Rhythm and Raga

Learn the basics of

Indian music
Indian music is as vast and varied as the country from which it
comes. Based upon ancient tradition, Indian classical music is
characterized by intricate and subtle melodies and complex rhythms.
To a novice listener, the complexity of Indian music might seem
overwhelming, but knowing just a few basics can give you the tools to
appreciate the art form’s spectacular richness.

Learning about Indian music offers a window not only to an interesting

musical tradition, but also to an ancient and multifaceted culture.
Reflected within Indian music’s melodies, rhythmic patterns, sustained
pitches, and improvisational nature are thousands of years of oral
tradition and a deep spiritual sensibility that pervades many aspects of
Indian life.

This article introduces the basic distinguishing elements of Indian

music, instruments, and performance, and includes activities (look for
“Try It!”) that you can try. Enjoy your musical journey to India!

Pitch and Melody

An Ancient System. Listeners unfamiliar with Indian music are
often surprised by the unique combinations of pitches that they
hear. Melodies in Indian music are classified by an ancient
system of ragas. A raga (pronounced RAH-guh) is a collection
of pitches, kind of like a scale or mode in Western music. Each
raga is defined, however, not only by the pitches themselves,
but also by specific formulas for using them. Within a raga,
there will be prescribed ways of ascending and descending the
scale, as well as specific melodic phrases that can be
performed during improvisation.

Learning by Singing. Remember the song “Do-Re-Mi” from The

Sound of Music? Did you know that Indian music uses a very
similar system of note names? The syllables used to sing the
notes of an Indian raga are:

Sa        Re        Ga        Ma        Pa        Dha        Ni        Sa

This is called sargam (SAR-gum), which itself is a combination

of the first four syllables.

Try It! Try singing a scale with the sargam note names.

Indian musicians learn their craft by practicing these pitch

syllables in particular patterns, over and over. You can
sometimes hear Indian vocalists singing the pitch names as
they improvise within a piece. For example, listen to the great
singer Pandit Jasraj as he alternates singing the phrases of a
composition with improvising on the sargam syllables in the
raga “Bhairav Bahar” (listen for him to begin with the sargam
syllables between the first and second minute of the piece).

A Range of Expression. Whereas Western music has two kinds

of scales, major (think “Happy Birthday” or “Twinkle Twinkle,
Little Star”) and minor (think “Greensleeves,” or “Chim Chim
Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins), Indian music has dozens of
different ragas. Listeners familiar with Indian music can
recognize the raga from just a few short melodic phrases. Listen
to these examples of contrasting ragas in the Resource
Carousel above.

Like scales in Western music, ragas help set the mood for a
piece of music—but in much greater detail. Traditionally in
Indian music, each raga was itself associated with a very
specific emotion. In modern times, the ragas are often still
associated with a particular time of day or season.

Try It! Listen again to the three examples below. Which raga do

you thinkis associated with the evening, the rainy season, and
daybreak? 

Ahir BhairavBhupaliMiyan Ki Malhar

Rhythm
Just as the sargam syllables organize the melody, other short
syllables support the learning and practice of rhythm,
or tala (TAH-luh). Some rhythmic patterns are quite complex,
such as patterns in cycles of five, seven, nine, or ten beats. For
a three-beat pattern, musicians might say “ta-ki-ta” and a four-
beat pattern, “ta-ka-di-mi.” Those two patterns combine to form
a seven-beat cycle: “ta-ki-ta ta-ka-di-mi.”

Try It! Try saying this combination of syllables over and over

until you can feel the seven-beat rhythm.

In addition, there are special syllables called bols (BOWLS)

used by players of the tabla (TUHB-luh), a set of two drums, to
learn and practice specific sounds that can be produced on
their instrument. The syllables are onomatopoeic; that is, they
sound a bit like the sounds produced by the drums.

Try It! Watch musician Anubrata Chatterjee demonstrate the

tabla bols. Listen for ga, na, te-te, tun, ghe, and ghe-ghe.

Let’s see how tabla players use these syllables to create

rhythms. There is a very common 16-count rhythm used in
Indian classical music called teental. It is organized in four
groups of four beats each. The bols for each of the counts are
given below:

1          2          3         4

     dha     dhin     dhin     dha     

5         6         7         8

     dha     dhin     dhin     dha     

9         10       11       12

     dha       tin        tin        ta     

13        14       15       16

   ta        dhin      dhin    dha

Try It! Watch Anubrata Chatterjee explain and demonstrate
teental rhythm. You might notice that it sounds like he is saying
“na” instead of “dha,” but this is just a variation of the same
pattern.

As they’re listening to a long piece of music, audience members

often keep track of the rhythm with their hands. So, for teental,
they’d clap on beats 1, 5, and 13, and give a wave of the hand
on beat 9. That wave corresponds with the variation in the drum
sounds that follow beat 9, that is, “tin tin ta” instead of “dhin dhin
dha.”

Try It! Try repeating the teental syllables while you practice the
clapping pattern. Then try clapping the pattern along with the
teental performed by the Taal India Percussion Ensemble at the
Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. In this clip, after the tabla
player plays two cycles of teental, the other instrumentalists
take turns playing single cycles of teental, and then the group
performs together. Keep clapping in tempo, and you’ll find the
whole piece ends on the first count of a cycle.
Instruments
There are different styles of Indian classical music
performed in North India and South India. Although the
regions share certain characteristics, they sometimes use
different instruments. In both regions, Indian classical music is
performed in a small ensemble, including one percussion
instrument, one drone instrument, one soloist (on melody
instrument or voice), and sometimes another melody
instrument. One thing you might notice right away as you’re
watching an Indian music performance is that all the performers
generally sit on the floor.

Let’s look at some of the most commonly used instruments in

Indian classical music.
Melody Instruments
Sitar (pronounced si-TAHR)—a North Indian plucked stringed
instrument with a long neck and a round resonating chamber
made from a gourd. Of all the Indian instruments, the sitar tends
to be the most widely recognized by outsiders to Indian culture.
It can have 21, 22, or 23 strings, although musicians only
actually play six or seven of these. The rest of the strings are
called sympathetic strings, which means that they are tuned to
specific pitches and vibrate when the same pitch is played on
the main strings. These sympathetic strings give the sitar its
characteristic ring.
Sarod (suh-ROHD)—another North Indian plucked stringed
instrument with 20 to 25 strings. Like the sitar, the sarod has
many sympathetic strings that lend a ringing tone. The face of
the sarod is covered with goatskin, which gives it a unique
sound.

Veena (VEE-nuh)—an ancient plucked stringed instrument

used in South Indian classical music. It is similar in appearance
to the sitar, with a long neck, a round resonator, and an
additional gourd resonator attached to the neck. It has four
melody strings and three sympathetic strings.
Violin—a European instrument used frequently in South Indian
music. It was easily adopted into Indian music in the 19th
century by virtue of its ability to play the Indian ragas (RAH-
guhs). In contrast to Western violinists, Indian players hold the
instrument below the chin and rest the scroll of the violin on the
ankle, leaving the left hand free to slide the whole length of the
neck while the right hand moves the bow.

Bansuri (BUN-soo-ree)—a transverse flute made from hollow

bamboo. Its simple construction contrasts with the complex
embouchure (formation of the mouth) required to play it and
produce the many embellishments used in Indian music.
Harmonium—a reed instrument played by a keyboard (similar to
an accordion) that was introduced to Indian music in the 19th
century. It can play either melody or drone and is common in
many styles of Indian music.

Drone Instruments
An Indian music performance almost always includes one
instrument that provides a drone, a sustained pitch or set of
pitches that is a background sound against which the melody is
played. Since Indian music does not use harmony in the way
that Western music does, the drone provides a pleasing
contrast to the notes of the melody and brings out the unique
sonority of the raga.

The presence of the drone also embodies the concept

of om (pronounced OHM), the elemental and eternal sound
from which all other sounds flow. Om is an essential concept
not only in music, but also in religion, philosophy, and many
other facets of life in India.
Tambura (TAM-boo-rah) or tampura (TAM-poo-rah)—the
instrument traditionally used for a drone. Similar in shape to the
sitar, it has four or five strings that are tuned to the most
important notes of the raga. The instrument is fairly simple to
play and is often played in performance by a student of the
soloist.

Surpeti (sur-PETI) or “drone box”—originally a simple reed

instrument played with a bellows (a compressible chamber,
similar to an accordion). Today, the name surpeti most often
refers to an electronic instrument that produces sounds similar
to the tambura. Musicians use the surpeti for practice or in
place of a tambura in performance.

Percussion Instruments

Tabla (TUHB-luh)—a set of two drums used in North Indian

music. The drums can be made of metal or wood and are
covered with skins that can be tightened or loosened to tune the
drums to the main notes of the raga. The player’s dominant
hand plays the higher-pitched drum and the other hand plays
the second drum.
Mridangam (mree-DAHNG-guhm)—a double-headed drum
used in South Indian music. Like the tabla, the heads of the
mridangam can be tuned to the main notes of the raga being
performed.
Performance

Performances of Indian music, especially Indian “classical” or

“art” music, typically include long pieces of music in a
single raga (pronounced RAH-guh). Unlike Western classical
music, in which musicians play from written scores for a whole
piece, Indian classical music includes only a very small portion
of music composed in advance of the performance. Most of the
music is improvised, or composed by the musician during the
performance.

That strong improvisational element comes from India’s oral

tradition of teaching and learning music, which favors the
passing down of short musical pieces and phrases rather than
long compositions or multipart works (like symphonies). Those
short elements form the basis for longer works created and
embellished by the performer in the moment—grounding each
performance in both the past and the present.

To hear an example of this, watch these Kennedy Center

Millennium Stage concert excerpts by Shashank
Subramanyam, a young master of the South Indian bamboo
flute. It starts with an improvisatory section by the flute and
violin with no percussion. Listen to how the violin imitates the
flute’s improvisation in this first section. As the percussion
enters in the eight-count rhythm called adi tal (AH-dee TAHL),
the performers begin the pre-composed portion of the piece.
Can you tell when the composed part is over and the musicians
begin improvising again? Hint: Listen for the point at which the
percussion recedes in volume and the melody instruments
resume taking turns.

Try It! You can explore improvisation with this simple activity:

Find a partner and choose instruments (any simple melody
instrument, your voice, or even your whistle). One partner leads
by singing or playing a short phrase, which the second partner
repeats in a similar (but not exact!) fashion. Try this for a few
phrases, and then switch leaders. As follower, if you can’t
remember what the leader did, make up something that ends on
the same pitch. Does this exercise give you some creative
ideas for further improvisation?