is to provide continuity when the singer pauses for breath, using small variations of the singer's phrases or parts thereof. While there is a wide variety of rhythmic patterns that could be used by the percussionist, khyal performances typically use Ektaal, Jhoomra, Jhaptaal, Tilwada, Teentaal, Rupak, and Adachautaal .

A typical khyal performance uses two songs — the bada khyal or great khyal, in slow tempo (vilambit laya), comprises most of the performance, while the chhota khyal (small khyal), in fast tempo (drut laya), is used as a finale and is usually in the same raga but a different taal . The songs are sometimes preceded by improvised alap to sketch the basic raga structure without drum accompaniment; alap is given much less room in khyal than in dhrupad.

As the songs are short, and performances long (half an hour or more), the lyrics lose some of their importance. Improvisation is added to the songs in a number of ways: for example improvising new melodies to the words, using the syllables of the songs to improvise material (bol-baant, bol-taans), singing the names of the scale degrees — sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha and ni (sargam) — or simply interspersing phrases sung on vowels, usually the vowel A, akaar taans. Taans are one of the major distinguishing features of the khyal . Now and then, the singer returns to the song, especially its first line, as a point of reference. Besides the vilambit (slow) and drut (fast) tempos, a performance may include ati-vilambit (ultra-slow), madhya (medium speed) and ati-drut (super-fast) tempos. Song forms such as taranas, thumris or tappas are sometimes used to round off a khyal performance.

Khayal was popularized by Niyamat Khan (a.k.a. Sadarang) and his nephew Firoz Khan (a.k.a. Adarang), both musicians in the court of Muhammad Shah Rangile (1719–1748). It seems likely that khyal already existed at the time, although perhaps not in the present form . The compositions of Sadarang and Adarang employ the theme of Hindi love-poetry. The khyal of this period also acquired the dignity of Dhrupad and the manner of the veena in its glide or meend, plus a number of musical alankars that were introduced into the body of the composition[citation needed]. The gharana system arose out of stylistic rendering of the khyal by various subsequent generations of musicians. The gharanas have distinct styles of presenting the khyal — how much to emphasize and how to enunciate the words of the composition, when to sing the sthayi and antara, whether to sing an unmetered alap in the beginning, what kinds of improvisations to use, how much importance to give to the rhythmic aspect, and so on.

With India united into a country from various scattered princely states, with royal courts and the zamindari system abolished, and with modern communications and recording technology, stylistic borders have become blurred and many singers today have studied with teachers from more than one gharana. This used to be uncommon, and a few decades ago teachers used to forbid students to even hear other gharana singers perform, not allowing them to buy records or listen to the radio. Today, as always, a singer is expected to develop an individual style, albeit one that is demonstrably linked to tradition.

A raga (Sanskrit rāga राग, literally "colour, hue" but also "beauty, harmony, melody"; also spelled raag, rag, ragam) is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.

 

 

 

 

 

Khayal Maestro : Pandit Kumar Gandharva

Khayal Maestro : Bharat Ratna Pandit Bhimsen Joshiji

It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made. In the Indian musical tradition, rāgas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons. Indian classical music is always set in a rāga. Non-classical music such as popular Indian film songs or ghazals sometimes use rāgas in their compositions.

The Sanskrit noun rāga is derived from the verbal root rañj "to colour, to dye". It is used in the literal sense of "the act of dyeing", and also "colour, hue, tint", especially "red colour" in the Sanskrit epics. A figurative sense "passion, love, desire, delight" is also found in the Mahabharata.


The specialized sense of "loveliness, beauty", especially of voice or song, emerges in Classical Sanskrit, used by Kalidasa and in the Pancatantra.

The term first occurs in a technical context in the Brihaddeshi (dated ca. 5th to 8th century), where it is described as "a combination of tones which, with beautiful illuminating graces, pleases the people in general".

Many Hindustani (North Indian) rāgas are prescribed for the particular time of a day or a season. When performed at the suggested time, the rāga has its maximum effect. During the monsoon, for example, many of the Malhar group of rāgas, which are associated with the monsoon and ascribed the magical power to bring rain, are performed. However, these prescriptions are not strictly followed, especially since modern concerts are generally held in the evening. There has also been a growing tendency over the last century for North Indian musicians to adopt South Indian rāgas, which do not come with any particular time associated with them. The result of these various influences is that there is increasing flexibility as to when rāgas may be performed.

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Tāla or Taal (Sanskrit tālà, literally a "clap", also transliterated as "tala") is the term used in Indian classical music for the rhythmic pattern of any composition and for the entire subject of rhythm, roughly corresponding to metre in Western music, though closer conceptual equivalents are to be found in other Asian classical systems such as the notion of usul in the theory of Ottoman/Turkish music.

Rhythm in Indian music performs the function of a time counter. A taal is a rhythmic cycle of beats with an ebb and flow of various types of intonations resounded on a percussive instrument. Each such pattern has its own name. Indian classical music has complex, all-embracing rules for the elaboration of possible patterns, though in practice a few taals are very common while others are rare. The most common taal in Hindustani classical music is Teental, acycle of four measures of four beats each.

 

Tabla Maestro : Ustad Zakir Hussain

A taal does not have a fixed tempo and can be played at different speeds. In Hindustani classical music a typical recital of a raga falls into two or three parts categorized by the tempo of the music - Vilambit laya (Slow tempo), Madhya laya (Medium tempo) and Drut laya (Fast tempo). But, although the tempo changes, the fundamental rhythm does not.

Each repeated cycle of a taal is called an avartan. A tala is generally divided into sections (vibhaags), not all of which may have the same number of beats.

The most common instrument for keeping rhythm in Hindustani music is the tabla, while in Carnatic music, it is the mridangam (which is also transliterated as mridang).
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Thumri / Dadra
Thumri is a common genre of semi-classical Indian music.

The text is romantic or devotional in nature, and usually revolves around a girl's love for Krishna. The lyrics are usually in Uttar Pradesh dialects of Hindi called Poorbi and Brij Bhasha. Thumri is characterized by its sensuality, and by a greater flexibility with the raga.

Thumri is also used as a generic name for some other, even lighter, forms such as Dadra, Hori, Kajari, Saavan, Jhoola, and Chaiti, even though each of them has its own structure and content — either lyrical or musical or both — and so the exposition of these forms vary. Like Indian classical music itself, some of these forms have their origin in folk literature and music.

Thumri Queen : Shobha Gurtu


Devotional Music
Devotional Music is to express more Bhakti towards Lord Almighty God.
It is the form to express your feelings towards God.

A Bhajan is any type of Indian devotional song. It has no fixed form: it may be as simple as a mantra or kirtan or as sophisticated as the dhrupad or kriti with music based on classical ragas and talas. It is normally lyrical, expressing love for the Divine. The name, a cognate of bhakti, meaning religious devotion, suggests its importance to the bhakti movement that spread from the south of India throughout the entire subcontinent in the Moghul era.

Anecdotes and episodes from scriptures, the teachings of saints and descriptions of gods have all been the subject of bhajans. The Dhrupad style, Sufi, Qawwali and the kirtan or song in the Haridasi tradition are related to bhajan.



Kabir, Meera, Surdas, Tulsidas, Nanak are notable composers

Sant Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram and Ram Das are notable poets from Maharastra.
(creators of Marathi Abhangs - poems)

Bullehshah famous Sufi saint and poet

Traditions of bhajan such as Nirguni, Gorakhanathi, Vallabhapanthi, Ashtachhap, Madhura-bhakti and the traditional South Indian form Sampradya Bhajan each have their own repertoire and methods of singing.

 

Marathi Natyasangeet

Marathi NatyaSangeet is one of the most popular and very hard singing style in Maharastra. The songs from Marathi Drama are called Marathi Natyasangeet. These songs are from the most popular Drama like Saubhadra, Manapaman which are more than 100 years old Dramas still popular because of their orginal beauty.

Shivkumar's performing style of Natyasangeet is as that of his Guru Shri Prabhakar Karekarjee whose style is more or less compared to Late Master Dinanath Mangueshkar.

Late Master Dinanath Mangueshkar

Indian Instruments used in concerts

 

Harmonium

The harmonium was invented in Paris in the 1840s by Alexandre Debain, though there was concurrent development of similar instruments.[1] Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723–1795), Professor of Physiology at Copenhagen, was credited with the first free-reed to be made in the western world after winning the annual prize in 1780 from the Imperial Academy of St.Petersburg.

During the mid-19th century missionaries brought French-made hand-pumped harmoniums to India. The instrument quickly became popular there: it was portable, reliable and easy to learn. It has remained popular to the present day, and the harmonium remains an important instrument in many genres of Indian music. It is commonly found in Indian homes. Though derived from the designs developed in France, the harmonium was developed further in India in unique ways, such as the addition of drone stops and a scale changing mechanism.

The harmonium was widely accepted in Indian music, particularly Parsi and Marathi stage music, in the late 19th century. By the early 20th century, however, in the context of nationalist movements that sought to depict India as utterly separate from the West, the harmonium came to be portrayed as an unwanted foreigner.

 

 

Harmonium Maestro : Pandit Tulshidas Borkar

Technical concerns with the harmonium included its inability to produce meend(slides between notes) and the fact that, once tuned, it cannot be adjusted in the course of performance.

The former prevents it from articulating the subtle inflections (such as andolan, gentle oscillation) so crucial to many ragas; the latter prevents it from articulating the subtle differences in intonational color between a given svara in two different ragas. For these reasons, it was banned from All-India Radio from 1940 to 1971. (Indeed, a ban still stands on harmonium solos.) On the other hand, many of the harmonium's qualities suited it very well for the newly-reformed classical music of the early 20th century: it is easy for amateurs to learn; it supports group singing and large voice classes; it provides a template for standardized raga grammar; it is loud enough to provide a drone in a concert hall. For these reasons, it has become the instrument of choice for accompanying most North Indian classical vocal genres, though it is still despised due to its foreign origin by some connoisseurs of Indian music, who prefer the sarangi as an accompanying instrument for khyal singing.

Tabla

Instrument used in Hindustani classical music and in popular and devotional music of the Indian subcontinent. The instrument consists of a pair of hand drums of contrasting sizes and timbres. The term 'tabla is derived from an Arabic word, tabl, which simply means "drum."

Latif Khan playing tabla - Pandit Shivkumar in concert

Playing technique involves extensive use of the fingers and palms in various configurations to create a wide variety of different sounds, reflected in the mnemonic syllables (bol). The heel of the hand is used to apply pressure or in a sliding motion on the larger drum so that the pitch is changed during the sound's decay.

Tanpura

The tanpura, tambora, or tambura is a long necked plucked lute, a stringed instrument found in different versions in different places. The tanpura in its bodily shape somewhat resembles the sitar, but it has no frets, as only the open strings are played as a harmonic accompaniment to the other musicians. It has four or five (rarely, six) wire strings, which are plucked one after another in a regular pattern to create a harmonic resonance on the basic note (bourdon or drone function).

Tanpuras come in different sizes and pitches: bigger "males" and smaller "females" for vocalists and yet a smaller version that is used for accompanying sitar or sarod, called tamburi or tanpuri.

The name 'tanpura' is probably derived from tana, referring to a musical phrase, and pura which means "full" or "complete". Both in its musical function and how it works, the tanpura is a unique instrument in many ways. It does not partake in the melodic part of the music but it supports and sustains the melody by providing a very colourful and dynamic harmonic resonance field based on one precise tone, the basic note or key-note. The special overtone-rich sound is achieved by applying the principle of jivari which creates a sustained, "buzzing" sound in which particular harmonics will resonate with focused clarity. 'Jiva' refers to 'soul', that which gives life. What is implied is that an 'animated' tone-quality is the idea which the tanpura embodies. The principle of jivari can be likened to the prismatic refraction of white light into the colours of the rainbow, as its acoustic twin-principle at work.
Sindhi historians believe that the Tambura was invented by Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai.

To achieve this effect, the strings pass over a wide, arched bridge-piece, the front of the bridge sloping gently away from under the strings. When the string is plucked, it will have an intermittent periodical contact with the bridge at a point close to the front edge. This intermittent grazing of string and bridge is not a static process, as the points of contact will gradually shift, being a compound function of amplitude and the curvature of the bridge and string tension. When the string is plucked it has a large amplitude, moving up and down and contacting the bridge on the down-phase. As the energy of the string's movement gradually diminishes, the contact point of the string with the bridge slowly creeps up the slope to the top of the bridge toward point zero when the string has finally come to rest. (depending on scale and pitch, this can take between 3 and 10 seconds) This dynamic sonic process can be fine-tuned using a cotton thread between string and bridge. By shifting the thread minutely, the whole dynamic process of the grazing contact is also shifted to a different position on the bridge, thus changing the harmonic content. Every single string produces its own cascading range of harmonics and at the same time builds up a particular resonance. Evidently, this generates a diversity of harmonic possibilities. According to this refined principle tanpuras are most attentively tuned to achieve a particular tonal shade in function of the intonation-related qualities of the raga.

These more delicate aspects of tuning are directly related to what Indian musicians call 'raga svaroop', which is about how very characteristic intonations strengthen the tonal impression of a particular raga. The particular set-up of the tanpura with the adjustable sonic-prismatic function of curved bridge and thread made it possible to explore a multitude of harmonic relations produced by the subtle harmonic interplay of four strings. Theoretically, at least, this is what the instrument was designed to do. However, it seems that this degree of artistry is slowly being eclipsed by the common use of the readily accessible electronic tanpura, which is not capable of this natural diversity as it produces one 'standard' sound per setting.