Instrumental music occupies an important position in Indian music. It is one of the threefold aspects of “sangeet” (vocal music, instrumental music, and dance), and has a very ancient history (Rangachrya 1966). Instrumental music is known as “vadhya sangeet” (Menon 1995).
This page will concentrate upon melodic instruments. We will not discuss percussion here.
Most Indian instruments serve one of three functions. There is the melodic function, there is a rhythmic function, and there is the drone. It is not unusual for two or more functions to be joined together; for instance the sitar is a melodic instrument, yet built into it are drone strings. The tabla is a rhythmic instrument, yet the precise clear pitch of the instrument gives it some of the qualities of a drone.
There is a general tendency for the melodic instruments to follow quite closely the vocal styles (Shankar 1968). Yet, the degree to which an instrument follows is primarily linked to the dynamics of the instrument.
Dynamics is the nature of the loudness of an instrument. This is not intended to mean loudness in the usual interpretation, but rather the amplitudinal characteristics of the instrument. The sitar and flute offer a good illustration. A flute is continuously excited, therefore there is a steady sound as long as the breath is applied. Since it is possible to sustain a sound for a long time, it is possible to perform all kinds of delicate meends (glissando), gamaks or other ornamentation. Instruments with a long sustain tend to follow the vocal styles in their presentation. Contrast this to a sitar with its rapid decay. The sound is essentially inaudible within a few seconds. Many types of ornamentation cannot be executed due to this quick decay.
This creates an artistic pressure for melodic instruments that have a staccato quality to develop their own styles. These styles enhance the strong points while avoiding the weaknesses. Over the years they have become formalised into four major instrumental styles which in North Indian music are known as: alap, jor, gat and jhala. The alap is a slow rhythmless elaboration upon the rag. The jor is a section that has rhythm but no developed rhythmic cycle (i.e., tal). The gat is the fully developed piece, while the jhala is a fast rhythmic interplay between the drone strings and the main playing strings.
South Indian Instrumental
South India has a very rich tradition of instrumental music. Instruments such has the veena (a.k.a., Saraswati Vina), mridangam, gottuvadyam, and nadaswaram are well known. Furthermore, their repertoire and technique are highly sophisticated and formalised. But the major focus of this website is on the North Indian system of music. Therefore we will not be able to discuss this in any detail.
Folk Music Instrumental
The folk music of India also has a rich tradition. There are many instruments and forms. Some examples are the pepa, dotar, banam and gopichand. These instruments, and their musical forms, are tied to particular ethnicities, and are innumerable. Indeed, there are so many forms that it is impossible for us to go into them in any depth here.
Instruments
India has a very large variety of musical instruments. The mere overview is so large that we are forced to devote a massive page to it. This may be read in the following link:
Tuning Indian Musical Instruments
North Indian instruments generally do not have standard tunings. But they do have a fairly standard approach to developing one’s tunings. This is discussed in great length in the following link:
Alap
The alap of North Indian instrumentalists is virtually identical to the alap of the vocalists. It is a slow, rhythmless exposition of the rag. It is usually the beginning movement. There may be a slight difference in interpretation due to the limitations of many instruments.
Although alap does not have a wide popular appeal, it is still considered the mark of proper training. Where other forms of the performance allow some latitude in the interpretation of the rag, the alap requires strict adherence to the rules (Bose 1990). This requires a firm knowledge, therefore the execution of alap is very difficult.
Jor (Jod)
Jor or jod is an instrumental rendition of nomtom. It is characterised by the use of a slow to medium rhythm. There is not a fully developed cycle so it is never accompanied by tabla. Although the nomtom has fallen out of fashion among the vocalists, it is still a ubiquitous component of instrumental concerts. The dynamics of most stringed instruments lend themselves well to this style.
Gat (a.k.a. Bandish or Chiz)
Gat (a.k.a. bandish or chiz) in its most general sense means a fixed composition. As such, you find gats for both melodic instruments as well as rhythmic instruments like the tabla. However, for this page we will be referring to the fixed composition for melodic instruments.
Gat is a structure which has some similarities to the sthai in the vocal tradition. But it may also be considered to be an aggregate of the sthai and antara. As such, it has a fully developed cycle and is invariably accompanied by the tabla.
GAYAKI STYLE – Indian music is dominated by the vocal traditions. Therefore it is not unusual to find vocal compositions transferred to the various musical instruments. This is known as a “gayaki style”. It may be an imitation of kheyal, dhrupad or any vocal form. For more information on this one simply has to look at vocal music.
INSTRUMENTAL GATS – Traditionally there were two basic approaches to the classical instrumental gat; masitkhani and razakhani. The masitkhani gat is the basic slow gat while the razakhani is fast. In recent years, the distinction between the two styles has become blurred. These forms were originally highly fixed, but today there is much more flexibility (Miner 1993). The contemporary structure of both the fast and slow sections seems to have morphed away from the styles developed by Raza Khan and Masit Khan.
DHUN – The dhun is a common instrumental form of the gat class. It is basically nothing more than an instrumental version of a song. Quite often it is a folk song, but on occasion it may be film song.
One tends to find only the lighter tals used to accompany the dhun. This is most commonly kaherava of 8 beats or dipchandi, or similar semiclassical rhythms.
The dhun tends to be played in the lighter rags; Mand, Khammaj, and Pahadi are extremely common. Heavy rags such as Darbari Kanada are almost never heard. Furthermore the treatment of the rags is given extreme latitude. It is very common to play everything misra, or mixed.
The term dhun must not be confused with the devotional chant, which is also called dhun.
LAHARA (a.k.a. Naghma) – The lahara or naghma is another common approach to the gat. A lahara may be derived from any of the aforementioned styles simply by reducing them to a single cycle. The lahara is treated in considerable depth in the link below:
Jhala
Jhala is undoubtedly the most characteristic of the instrumental styles. Indian stringed instruments are noted by a few special purpose drone strings called chikari (Menon, 1995). These strings are never fretted, but are struck whenever the tonic needs to be emphasised (i.e., Sa and Pa). The jhala is a fast paced alternation of main melody string and chikari. This lends itself to interesting permutations of both rag and tal simultaneously. This exciting style has become an obligatory conclusion to any sitar or sarod recital.
Works Cited
Bose, Sunil
1990 Indian Classical Music. New Delhi:Vikas Publishing House.
Menon, Raghav R.
1995 The Penguin Dictionary of Indian Classical Music. New Delhi, Penguin Books.
Miner, Allyn
1993 Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
Rangacharya, Adya
1966 Introduction to Bharata’s Natya-Sastra. Bombay, India: Popular Prakashan.
Shankar, Ravi
1968 Ravi Shankar: My Music, My Life. New Delhi, India: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.
Other Sites of Interest
Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya (Review)
Catalogue of Indian Musical Instruments
Fractal dimension analysis of audio signals for Indian musical instrument recognition
Natural synthesis of North Indian musical instruments
Recognition of Indian Musical Instruments with Multi-Classifier Fusion
The Tagore collection of Indian musical instruments
Improvement of Audio Feature Extraction Techniques in Traditional Indian Musical Instrument
East Indians musical instruments