About North Indian Classical Music
The classical tradition in Indian music dates back over 3,000 years to the Vedas, the earliest Hindu spiritual texts. The Sama Veda speaks of "Nada Bramha," the concept that "music is the language of God."
Based on the fundamentals of Raga (melody) and Tala (rhythm) the music has developed continuously through ancient and medieval times into a system capable of expressing the finest shades and degrees of color and emotion.
Indian classical music utilizes the same 12 note scale as is used in the West, except that the notes are used in just (pure) intonation rather than the equal temperament developed in Europe. The existence of "microtones" between the standard notes is also recognized.
A raga is formed from a series of ascending and descending notes selected from a given music scale. Within this skeleton, the musician brings out the melody that gives a particular raga its character and mood: joy, sadness, romance, or a combination of these and other basic emotions.
In a classical performance, the raga is presented in two sections. In the first part, called alap , the musician plays unaccompanied and presents the notes contained within the raga, proceeding until all the notes and their interrelationship are explored. This allows the character of the notes and the raga to be shown in a framework free of a fixed rhythmic structure.
The second section, gat, is marked by the entrance of the accompanying table player. From this point the raga is presented within a rhythmic cycle, having a specified number of beats, called the tala. The most common cycles contain 16, 10, 7, or 6 beats, subdivided into blocks of 2,3, or 4 beats.
The music takes the form of theme and variation with the tabla maintaining a fixed pattern while the instrumentalist solos, and improvising in turn when the instrumentalist returns to the initial theme. The interplay or musical exchange between the instrumentalist and the accompanying tabla player revolves around showing the sam, the downbeat of the cycle. The speed and energy of the exchange increases throughout the composition building to a climax at the end of the piece.
