Language of Music

The Language of Music

One of my favorite things about Hindustani classical music is that you learn it very much the way you would learn a language. With language, once you've learned certain basic things like grammar and vocabulary, you start making your own sentences. In Hindustani classical music, once you have learned the basic notes, you are introduced to ragas (which are like musical themes), and then you are encouraged to start improvising and making your own melodies. It's really not that difficult to improvise melodies in a raga you're familiar with. I have nowhere near the level of talent it takes to become a performing artist, but I can make spontaneous music, and that's an inexhaustible source of delight. 

So, it doesn't take much to improvise little bits of melody here and there, but it gets more difficult when you try to improvise in coordination with the rhythm, and becoming an artist capable of hour-long extemporaneous performances is a different story altogether. A performance must have a clear structure, it must feature certain elements, it must progress coherently, attain climax, and be brought to a conclusion, and it must measure up to certain standards. Achieving all that takes many decades of study and training, and only rarely will you find an artist who can be taken seriously before the age of 40. 

Raga (also "raag") and Raga Performance

Very simply, a raga is a musical theme created by choosing a specific set of notes from within an octave. Music has the power to move us because it can speak to our deepest emotions through the moods it creates. Different sets of notes evoke different moods and inspire different feelings. Here are a few examples.

The main thing Hindustani classical music does is explore the melodic and emotional potential of different sets of notes. About five hundred ragas are known or known of (including historical ragas) today. Sometimes ragas die out if people stop singing them, but then new ragas are born all the time, and some of them endure. So, the number of ragas is not fixed. Students learn the basics of most of the important ragas, and then spend many years mastering a few ragas of their choice.

Here is an analogy to help you visualize a raga. If you think of the octave as being like the light spectrum, the musical notes would be like the colors in the spectrum, and ragas would be like color schemes. By restricting yourself to only a few out of all the colors in the spectrum, you get a ready-made theme to work with. Say you choose a predominantly blue-green color scheme, also including violet, gray and white, plus a slight hint of yellow. You could come up with any number of creative ideas for how to combine these colors for a beautiful effect. Every time you paint with this color scheme, the result could be something different. Give the same color scheme to someone else, and they would add their own imagination to the equation and create a whole new dimension of variety. The possibilities of what can be done with any given color scheme are endless, and yet, all paintings in that color scheme would share an easily-recognizable underlying quality that is distinct from paintings based on other color schemes. And that is how it is with a raga.

All Hindustani classical performances are presentations of one raga or another. Just put in "raga" in the search box in YouTube, and it will come up with thousands of hits for Hindustani classical music performances. The artist chooses a raga, which is the musical equivalent of a color scheme, and proceeds to present her interpretation of it to the audience. A Hindustani classical music performance can go on for well over an hour and is spontaneously improvised for the most part. The only pre-composed portions are the refrains, which provide a structural framework for the performance.

Defining "Classical music" in the Indian Context

Many of the Indian classical ragas are derived from (but much more evolved versions of) folk tunes from various parts of India, and most of the other popular and light-classical music forms in India are based on classical music, so how does one distinguish between classical and folk or popular music?

Folk tunes tend to be quite simple even when they are lively and colorful. Often they have a limited pitch range of less than an octave. 

Popular music forms may be based on ragas to a greater or lesser extent or borrow ornamentation techniques from classical music, but they are almost always pre-composed and orchestrated, with lyrics and background music playing almost as prominent a role as the main melody line.

Semi-classical performances are somewhere between classical and popular. Usually, they are like classical performances in that they involve considerable improvisation and minimal instrumental accompaniment. The difference is that they are less complex and much shorter than serious classical performances. Semi-classical performances also usually feature easier ragas or mixed (experimental) ragas.

Classical music performances showcase the heights of musical creativity achieved by individuals through decades of rigorous training and discipline. So, they are always extemporaneous and involve only rudimentary lyrics (for the refrain portions) and the barest minimum of instrumental accompaniment (tabla for rhythm, tanpura for harmonic resonance). Some unobtrusive melodic instrument (usually the harmonium) may also be used to shadow the main artist as best as possible and fill in the gaps when the main artist needs to stop for breath or a drink of water. But nothing that could upstage or distract from the main artist's performance.

It is also important to recognize that there are two distinct traditions of classical music in India. The North Indian (Hindustani) and the South Indian (Carnatic) traditions. Both the traditions have a common origin but have grown, over the centuries, to develop two distinct styles.