Carnatic music

Carnatic music is the classical music of south India: melodic, built on raga and tala, almost entirely composed rather than improvised from nothing, and performed by a small ensemble with a singer at the centre. Where the Hindustani tradition of the north builds a raga slowly over an hour, Carnatic sets out a composition first and improvises around it, and the composition is usually a devotional song in Telugu, Sanskrit or Tamil. The whole tradition is organised round three composers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who are called the Trinity, and a concert will usually include all three.

A raga is a set of notes with rules about how to move among them, and the seventy two melakarta scheme generates the parent scales arithmetically, from which hundreds of janya ragas descend. A tala is a cycle of beats counted on the hand, and the thirty five tala scheme is similarly systematic. A concert runs: varnam to open and warm the voice, a series of kritis of increasing weight, then the main item with alapana, a free exploration of the raga without rhythm, then niraval and kalpanaswaram, both improvised, then the tani avartanam where the percussionists play alone, and then the lighter tukkada pieces. The violin accompanies and answers the singer phrase by phrase; the mridangam keeps the tala; the tambura drone runs throughout.

A child begins at five or six with the sarali varisai, the basic exercises, and will spend a year or more on exercises before a single song. Varnams follow, then kritis. Daily practice of an hour is the minimum expected and two or three is normal for a serious student. A first concert comes after perhaps eight to twelve years. Learning is by ear and by repetition from the teacher, not from notation, and the notation that exists is a memory aid rather than a score. Manodharma, the improvised portion, is taught last and some teachers hold it cannot be taught at all, only provoked.

Purandara Dasa of the sixteenth century is called the father of the tradition for systematising the exercises still used. The Trinity are Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, all born at Tiruvarur within a few years of each other. Lineage runs by sishya parampara from teacher to student and the schools are named for the teacher, not for a place, which is the main structural difference from the Hindustani gharana. The Tamil Isai movement of the twentieth century argued that a tradition performed in Tamil Nadu sang too little Tamil, which was resisted and then largely conceded, and Tamil compositions now hold a regular place in a concert.

Tamil Nadu

Chennai is the centre of the concert world and the December season is the calendar; the Tamil Isai Sangam presses the case for Tamil composition.

Andhra and Telangana

Most of the Trinity’s compositions are in Telugu, and Andhra claims the language of the tradition even though its centre of gravity moved south.

Karnataka

The Haridasa tradition of Purandara Dasa gave the system its exercises, and Karnataka keeps the devaranama repertoire.

Kerala

Swathi Thirunal of Travancore composed in several languages and the Kerala tradition keeps his work and the distinct Sopana style beside the concert one.

Deities

• Saraswati
• Rama
• Krishna
• Murugan

Festivals

• Saraswati Puja · Ayudha Puja · Sri Panchami
• Navaratri begins
• Vijayadasami
• Thiruvathirai · Arudra Darshanam

Temples

• Arunachaleswarar Temple
• Thillai Nataraja Temple

Related arts

• Bharatanatyam