Udaya

Mridangam

மிருதங்கம் मृदङ्ग

Also Mridanga, Mathalam.

Instrument Tamil Nadu

Share as image

· 1080 × 1350

WhatsApp opens with the words on this card and the address of the page, not with the picture: a link cannot carry a file. This browser cannot hand an image to another app either, so to send the picture itself, save it and attach it in the chat.

What it is#

The mridangam is the principal percussion of Carnatic music, a barrel drum played horizontally across the lap with both hands, one head tuned to the tonic and the other giving the bass. It accompanies rather than leads for most of a concert, following the singer phrase by phrase, and then takes the stage alone for the tani avartanam, which is the one extended solo in the form. A mridangam player is expected to know the compositions as well as the singer does, because the accompaniment is not timekeeping but commentary.

How it is built#

The right head, the valanthalai, carries a black circular patch of rice paste, iron filings and manganese applied in layers, which gives it a definite pitch and is the reason the drum can be tuned to the singer. The left, the thoppi, is given a paste of semolina and water fresh before each concert and removed after. The strokes have names, the solkattu syllables, tha, dhi, thom, nam and the rest, and a player speaks them as well as plays them. The tani avartanam develops a rhythmic idea over several cycles and ends in a korvai, a phrase resolved exactly on the first beat, which is the moment the audience applauds.

How it is learnt#

The question a family actually has

Begun at six or seven with the syllables spoken before the drum is touched, and then with the right hand alone on the valanthalai for months. The basic lessons run through sarva laghu and the hand exercises; the left hand is added later. A student will be playing simple accompaniment within three or four years and will take a decade before being trusted with a full concert. Daily practice of two hours is the floor. The hands harden and the fingertips callus, and players describe the first two years as largely about pain.

Whose lineage is whose#

Where a claim is contested, by whom

The Thanjavur and Pudukkottai schools are the two usually named: the Pudukkottai line of Dakshinamurthy Pillai is known for its intricacy and the Thanjavur for its weight and clarity. Palghat Mani Iyer in the twentieth century is generally held to have reshaped what the instrument does in a concert, raising the accompanist from a timekeeper to an equal. Makers matter as much as players: a drum is known by its maker and its wood, jackfruit for preference, and a good instrument is kept for a lifetime and re skinned rather than replaced.

Worth knowing#

The paste that makes the pitch

The black patch on the right head is not decoration. It is applied in dozens of thin layers of rice paste mixed with iron filings, each dried and burnished with a stone, and it loads the membrane so that it produces a definite note rather than a thud. Only a few families make them well and the knowledge is not written down. A drum is tuned to the singer’s tonic by the maker and cannot be retuned far, which is why a professional carries several and why the choice of which to take to a concert is made when the singer is known.

Landing on the first beat

A tani avartanam ends with a korvai, a phrase repeated three times and calculated so that the last syllable falls exactly on the sam, the first beat of the cycle. The arithmetic can be formidable and is worked out in advance or, by the best players, in the moment. An audience that knows the tala counts along on the hand and the applause comes at the landing, not at the end. It is the one point in a Carnatic concert where the mathematics is audible to everybody in the hall, and it is the reason percussion solos are popular rather than endured.

Where the regions differ#

  • Tamil
  • Kerala
  • Telugu
  • Kannada
  • North
  • Maharashtra
  • Bengal
  • Punjab
  • Assam
  • Sri Lanka
  • Nepal
  • Gujarat
  • Odisha
  • Mithila
  • Kashmir
  • Tulu Nadu
  • manipur
  • rajasthan
  • konkani
  • sindhi
  • jharkhand
  • himalayan
  • kodava
Where it is kept: 3 of the 23 traditions this app follows. The filled one is where it is from.
Tamil Nadu
The Thanjavur and Pudukkottai schools, the December season, and the makers of Thanjavur and Chennai who supply most professionals.
Kerala
The maddalam and the chenda hold the equivalent place in Kerala and the mridangam is used in the Carnatic concert context.
Andhra and Telangana
Taught and played across Andhra and Telangana in the same concert tradition, with the Trinity’s compositions as the common ground.

All the arts