Seni Rabab

by David Courtney

The seni rabab is an instrument that was very pop­ular du­ring the Moghal period.  The seni rabab came close to extinction, but in recent years has star­ted to make a comeback.

This instrument comes in seve­ral forms.  As one moves around in time and geography one finds tre­men­dous variation.  It be­comes al­most im­pos­sible to tell where the seni rabab, ends and other rababs begin.  Some of the other in­stru­ments in the rabab family in­clude the kabuli rabab, the swarabat of south India, and the dotora of Bengal.  Even the kamancha of Rajasthan ap­pears to be nothing more than a bowed version of the seni rabab.

The name “seni rabab” is inter­est­ing.  It is an In­dian cor­rup­tion of the Persian “Sen-e-Rabab” which means “the rabab of Tansen”.  Tansen was a great musician in the court of Akbar who is credited with the pop­ularisation of this instrument.  There are many who (incorrectly) attribute the invention of the seni rabab to Tansen.  The seni rabab is also re­fer­red to as the “Indian rabab”, to distinguish it from the kabuli rabab.  The kabuli rabab is ori­gi­nally from Afghanistan, but today com­monly found in Pakistan and Kashmir.

This instrument was held in great esteem in the past.  The first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak is said to have had tre­men­dous love for the instrument.  It is said that he was accompanied by has friend and mus­ical ac­com­panist Mirdana while he sang the Gurbani.  It is the rising interest in gurmat sangeet (Sikh re­li­gious music) which is primarily re­spon­sible for the reawakening in interest in this instrument.

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Parts of the Seni Rabab

There are a num­ber of parts of the seni rabab.  These are shown in the illustration below:

Parts of the Seni Rabab

The seni rabab consists of a body which is hollowed out of wood.  There is a large hollowed out bowl which is covered with thin goat skin (khal); this forms the resonator.  There are two bridges on the instrument; the one on the skin is known as the guraj while the upper one on the neck is known as the tar gahan.  There are six strings known as rodas.  They are affixed to six wooden tuning pegs (kunti) at the upper end.  They are also affixed at the lower end.  There are no frets to the seni rabab, only a wooden finger board.  The fact that this finger board is made of wood, and not covered with a metal plate, means that only soft strings can be used.  These are us­ually of gut; how­ever on modern in­stru­ments, one often finds that nylon is used.

The construction of the seni rabab is inter­est­ing, not just for what is found, but prob­ably more for what is not found.  Traditionally, the seni rabab did not have sympathetic strings (tarafdar); how­ever, some modern in­stru­ments in­clude them.  Fur­ther­more, they did not have chikari strings as we have come to expect on modern in­stru­ments.  Still, the lower strings of this instrument do func­tion as drone strings in much the same way as the lower strings of a sitar, esraj, or dilruba, may func­tion as drone.

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Tuning the Seni Rabab

Anyone with any experience with In­dian mus­ical in­stru­ments should not be surprised to find that there are seve­ral tunings for the seni rabab.

It must al­ways be re­mem­bered that the tuning of In­dian stringed in­stru­ments is a ref­lec­tion of how a par­ti­cu­lar artist feels about their music.  Stringed in­stru­ments are typically tuned dif­fer­ently for dif­fer­ent rags and dif­fer­ent styles.  Many times an artist will use a dif­fer­ent tuning for each piece.  One should keep this in mind as we go over seve­ral tunings here.  For these, kindly refer to the illustration below:

Seni Rabab Strings

Tuning #1 – The table below is a very trad­itional tuning for the rabab:

String	Pitch	Name of String
1	Pa in Madhya Saptak	Zeer
2	Re in Madhya Saptak	Mian
3	Sa in Madhya Saptak	Sur
4	Pa in Mandra Saptak	Mandra
5	Ga or Ma in Mandra Saptak	Ghor
6	Sa in Mandra Saptak	Karaj

Tuning #2 – Here is an­other tuning for the seni rabab.  The last tuning may be trad­itional, but many peo­ple may be uncomfortable with the constant sounding of the Re.  There­fore, in an effort to aid the revival of the rabab, many art­ists adopt a more contemporary ap­proach to tuning.  One example is shown in the table below:

String	Pitch	Comments
1	Ma in Madhya Saptak
2	Sa in Madhya Saptak
3	Pa in Mandra Saptak
4	Sa in Mandra Saptak
5	variable ac­cor­ding to the rag
6	variable ac­cor­ding to the rag	Many of the modern seni Rababs do not havea 6th string

Tuning #3 – There is an­other variation upon this tuning which is some­times employed.

String	Pitch	Comments
1	Sa in Madhya Saptak
2	Pa in Mandra Saptak
3	Sa in Mandra Saptak
4	variable ac­cor­ding to the rag
5	variable ac­cor­ding to the rag
6	variable ac­cor­ding to the rag	Many of the modern seni Rababs do not have a 6th string

Tuning Taraf Strings – It ap­pears that taraf strings (i.e., sympathetic strings) on the rabab are a “recent” innovation.  (The word “recent” might be seve­ral centu­ries, so you can interpret this word any way you wish.)  If your rabab does have taraf strings, the ques­tion natu­rally arises as to how they are tuned.  For this, one follows the same principles used in the tuning of the taraf strings on the sitar, sarod or any other north In­dian instrument.  That is to say that they may be tuned chromatically, or ac­cor­ding to the rag, or some variation bet­ween these two ap­proaches.

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Playing the Rabab

Let us dis­cuss some of the basic points that are impor­tant to play­ing the seni rabab.

Sitting Position – It is ob­vious that the sitting posi­tion is one of the most fun­da­men­tal points to play­ing the seni rabab.  How­ever there is not just one way, we can des­cribe at least four ways.  These will be des­cribed below:

The illustration below shows a per­son standing while the rabab is suspended around his neck.  Since the seni rabab was known to be a rather loud instrument, it was suited for outdoors pro­cessions.  In such si­tua­tions, this was a very workable arrangement.

The illustration below shows a way that ap­pears to have been very com­mon.  In this posi­tion, one sits on ones knees such that the feet a facing the rear.  The rabab is placed at a very steep angle over the left shoulder.

Neither comfort nor good con­trol of the instrument are advantages of this ap­proach.  The main func­tion is to avoid the misdemeanour of inadvertently showing the soles of your feet to the king, or honoured guests of the performance.

The illustration below shows a musician seated in a cross legged posi­tion with the instrument in his lap.

Below we see the rabab placed ag­ainst the heel of the left foot in a posi­tion very much like that used for the sitar.

In this sec­tion, we pres­ented four ways to hold the rabab.  Do not think that these are the only ways to do it.  I am sure that there are other posi­tions; how­ever, this sampling should at least give you an idea of the possibilities.

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Plucking and fingering

Plucking is done with a triangular wooden plectrum, known as a java.  This may be made of a variety of materials including, sandalwood, coconut shell, or bamboo.

Fingering is done with the left hand.  us­ually the nails are employed.  In this ca­pa­city it was com­mon for music­ians to grow their fingernails long.  In other insta­nces the scales of fish were glued on.

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