Tala

The remarkable facility in rhythmic play demonstrated by musicians and dancers throughout the Indian subcontinent is as impressive as it can be bewildering for the listener. From local and regional practices, through devotional and popular genres, to the heavily theorized concert traditions of the North (Hindustani music) and South (Karnatak music), rhythmic complexity abounds. A performance may begin without even a pulse, where melodies seem to float unpredictably in musical space. Yet increasing rhythmic regularity leads to the establishment of repetitive sequences of beats, both evenly and unevenly distributed, which provide the frameworks for elaborate melodic and rhythmic compositions, variations, and improvisations. The entrance of drums – also essentially melodic in their subtle manipulations of pitch, timbre, stress, and resonance – is invariably a moment of great visceral as well as intellectual excitement. Together, singers, dancers, instrumentalists, and drummers build their performances around the anchors provided by the beats; they subdivide these beats in myriad ways, playing with different rhythmic densities and syncopations. The thrilling, rapidly articulated sequences with their offbeat stresses can temporarily disorient the listener until all seems to resolve in a triumphant convergence of surface rhythm and target beat. The rhythmic system as a whole and the individual frameworks of beats that serve to organize rhythmic expression are known as tala.

The Sanskrit term tala (Hindi: tal; Tamil: talam) is an ancient concept described in treatises close to 2,000 years old, and still today the word carries the same essential meaning of a handclap. Any attempt to summarize what are arguably the world’s most complex and virtuoso rhythmic-metric practices must necessarily begin with a definition of tala, for it differs from Western meter in a fundamental way. Meter is implicit: it is a pattern that is abstracted from the surface rhythms of a piece, and consists of an underlying pulse that is organized into a recurring hierarchical sequence of strong and weak beats. On the other hand, tala is explicit: it is a recurring pattern of non-hierarchical beats manifested as hand gestures consisting of claps, silent waves, and finger counts, or as a relatively fixed sequence of drum strokes.

The repetitive beat patterns of a tala are often thought of as cyclic, and certain words describing the cycle (avartana, for instance) are based on the Sanskrit root vrt, meaning “turning” or “revolving.” The circular representation shown in Figure 14.1, taken from an Urdu book published in 1869, maps out tintal, Hindustani music’s most prevalent tala of four beats, with each beat lasting four counts for a total of sixteen: it contains quasi-onomatopoeic syllables for the drum strokes (dha, dhin, ta, tin) used to represent the tala. Conceptually, the cycle begins and ends on sama (Hindi: sam; Tamil: samam – here, at the top of the dial), which is the beat representing the most common point of melodic and rhythmic confluence.

14.1 Cyclic representation of tala

Throughout this chapter, readers will encounter many examples of clapped beat structures as well as syllables representing the strokes that articulate rhythms. All are encouraged to engage physically with these phenomena by performing the patterns of claps, waves, and finger counts, and by orally expressing the syllables. For it is through physicality and orality that the musical system is taught. Such an embodiment of tala is crucial not only for achieving rhythmic competence and engendering creativity as a performer but also for deriving enhanced aesthetic pleasure as an audience. Indeed, audience participation through gestures marking tala is prevalent in the concert traditions, especially in Karnatak music, and allows audiences to experience and appreciate more keenly the rhythmic architecture of performance.

Tala in Karnatak Music

As an abstract structure, tala finds its most canonical form in the concert tradition of southern India: Karnatak music. We begin with the example of adi tala: a series of claps, silent waves, and finger counts that provides the framework for roughly 80 percent of songs and other composed works in this repertoire. In Table 14.1, the eight-count sequence of hand gestures provides both visual and sonic markers that allow performers and listeners alike to know precisely where they are within the tala at any given moment. This pattern begins with a clap of the right hand down onto the upturned palm of the left hand on count 1, followed on counts 2, 3, and 4 by taps of the pinky, ring, and middle fingers of the right hand onto the left palm; it continues on count 5 with another clap, and on count 6 with a wave, which is where the right hand turns palm upward and effects either a light tap of the back of the right hand on the left palm or a bounce in the air above it; another clap and wave on counts 7 and 8 conclude the sequence, and the pattern cycles back to repeat from count 1. As stated earlier, the tala has no internal accent structure like Western meter, not even on the clap marking count 1. The gestured 8-count pattern functions to provide a solid temporal reference for complex surface musical activity.

A musician trained in a Western tradition might well approach the clapping pattern of adi tala by doing the hand gestures and counting out the eight counts. Yet this approach is rare in South Asia, where musicians tend to use syllabic sequences to mark time rather than numbers. This results in a qualitatively different way of experiencing one’s relationship to the tala. The syllabic sequences are based on solkattu: a rich vocabulary of drum strokes and sounds that are expressed as onomatopoeic syllables like ta, di, tom, and nam. Returning to Table 14.1, we note the presence of eight syllables that should now replace the numbers as one performs the gestures. As a basic exercise, one begins with density level 1, where each hand gesture is accompanied by one syllable. Density level 2 doubles the speed of articulation of the syllables, although one must remember to strictly maintain the original pace of the hand gestures so that now each one is accompanied by two syllables. Density level 3 doubles the speed of articulation yet again, so that four syllables accompany each gesture. These three density levels are known as trikala, the “three speeds,” and all students of Karnatak music, whether melodic or percussive in form, learn this fundamental technique of changing rhythmic densities while maintaining the original pulse. Students of vocal music, for example, proceed through defined sets of scalar exercises sung to the solfège names Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa, all the while clapping adi tala and applying the “three speeds.” As can also be seen in Table 14.1, an additional rhythmic exercise arranges the same syllables in triple time.

Adi tala is fundamentally duple in character, and as such it fits into the first of five classes of rhythm. This first class, or jati, is known as caturasra, or “four sided,” and is commonly articulated with the solkattu sequence ta ka di mi (or ta ka jo nu). As shown in Table 14.2, there are four other jati of 3, 7, 5, and 9 (this is their traditional order), each with its own pattern. The jati are important in several ways: they show how the beat may be internally subdivided into quadruplets, triplets, septuplets, quintuplets, and nonuplets, respectively; they can form the basis for calculating larger units of rhythmic improvisation; and they can serve to modify tala structures. This last point necessitates a brief discussion of the suladi sapta tala system.

Appearing first in the late nineteenth century, the suladi sapta tala (seven primordial tala) system quantifies seven basic categories, each with a distinctive gestural structure. The three gestures are laghu (symbol I: a clap plus a variable number of finger counts), drutam (symbol O: a clap plus a wave), and anudrutam (symbol U: a single clap). Adi tala belongs to the triputa category, which comprises one laghu and two drutam. The length of the variable laghu is determined by one of the jati categories: in the case of adi tala, the clap is followed by three finger counts for a total of four counts, and thus the laghu is “four sided.” Another, more cumbersome name for adi tala is therefore caturasra jati triputa tala. As can be seen in Table 14.2, the combination of seven tala categories with the five jati results in thirty-five distinctive tala structures, from three counts up to twenty-nine. What is interesting is that adi tala is not the only structure comprising eight counts, and yet tisra jati matya tala (clap pinky ring clap wave clap pinky ring) and khanda jati jhampa tala (clap pinky ring middle index clap clap wave) differ markedly in their arrangements of gestures.

In truth, however, very few of the thirty-five structures have been employed in performance practice, though one does occasionally hear uncommon tala structures used for exercises and technically challenging showpieces called pallavi that are designed to demonstrate technical virtuosity. The vast majority of compositions, including those of the greatest composers from the Golden Age of Karnatak music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – the so-called “Holy Trinity” of Tyagaraja, Diksitar, and Syama Sastri – are set in just four tala: adi tala plus three that do not even belong to the suladi sapta tala system. These are also given in Table 14.2 and comprise only claps and waves: rupaka (3 counts), misra capu (7 counts), and khanda capu (5 counts). These structures are very likely to have entered the concert tradition from local or regional practices. Rupaka is an interesting and somewhat confusing case, as it shares its name but not its structure (clap clap wave) with one of the seven suladi categories (comprising one drutam and one laghu), and it also appears to be a relatively modern substitute for the ancient tisra jati eka tala (clap pinky ring). In practice, rupaka and tisra jati eka tala are interchangeable, and musicians choose according to the teaching lineage through which they have acquired their knowledge.

Rhythmic Play in Karnatak Music

The performance of a typical piece of Karnatak concert music begins with alapana, which is an exposition of the melodic motivic characteristics of a raga without tala. Although the melodies may seem to be free of any regular sense of rhythm, many musicians insist that they are mindful of an underlying pulse against which melodic expression is measurable. Alapana is often quite short, but nevertheless the expanding range of melodic motifs is complemented with increased surface rhythmic density.

Following the alapana is the composition, a text set to melody (or an instrumental rendition of one) that is always framed by a tala and thus always accompanied by a drum. The great percussion instrument of Karnatak music is the mridangam, a barrel drum with two heads made from layers of animal hide, laced together, and capable of being tuned by means of a permanent black compound applied as a low, circular mound in the center of the right head and by the application of a temporary ball of dough stuck and flattened onto the left. While the left head provides a deep, resonant bass, the right produces a variety of timbres depending on how and where the fingers and palm strike it. As the first strains of the melodic composition are delivered, the mridangam player must quickly identify the tala and the tempo, which then remain constant throughout the piece. The starting point for the melodic composition may occur anywhere in the cycle and could even begin on a half beat. Experienced drummers will likely know many compositions and may even play along with some of the prominent rhythmic signatures of the melody. As an accompanist, the drummer’s role is to support the melodic unfolding of the composition, mark the ends of sections of the exposition with rhythmic cadences, and contribute to the increasing energy and intensity of sections of improvisation that follow.

The rhythmic patterns played by the drummer fall into two categories: those that structurally maintain the flow of time, and those that disrupt it through rhythmic formulas that are calculated to terminate on a target beat within the tala, most commonly sama. The first category is known as sarvalaghu (from Sanskrit words implying “all short/easy”). Table 14.3 outlines a few simple examples of sarvalaghu, each of which the reader is encouraged to read out loud while clapping the structure of adi tala. These patterns have a tendency toward internal repetition that subdivides them into two halves and thus reinforces the repetitive groove resulting from the distinctive timbres and articulations. The groove takes on a particularly heavy swing in examples 4–7 (for instance, in example 5 one should sharpen the attack on TAka and exaggerate the weighty resonance of JOnu), and example 8 suggests greater surface rhythmic density, pointing toward patterns that become increasingly complex as pieces develop. Once one has gained familiarity with these patterns, one should double their speed to get a sense of how they sound in performance (yet maintain the original tempo of the clapping pattern – a metronome mark of roughly 84 counts per minute is a fairly typical performance tempo). A drummer will switch between many different sarvalaghu patterns according to the flow and rate of activity of the melodic exposition and its development.

The second category is known as kanakku, “calculation,” which is a vast and complex topic too large for anything but a cursory introduction. We shall briefly look at endings (mora), shapes (yati), and complex designs (korvai). All are configured in such a way as to create temporary uncertainty only to find familiar ground once again by directing our attention to a target beat. The simple examples given in Table 14.4 are borrowed from David Nelson’s exemplary Solkattu Manual.¹

A mora is a rhythmic cadence that ends a section of the music. In its simplest form, it is a sequence of strokes that is played three times: the reason for three statements of a given pattern is important. With just two statements, it would be difficult to anticipate the target beat, whereas with three, the pattern is not only more firmly established in the listener’s mind but also the temporal distance from the second to the third can be predicted to be the same as from the first to the second. The mora shown in Table 14.4 features the pattern ta ta kt tom tom ta tam, which covers 7 pulses (kt stands for kita and occupies 1 pulse). The body of the pattern is the 6-pulse statement ta ta kt tom tom ta, and tam is its end point. Tam may be followed by no gap at all, or more commonly with a gap of a variable number of pulses. In this case, tam is followed by a 2-pulse gap for a total of 3 pulses: tam – –. The mora, then, comprises (statement) + [gap] + (statement) + [gap] + (statement) for a total of 24 pulses. If the rate of rhythmic action in adi tala is 4 pulses per count, then the 8-count cycle will comprise 32 pulses. It follows, therefore, that in order to target the sama of the cycle on count 1 the mora should start after a gap of 8 pulses (in this case, those pulses are occupied by part of a sarvalaghu pattern from Table 14.3, ta – din – din – na –); in other words, the mora begins on the third count that is marked by the ring-finger gesture.

Yati refers to a series of operations that create shapes in the mind of the listener. The truly interesting ones among them are the cow’s tail (gopucca) and the river mouth (srotovaha), which represent narrowing and expanding operations, respectively. Retaining the same statement used for the first mora, we can see in Table 14.4 how elements are subtracted from the original phrase in gopucca yati, while the reverse is true in srotovaha yati. The gap in each instance is reduced to 2 pulses [tam –], and once again the total number of pulses for each sequence is 24. Therefore, these mora also begin on the third count of adi tala. By combining these two shapes, one can create two more: damaru yati (a small hourglass-shaped drum) with gopucca-srotovaha, and the barrel-shaped mridanga yati with srotovaha-gopucca.

In accompaniment, the mridangam player tends toward shorter, simpler mora structures. Yet often near the end of a concert piece the spotlight may shift over to the drummer for a solo that can run anywhere from two to ten minutes. This is the tani avartanam, and it marks a special moment of great concentration for the other performers on stage who attempt to maintain the clapping pattern of the tala as the only accompaniment to the sounds of the drum. Here the rhythmic designs are longer and more complex, and may involve changing the surface rhythmic density from duple to triple time, or even to quintuplets and septuplets. Compound mora structures are also increasingly likely, where a mora is repeated three times, thus prolonging the tension before a resolution on the sama of the cycle. But the tani avartanam must also have at least one grand, pre-composed structure: the korvai.

A korvai may feature all manner of clever rhythmic thinking, but at root it comprises a yati plus a mora. In the relatively simple example given in Table 14.4, there are four phrases of 10, 4, 4, and 3 pulses, respectively, which create the narrowing shape of gopucca yati. The composition repeats phrases abcd three times, then bcd, then b, and finally the mora statement and gap constructed from (c)+[d]+(c)+[d]+(c). A korvai may in fact be extensive, combining many sections, as long as it ends with a mora. They are often difficult to execute, and difficult to follow, but they represent the pinnacle of arithmetic thinking merged with musical aesthetics and technique, and they are quite thrilling to experience.

Finally, one may sometimes find more than one percussion instrument on stage in a Karnatak music concert, most commonly a ghatam (clay pot) and a khanjira (small tambourine). These are wielded with extraordinary technical skill, and are capable of replicating anything the mridangam can do.

A Brief Word on Local and Regional Rhythmic Traditions

There exists an extraordinary diversity of approaches to rhythm in South Asia, yet outside the concert traditions of Karnatak and Hindustani music there is relatively little detailed documentation or analysis of how precisely rhythm works. Certain scholars have unearthed evidence contradicting the notion that rhythm in South Asia is rigidly organized into isometric, that is, unchanging cycles of beats and counts. Jim Sykes² has described Sinhala Buddhist ritual music in Sri Lanka where drumming patterns can sound like unmetered speech, where long and short drum syllables set in lines of drum poetry often do not coincide with beats or pulses, and where sometimes the beats may even be stretched to match the durations of drum words. Without an insider’s understanding of the rhythmic logic of the drums in these ritual contexts, these irregular cycles and rhythms are difficult or impossible to count. Richard Widdess³ has noted how in many older repertoires of religious genres – such as Sikh gurubani hymns in the Punjab, Sufi devotional qawwali songs from Delhi, temple traditions from Lord Krishna’s heartland of Vrindaban, and religious and ceremonial music and dance among the Newar of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal – heterometric rhythmic organization survives alongside isometric structures, and may have been (or indeed may still be) far more widespread that we realize. In a heterometric composition, the tala changes from section to section of the piece, unlike the concert traditions where the tala changes only if the composition does. In his work with Shi’a drumming groups active during Muharram (the annual period of mourning) in Muslim centers across India and Pakistan, Richard Wolf ⁴ also documented examples of heterometric structure. Additionally, in his study of Kota tribal drumming from South India,⁵ he introduced the important analytic idea of beats as anchor points that act as signposts that are especially important in coordinating group rhythmic practices. The spaces between beats can be flexible through non-uniform inflation, just as they are in the Karnatak system where the variable laghu can expand from 3 to 4, 5, 7, or 9 counts. Indeed, the rationale for many of the observations Wolf has made about a wide array of drumming practices focuses on the importance of the number of beats – both as a series of foundational anchors and also as stressed strokes in a surface rhythmic pattern – in the naming and identification of a tala. Of course, not all carry the name tala: though the term is widespread, others like cal (Hindi: “motion; gait”) or ati (Tamil: “beat”) are also found, and some traditions appear to have no word for tala at all.

One other very important analytic concept introduced by Richard Wolf is “stroke melody.” This resonates with what I wrote earlier about the extraordinary variety of different pitches, timbres, and articulations that drummers can produce on their instruments, either solo or in ensembles featuring several different kinds of membranophones and idiophones (small cymbals, for instance, that have always traditionally marked anchor points). Stroke melodies are prominent throughout South Asia, and are fixed patterns whose combinations of timbres and stresses set up what might best be described as a groove: a repetitive rhythm rooted in bodily movement that often involves offbeat stresses and that conveys a feeling of motion (compare the Hindi term cal). They often establish an underlying framework for other musical activity, and sometimes through variation, expansion, and changes in density they can be the focus of the musical performance itself. As we shall see, stroke melodies are also very important in the Hindustani concert tradition.

Hindustani Tala

The Hindustani tala system in fact harbors two systems that over the past two centuries have become enmeshed to such an extent that few would acknowledge any separation whatsoever. Yet extricating one from the other can prove instructive. The first lies within the domain of dhrupad: widely considered to be the oldest genre still performed, a dhrupad performance features a substantial unaccompanied alap (compare this with alapana), followed by one or two compositions set in tala and accompanied by a barrel drum called either pakhavaj or mridang (compare this with mridangam, to which it is structurally similar). The second pertains to all other types of concert music: vocal genres such as khayal, thumri, and so on; instrumental music of the sitar, sarod, and so on; and the dance form that during the twentieth century came to be known as kathak. All these genres are accompanied by the tabla, which along with the sitar has become a globally recognized symbol of Indian music.

Of the hundreds of tala structures that have been listed over the centuries in Sanskrit and Indo-Persian treatises, only four continue to appear with any regularity in the modern dhrupad repertoire. Of these, cautal and dhamar (12 and 14 counts, respectively) dominate slow-tempo compositions, and sultal and tivra (10 and 7 counts) frame those in fast tempo. Matra (etymologically linked to meter) is the commonly used word for a count: in the past, the matra corresponded to a healthy human pulse, but it is now conceived as a flexible unit dependent on tempo: laya. In the three categories, slow, medium, and fast (vilambit, madhya, drut), the matra can range from 12 per minute in the case of slow khayal compositions up to 720 in ever-accelerating instrumental climaxes.

Table 14.5 maps the beats of tala structures for dhrupad using only clap and wave gestures: unlike Karnatak tala, finger counts are not generally used, and certainly not systematically so. What dhrupad has in common with Karnatak practice, however, is the strict maintenance of the clapping pattern by performers and audience as an external representation of the tala in use, which in turn frees the pakhavaj player to support the melodic unfolding of the composition, mark the ends of its sections with rhythmic cadences, and contribute to the increasing energy and intensity of the performance – as is precisely the case with the mridangam player. Moreover, just as the mridangam player may choose from various sarvalaghu patterns to fill the tala cycle and contribute to rhythmic flow, the pakhavaj player too adopts repetitive, groove-like patterns. The first examples were notated in the early 1850s by Wajid Ali Shah, king of Awadh, a lavish patron and practitioner of music at his court in Lucknow. He called them theka, “accompaniment.” A theka is a fixed sequence of drum strokes that, when repeated relatively unchanged cycle after cycle, creates a recognizable representation of a tala – an aural symbol of it – and thus its presence largely obviates the need for the clapping pattern to mark time. However, Wajid Ali Shah’s theka for cautal would in subsequent years be interpreted merely as a kind of filler pattern akin to sarvalaghu, and was superseded in the late nineteenth century by another pattern that even today continues as the established theka representing cautal. The paradox is that in spite of the presence of these theka patterns, there is still a heavy reliance on external clapping patterns for dhrupad and pakhavaj performance. By contrast, clapping in non-dhrupad genres is rare. This raises three points: (1) that dhrupad and Karnatak performance are less removed from one another than is generally assumed; (2) that the pakhavaj accompanist spends very little time playing theka but rather quickly shifts gears into filler patterns and compositions, thus creating the need for an external set of markers for the tala; and (3) that theka is probably not native to the pakhavaj but instead owes its presence to the influence of the tabla. Theka is first linked to tabla in texts from the early nineteenth century.

Table 14.5 Tala structures for dhrupad

First appearing in the early eighteenth century, the tabla was, organologically speaking, a pakhavaj split into two parts and played with skins facing up. The substitution of a small hemispherical kettledrum for the bass gave drummers the ability to create extremely active pitch inflections of its resonant sonority, allowing it to replicate not only the rhythmic language of the pakhavaj but also that of the barrel drum dholak, widely used in local and regional musical genres as well as in the traditions of the Qawwals, who sang Muslim devotional genres as well as khayal, among other things. It was this flexibility that led to a growing preference for tabla in all genres other than dhrupad, but the drum owed its rapid spread throughout northern parts of the subcontinent to the popular songs and dances of female entertainers. Such performances were labelled “nautch” by the British (a corruption of nac, “dance”), and were very much the rage in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among Indians and foreigners alike.

Three rhythmic patterns dominated the nautch: a compound duple with hemiolic properties called dadra (3+3 / 2+2+2), a lilting ghazal (3+4), and a duple kaherva (4+4). These were articulated on tabla with short, fixed patterns – stroke melodies – that likely underwent embellishment and intensification without deviating greatly from the beat pattern other than to end a section of music or dance with a short cadential flourish. As tabla began to be used for other genres with longer beat patterns, the grooves largely remained intact, but were played twice in order to fill the extended tala structures. A case in point is ektal, whose clapping pattern derives from cautal for pakhavaj, but whose theka consists of a dadra groove played twice, as seen in Table 14.6. Yet in order to differentiate between the repetitions, and thus ensure that the theka marks the sam of the cycle, the repeat removes the bass resonance (voiced phonemes dhin dhin become unvoiced ones, kat tin). This highlights the timbral difference between the opposing polar axes of sam at the beginning of the cycle (clapped and marked with an X) and khali halfway through it (waved and marked with a 0). Khali, the “empty” beat, therefore becomes an important marker in a bipartite structure. The same process can also be seen in Table 14.6 with the most common of all tabla tala structures, titala, which in an older form was called dhima titala that was adapted from dhrupad-pakhavaj repertoire (but that is now rarely heard there). Dhima was only one form of titala, however, as other stroke melodies appropriate to different song genres were also in common usage. A few of these are shown in Table 14.6, but most are now obscure owing to the almost complete dominance of tintal (also represented in Figure 14.1), which was originally used in dance accompaniment. Nowadays, the vast majority of vocal and instrumental genres of concert music accompanied by tabla use tintal, jhumra, dipcandi, ektal, jhaptal, and rupak (this last, a structural anomaly, is representative of an iambic lilt influenced by regional and popular forms of 3+4). These patterns are also given in Table 14.6.

Rhythmic Play in Hindustani Music

In dhrupad, a melodic composition is stated several times before undergoing many kinds of rhythmic transformation of text and tune, with the beats being subject to increasingly denser subdivisions. The pakhavaj accompanist tries to match these, and can draw on a variety of filler patterns, as noted earlier, or on compositions known broadly as paran. Table 14.7 outlines two simple paran compositions: the first is known as sath paran, sath meaning “with; together,” suggesting its use in accompaniment; the second is a mohra that incorporates a threefold repetition generally called tihai in Hindustani music (compare this with the Karnatak mora). In these, the typically unbroken stream of stroke phrases in the sath paran contrasts with the broken pattern initiating the mohra before the tihai (ghege tite kata gadi gena dha –) directs our attention to the sam.

There is no equivalent of Karnatak music’s tani avartanam in dhrupad, but instead the pakhavaj may be heard as a discrete solo item in a concert. Here, drummers embark on sets of longer, varied paran structures, including the chakradar paran that will comprise the threefold repetition of a paran plus a mohra, calculated to end on sam. Pakhavaj players have resurrected many older, obscure tala frameworks as the basis for solo performances, many possessing names of Hindu gods: Brahm, Rudra, Lakshmi, and so forth. They also recite and play compositions that blend drum syllables – bol – with lines of verse praising gods: the elephant-headed Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles, is a popular subject for an opening piece, an invocation for an auspicious blessing.

The role of the tabla as accompaniment to vocal genres differs from pakhavaj, because it is confined to a far greater extent to maintaining the theka, with very few opportunities for solo flourishes. In instrumental music, the modern trend has moved increasingly toward a collaborative performance where the accompanist is given several opportunities to perform solo, during which time the melodist maintains the raga composition as an aural marker of the tala. Theka and melodic composition become important frames of reference for the tala structure in the absence of the clapping gestures of Karnatak music and dhrupad. This is true also of lahra, a tune specifically designed to accompany the discrete genre of tabla solo.

Many different types of composition are available to the tabla player, but once again all fall into one of two categories: those that maintain the structure of the cycle and those that are calculated to end on a target beat, the sam. As far as the latter category is concerned, tabla borrows heavily from the structures of the pakhavaj: tukra is the equivalent of mohra, ending with a threefold tihai, and a chakradar-tukra repeats that structure three times. A gat is a specialized composition of mostly tabla material and is prized for its specialized techniques: some end with a tihai (gat-tukra), and others blend tabla material with pakhavaj phrases (gat-paran).

What truly sets tabla apart is the manner in which pieces that maintain the cycle are structured and performed. Peshkar (“presentation”) and bant (“division”) are slower, introductory compositions, qaida (“base; rule”) is the primary vehicle for developing variations on a theme, and rela (“torrent”) presents a stream of rapidly articulated phrases. There is considerable evidence to suggest that these compositional types emerged from theka and its embellishments and variations, particularly those for tintal. Crucially, all are subject to transformations dependent on the khali of the cycle. Take the popular late nineteenth-century Delhi qaida shown in Table 14.8: the 8-count theme (dhati tedha tite dhadha tite dhage teena kena) occupies the first half of the cycle, and is then repeated in the second half (tati teta tite dhadha tite dhage dheena gena). The right-hand, treble strokes remain the same, but the left-hand bass strokes change from open, resonant sounds to damped ones. As noted earlier with ektal theka, the transformation is represented by a phonemic change from voiced syllables (dha, ge) to unvoiced equivalents (ta, ke) as the theme approaches the khali, and then by the return of voiced syllables as the repeat returns toward the sam. Typically, the qaida is then played at twice the rhythmic density, though the theme continues to be subject to the bipartite division of the tala into sam and khali halves. Variations (vistar, “spreading”) are built from the components of the original theme by repeating, permutating, expanding, and compressing its phrases. Dohra (“double”), for example, is a common method of repeating the opening phrase three times. The qaida ends with a tihai based on the original theme or one of its variations. This Delhi qaida with a short sequence of variations and concluding tihai (bracketed) can be seen in Table 14.8.

Rhythmic Diversity or Unity?

In a region of the world so obviously socio-culturally diverse, different approaches to musical rhythm are to be expected. Yet as this necessarily brief introduction to rhythmic thought and practice in the Indian subcontinent has tried to show, there is much more that unites the region than divides it, in spite of the tendency of many musicians and scholars to maintain distance between Karnatak and Hindustani music systems, or between elite/concert and local/regional traditions. The fundamental orality of rhythm is ubiquitous, as is the explicitness of tala either as gestured, quantitative structures based on arrangements of beats or as qualitative stroke melodies that articulate and represent them. Indeed, it is clear that both Karnatak and Hindustani rhythm combine these quantitative and qualitative approaches to tala, and that the rhythmic strategies in their respective performance contexts are really not so different. The all-important beats of a tala are anchors that organize the flow of time, frame composition, and coordinate creativity: we have seen that this flow can be maintained with stroke melodies like sarvalaghu and theka, and through various rhythmic compositions that are bound to and reflective of the structure of the tala cycle; and we have noted how the flow may be disrupted by rhythmic patterns and compositions calculated to target a specific beat, most commonly sama/sam, the principal marker of creative confluence. One does not need to understand complex theory to sense the sheer excitement of rhythmic performance in South Asia, but an awareness of its beat structures and patterns of maintenance and disruption will most certainly enhance enjoyment of what is one of the world’s most thrilling systems of rhythm.