Today we will discuss Tala and Rhythm of Indian Classical Music. There is a proverb “Sur is the mother and Tala is the father”. It is so important that music cannot be created with any of this two. Tala and Rhythm is not a simple division of time in Indian classical music. Tala itself is a composition and has different syllables for teaching. Lets see more…
वीणावादनतत्त्वज्ञः श्रुतिजातिविशारदः ।
तालज्ञश्चाप्रयासेन मोक्षमार्गं नियच्छति ॥
He who has mastered the art of playing the Veena,
who is versed in the science of sounds
and knows the Talas,
can easily tread the path to Moksha –
the ultimate Liberation
Table of Contents
Tala – the Throb of the Raga
Tala and Rhythm
In Indian classical music, the vocalist or the instrumentalist is accompanied by a percussion instrument-the Mridangam, the Pakahwaj or the Tabla-which provides the Tala, the measure of time. Sound, silence, rest, variation of intensity and tempo, all play an important role.
The word rhythm has often been used as though it were the English equivalent of the word Tala. This is not an entirely true description. We have seen that there is a distinction between the Swara and the note. The Swara is the inner face of a note. So also is the Tala the inner face of rhythm and involves as long and as arduous a journey as the seeking after the Swara.
Rhythm like the musical note is physical and universal and can be shared by all. The Tala belongs to the mind and the intellect and is similar to language. The science of linguistics says that punctuation cannot standardized. It has dimensions and differs from culture to culture, even the same language. This is because punctuation is the organization of silence. In the same sense, Tala composed both mic sound and the organization and interstices of silence.
1. Vilayat Khan Sitar-Shankar Ghosh – Tabla Raga Darbari Kanada
Though rhythm does not need language, Tala does Therefore the Mridangam, Pakhawaj, and Tabla use bols and mnemonics to preserve roots in human utterance. It is a language that embodies Tala, gives extension into passing suffuses with emotion and feeling. not possible to language from the dictionary which has only the sounds and meanings, of the words of the language, but not its pauses waiting.
Not to understand the science of a language is to be a foreigner to it. This is one of the reasons why our music cannot down faithfully because written texts cannot incorporate silence. Therefore, though rhythm is very important component of Tala, still Tala cannot be learnt without prior reference to the language to which it belongs. If we do use it in the manner we trivialize it and lower significance, reducing breadth compass acrobatics without grace.
[ Tala and Rhythm : Indian Classical Music ]
Tala Structures
The acquisition of the art of Tabla, Mridangam and Pakhawaj is difficult and demanding an art as all of To know nature of the Tala truly, the performer must be linguistically secure. If he does not know the language in which a composition is sung he cannot know its Tala schematically, as accented and unaccented syllables of stress and release.
The structures of Tala are closed loops rather than open-ended infinite series of rhythms which, when the text returns a refrain, carries beyond in a straight line. The Tala is something like pulsating heart. An alternation of contraction and relaxation, a squeezing and a release.
For example take the bols of Tala called Teen Tala. Teen Tala has beats Matras grouped into four sections of four beat each 2
Dha Dhin Dhin Dha
1 2 3 4
Dha Dhin Dhin Dha
5 6 7 8
Dha Tin Tin Ta
9 10 11 12
Ta Dhin Dhin Dha
13 14 15 16
The first beat is the stressed beat and is called the Sam. The third starting from the ninth beat unstressed and is called Khali. From the first, most tense stroke, the beats relax until point maximum relaxation occurs on the ninth. After that tension mounts again. Listen carefully to the sound of the Tabla, watch how tenses and relaxes.³
There are several Talas common use: Jhap Tala with ten beats, Rupak with seven, Chautal with twelve-a great variety. Round and round repeated cycles, the Tala passes from stress release, again and again from Sam through Khali to Sam again.
Every Tala characteristic of Sam and Khali like the Teen Tala discussed here.
The Tala does not conclude the composition. It is reverse. The song has come to the temporal end of meaning and with its end, the composition must finish and therefore the Tala too.
[ Tala and Rhythm : Indian Classical Music ]
The beat of the Timeless
The presence pervading cyclic quantity in all created things is a perception that goes the roots of Indian spiritual thought. The seasons, the diurnal return, the sky rotating, revolving invisible centres, all part of human experience. Made symbolic, Shiva Nataraja described playing the Damaru, tiny double-headed drum, worlds after worlds born and then perish to be born again.
In a sudden burst of mystic awareness of this metaphysical dance that shimmers and hides and appears in all created things, Tamil saint Thirumular sang:
“His form is everywhere. All-pervading is Shiva-Shakti. Chidambaram is everywhere, everywhere is His dance. As Shiva is all and omnipresent, everywhere is Shiva’s gracious dance made manifest.”*
Tala is a natural part of the living organism. It is prefigured in the heartbeat. In fact, even the tonally deaf and the musical insensitive person can have a marked sense of Tala and an awareness of the intervals elapsing time. In the state of Alap, Raga is unborn, hovering like a waiting spirit for a willing mother give it birth.
As soon Tala enters the Raga, a composition is born. It gets locked into time and becomes a temporal thing with definite stages in its passage. These stages are marked by a steady increase in complexity and rhythmic interaction. From the Vilambit, where the composition is set without sharp boundaries, the composition accelerates into sharper enclosures of time in Madhyalaya compositions. The Tarana and the fast laya Drut accomplish the setting of the dissolution of created things, the final audit of life’s accounts.
When the composition concludes, its time is finished, all its temporal manifestations have been realised and the spirit of the Raga moves away waiting to take birth once again on another day, in another time.”
6. Amjad Ali Khan-Sarod-Raga Malkauns
7. Shivkumar Sharma Santoor-Raga Rageshwari
[ Tala and Rhythm : Indian Classical Music ]
Read More About Indian Classical Music:
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- 02 – Sri Aurobindo Society – Alaap, Part – 1 Vol – 1 – The Quest