North Indian classical music concerts follow a standardized three-part progression: Aalap (slow, soloistic, meditative improvisation without rhythm), Gut (composed melodies in specific rhythmic cycles like 16-beat tala), and Fast Gut (increasingly faster tempo with improvisational sections called Tons). The concert begins with Aalap, progresses through slow Gut with Tons (improvised phrases ending in Tihai - three-fold repetitions), and concludes with Fast Gut, Tors (right-hand patterns), Jhala (drone string section), and Chuck of Dhrupad (final nine-fold repetition). This structure allows audiences to track the concert's progression and understand where they are in the performance.
Deep Dive
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Deep Dive
UCSB Music of IndiaAdded:
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>> Yeah.
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Hello everybody. Welcome to Gan Hall. Uh please note the emergency exit to the left and to the right of the building.
Uh please use this time to silence all cell phones and electronic devices.
>> Um please during the performance, no flash photography. You are welcome to leave and come in at any time during the entire concert. And yeah, please feel free to sit on the mats in front of you as well. And if you don't already, you're also welcome to take off your shoes. And please enjoy the sh Welcome. Welcome.
Let me hear a little noise.
Good. Good evening and thank you for coming. Did you all get a program?
>> Yes.
>> If you didn't get a program, I need you to get a program.
Um, who doesn't have a program?
>> Okay. Can we uh Jenny, can you can you get get us like 10 programs pass?
So, uh again, thank you for coming. So, this is uh within the department. you you'll see in the probe in the back cover we have ethno musiccology performance ensembles. So that means that within the discipline of ethnomusicology within the department um we have these ensembles. So this is a music of India ensemble and you see we have a a sarro ensemble a gospel choir a galon and a middle east ensemble. So we uh would love for you we invite you to participate in any and all of these.
Um so what you see in front of you is uh sittars four sitars and a ta the tla. So sitars are the uh maybe the main uh string instrument of north India or at least in people's imagination. So it is an instrument of north Indian music. It's not an instrument of south Indian classical music. It's north Indian classical music and it's shared by the neighboring countries.
So Pakistan, parts of Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and some folks within the country Sri Lanka all have this instrument the sit.
Um, and then on top of the top of the drums, this is Zead Marcus. Please welcome Zad.
So, uh, you you will see a uh a bio statement of Zad's studies of the T. And I should point out that this is Zad's mother here, Zabini K.
And uh we just celebrated Sad's birthday. He's 33.
You could stop and sing happy birthday to him. But it it has passed. So maybe we will pass on that. So what you're going to hear tonight, as you see on the program, you're going to hear two different performances. is in the first we're going to have a a rag called rag Yemen. So when you play north Indian classical music you don't necessarily have a title of a song or anything like this but you have a rag a mode a scale and you announce the the uh mode the ra that you're playing. So this group here is going to play a raw called yam. So Yemen is uh it has a special taste in north Indian classical music and that it is commonly stated that when you first you begin your studies of north Indian classical music you begin with rag yam so it's it's not needed it's not necessary and in many cases people don't follow this but it it is what everyone tends to say and so there are many rocks there are literally hundreds of rocks that you learn as you have an extended study. So, you know, by the time if you learn five years and 10 years and 15 years and 20 years, if you've been learning 20 years, you you've learned dozens and dozens and dozens of rocks.
Often in your first year, you might learn one or two or three, a very small number. So, rock Yemen is often the first Rob that people learn.
And then we're going to have a second group of people and they will perform we will perform a role called Bishop. Okay.
So the uh if we can if you could all help me by looking at page two of the program um performances of both classical music on the sit and on the other melody instruments first it's it's always soloistic. So you have one melody player and one drummer.
This is the norm. So we have a a bigger group because we are plas and actually one of the ways I studied was living in Boris at the university called BHU Badar Hindu University and we had a similar situation. So first year sitar we performed as a class of 12 people and second year sitar we perform about eight people and third year sitar you know get people become less it's like five people this type of thing so classes do exist but in the prof professional world and even uh media intermediate students when they perform they'll perform solo one melody person one player So the progression is threefold and this is I you're about to hear this. Okay. So I feel like if you do not know this progression then you will not understand what's happening. But if I can just introduce you to the progression then you'll basically know where we are as we progress. So the uh performance in every concert is basically of three parts and the first part you see is called alop.
You all see that there a lot and the second part is a composition called gut and the second part is when the gut that we play is very slow a slow gut and then you see number three below the third section of each performance is generally a fast cut. So this is what we are going to play in both drums. We're going to play a lop. We're going to play then the slow gut and then the fast gut. So let me explain what these things are briefly. The alop is soloistic and I will personally will play that. It's it's a slow unfolding of the rock. The tupple player just it doesn't come in.
The tupple player sits and listens as an audience member. And it's been supposed to be very slow. People use the word meditative and basically you go from low notes which on the sitar you'll see I'll be up here with the low notes and then little by little goes to higher notes little by little note goes to higher notes goes to the high and when you get to the top that's one way of understanding when the alop ends I can tell the story more involved but that's that's not a bad idea so alop is soloistic there's no specific specific rhythm. You cannot tuck your feet to it because there's no pulse.
Um, so this is the type of a lop that I'm going to perform. And a lop can be it's it's all improvised. So it can be three or four minutes or it can be 20, 30, 40 minutes. So I will do a short version >> and then the drummer will come in and us melody people, we're going to play a very short composition and and This is called a D. And the first composition is extremely slow.
Um, can can we play this now?
We want to show you what just what the gut is. You'll hear it over and over.
So, it is in a 16 beat cycle. And this might be, of course, this takes more explanation, but it starts on beat 12. And after five beats, it comes to beat one. and it goes to beat 11. That's the composition we're about to play for you. So, this is our slow Start me. 1 2 3 Here it is again.
Okay.
So as as I say here in the program this is called this is a slow gut in Sanskrit it's called gut and it's also called masi kani gut after the fellow masi khan who is understood to have invented the slow goat tradition he lived in the late 1700s so this is a slow tempo melody that presents the raw and serves as her frame separating ating moments of improvisation.
So we improvise and when we finish that idea, we come back to the so that makes it clear to you that we finished an idea because you hear that. And then there's another part of the tradition where when we are playing improvising zad on the tub of drum just accompanies us. He's just playing a basic pattern. We'll be playing in a cycle a towel of 16 beats.
So he's going to be playing this recurring cycle. But when we want him to improvise, then we just play the gut over and over again. We become the timeke keepers. We switch uh roles. When we're improvising, the drum is the timekeeper. But when the drummer is improvising, we are the timekeeper. And how do we keep time? By playing the gut over and over and over again. So when Xian is improvising his when he's doing a solo and we're playing this melody over and over again, don't listen to us.
We're just time keepers. Listen to Z.
Yeah, I hope that makes sense.
Um and then the improvisations are called toms and having started the gut which is 2 a tons are we start off with very small tongs very slow to there's a type of tong called gama tms where you take a note and forcefully fall from the note above it the the the on the satar and this this always happens at the beginning they're called tongs. You will hear this. And then we have something called liari tones where with a slow gut the beat is so slow.
It's it's about this tempo.
And so we start off with playing four beats per beat. Four notes per beat.
Something like this. One, two, three, four, one. And in the lari section we switch. And we play different notes per beat. So we're going to switch to six. 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6. If you're at all a musician and you hear us go into a six pattern, that's the moment we call it six like and then you're doing this. And having done it, we will do it on melody and Zad will take a turn improvising on the drum, the tupla drum. And then after we do this, we switch to seven. So it's one, two, three, four, five, six, four.
And here's seven. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 and we take it and Z takes it. Then we go to eight. So it's 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 is a six, right? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and then 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and 1 2 3 4. So it goes faster and faster. This is generally the way the slow section ends with a section of library. Again, what is library? That we're playing more notes per beat. So let me say those of us who are also played music in the west, the west does not have black heart. Musicians in the west do not learn to improvise switching from two to a beat to three to a beat to four beat to five to a beat. This is the part of every single Indian music classical music concert to do this type of thing and it generally ends the slow gut and then we change to a faster gut. You'll hear this and this was created by a fellow named Raza Khan and so it's called Raza Kan. Raza Khan lived in the 1840s in the city of Lucknau. Masi Khan lived in old Delhi right next to New Delhi. So these two people were responsible for creating these two guts that we structure all of our performances around.
And for the slask, we do the gun itself.
Then we do toms. One of the major aspects of toms is that we can end them by playing a phrase three times called a ti. And what we do is having played it three times. The last beat of the third time is supposed to coincide with the first beat of a recurring uh cycle, rhythmic cycle. So the cycle's going around and we want to play it three times like one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three and we're at the first beat. So these are called tihides.
Thighs can be as simple as or as longer like so longer and it can be three or four times longer than that. It can be three times. So, it's always improvised.
So, as it gets longer, obviously the musician has to memorize what he's just played. So, you can play it three times, which is in itself a bit of a feat as it gets longer. So, you're going to hear dozens of ties throughout the concert.
Okay? And then as speed up. The entire progression is from slow to fast. Once we start the fast cut, we gen we speed up after a while. And when you speed up, one of the things we do is we play toas are part of a right hand pattern. A da stroke is like this. A rough stroke is like this. So the pattern is slow motion ra and you use this pattern to structure your thoughts your improvisation and you can do it backwards you can to every variation of it. This is called toters.
It happens in every concert. And then toners are generally followed by theater work. And this is the idea. You're just speeding up so much that you just want to play one note and play a lot of it.
This happens after. And you'll hear this. It's very obvious when we get to the section. And then right as you're going to end, we do a thing called jala.
And Java is the idea that the centaur has strings.
These right here on top.
The sitar has six or seven strings on top. And these three right here are always just played open.
They're called java strings. And at the end we play the java strings rhythmically. Something like this.
So here I'm playing one melodic note and three drone strings.
And here I'm playing one note and two drone strings and one.
So this is a whole section. When you're hearing Jawa, you know the concert's almost over. And then the way you end the concert is you play a teehive that itself is treated as a teehigh. So you end up playing something nine times. And that's called you can see that there. That's called a chuck of darkhide. Every concert ends with a chuck of dark.
Um, so you'll hear this and generally one more thing I I could say right before the chuck of the dark you one of the cliche to introduce your final moment is you to you start at the octave scale and you fall down dramatically three times a third time and right after that is the trumpet of RTR. So when you hear this dramatic call three times, you know the concert is a minute and a half away from ending.
Okay. So I say this this all to you because anyone who knows the tradition can listen to a concert and know where you are in the concert because the progression is rather standard. So if you go to concerts and you know you're it's not like it doesn't seem to be why you know it's going it's going more wide. Rather you know exactly where you are. Oh we're probably about a third of the way done. When you hear the Torah section you know you're more than half the way done. When you hear jaw you know it's about to end. And everyone knows it's not a hidden thing. It's it just so because most of us are not have not been introduced to the tradition. I'm trying to introduce you now. Both of the concerts in Yemen and Bashri will follow this very progression. I hope this helps and makes it more enjoyable for listening. So, please welcome this group here. This is the first year class.
These guys started in January and they're fabulous. So, here we go.
Zad Marcus. Zad.
So, I need a lot more volume, please.
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Can I just say something?
So, one thing I should have mentioned is that a silent audience is a sense that okay, what's wrong here? Why is everyone so quiet? Um, you're supposed to like we just did we just finished the te that had some energy to it. It was sort of a dramatic landing. you there are all these things you could call out in in the Indian languages but you could just go oh but commonly you call out which means oh what a thing or you call it va e wa va va va which means how how excellent but a silent audience the audience the uh the musicians start wondering What's wrong here? Is the sound system not giving us good volume or are we just not playing well today?
Are there just a sound a silent audience is tr it's something's wrong here. So I I did not prep you all to uh if you like the tea that ended, you can applaud right at the moment.
This is not a culture you wait till the end and applaud politely. It's not. It's it's you applaud when you're when you enjoy something. And it could just be the arrival at a note and just go a like this. This is one of the great moments when you hear something so beautifully go oh like this. And Freddy, for this very reason in Indian culture, you keep the lights on in the audience so that the musicians can can watch the the audience and see and know they're responding. Can I can I can we practice doing this?
>> I had students who said, "Oh, I see what's happening. You furrow your brow and you sort of raise your chin right like oh please.
And we musicians we see everyone go like this or the other thing surprisingly unknown to to the west. The way you say yes is like this.
So you just you kind of move your chin. This is way to say yes it's a way to say something very positive. I I've had an experience with my temple player. You know, when I'm taking a solo to make just to help things along, the temple player is often going up. And so, someone after me, came in and said, you know, your tongle player just kept nodding no to anything you were playing. You didn't seem to agree with who you were playing. And of course, it was exactly the opposite. He was being my supporter, my friend by by uh by responding positively. Ka coach Ka.
>> So I have a funny way to explain this.
It's like if your friend is playing and you're in the audience, but your buddy is the musician. I have a sense like it's a funny way to say it, but if it's from 1 to 10, so if it's a 10, you'll definitely go, "Ah, oh, beautiful." you know, and it's a nine, you go, "Oh, beautiful." And, you know, if it's a person you don't know, if it's a six or seven, you just might come up. Okay.
Okay. But if it's your friend, it's a three or a four, you'll go, "Oh, beautiful."
Because it's your friend, then you're trying to help out, right? Um, it's called helping the musician catch mood.
Catch mood. So, what one of the things the biggest way to praise a musician after concert is wow we really caught mood because it was what a beautiful thing because the musician's supposed to be able to play in tune he's supposed to be able to play virtuosically you know all that's supposed to be there but the question is did he or she catch mood if you catch mood everything you do is elevated it's oh wow you caught mood and you could actually say yeah the way through the concert you really caught mood and And how what happened?
Maybe the audience responded well and that helped. Maybe the tug of suggest keeping the mood for like the middle section and you somehow lose it. So the audience has a role to play, right? To try to help the musicians alone. So um you guys were majorly quiet and it's It's not. It's not fair.
So, I'll tell you what, to give you a chance, we're going to play the ti we just played. We're going to replay it because I think it's kind of an exciting.
Okay. So, just helps out.
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Woo! Thank you.
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ZF.
And this is Angus. Angus.
And this is how this is.
So, we are going to take a break and switch over people. The a new ROG requires uh retuning instruments. So, we're going to take maybe about a 10-minute break and we'll come back with new folks and with a new rogish.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Killed it, guys.
That's awesome.
So um we are going to this is the the continuing class. These are folks who began in the previous year.
So we call this the advanced class. you you'll see we're doing a lot of more sophisticated pulling of the string. Um you on the sitar you can just move from fret to fret and you'll get every note assuming your string is in tune. But when you pull the string you are the one that determines the pitch that you get to. And so pulling the string to uh deflecting it to get the higher pitch and to get the higher pitch on any one you can get five notes on the sitar this. So um this is advanced technique on the sitar. So you'll see a good bit more of that here. And this is not a sitar.
Shri Jenny uh is played sitar with us last year. Um she's a performance major >> just studies >> just studies music studies major. So she's a a fabulous chist. She comes from a family of Indian musicians and uh we're we're thrilled and the uh cello as the violin has every aspect needed for to play Indian music.
So it's not a stretch.
Um but the technique is this technique we're playing obviously is satar technique. So that has to be transferred over to the cello. So we're playing a rock called Basher and as I said to you um there are hundreds of rocks actually and some of the rocks are more popular than others. So there's a route called Malcolm and when you announce the the printed program, the advertisements never say what ro a musician is going to play because it's thought that you uh what the mood of the hall, the mood of the musician, he or she could pick a wrong at the very last minute. So one of the first things they do at this moment, they'll lean forward into the mic and declare what they're about to play. And people often uh especially like if you say rock malos people will cheer. So it's the idea that there are popular grogs and rocks that are somewhat obscure and bashri is a popular rock.
People would applaud oh excitedly that were there about to hear Bashri. It's it's a very beautiful road.
For those of you who are music majors or musicians, all the notes of the last round we played young and all the all them are of the higher version of the note. So major second, major third. The fourth is sharp. So the higher version of a fourth everything is sharp and barish has a flat third. It has a flat seventh. Um it just it has a very very different feel.
So every grog has a different mood and you hear it from the very very beginning as you will now as I begin with a brief.
So please welcome the advanced group here and as we play Rob Bash the same progression you'll hear like six like seven like eight like you'll hear the you'll hear de who we played repeatedly on a single note you'll hear the ending you'll hear the descending passage three times quickly at the very very end then the ninefold repetition these are standard fees But I should say they're all improvised when they occur.
So you could, you know, ask a musician, I'll play an example of the final ti, what's called a chakra ti. And he or she go, well, how about this? How about that? How about this? You could think endless variety. It's not that they can only think of two or three. They'll think of 15 or 20. If you want to sit there, I'd say, "Oh, you could do it this way. You could do it that way." So which one do you do at a given moment in the performance? At that very moment you'll decide.
It's all of Indian music is improvised except for the slow gut and the fast gut. These two brief melodies and I think you realize like the slow melody takes about 20 seconds and the fast melody takes about seven or eight seconds. Everything else is improvised.
But in this context because it's a class we have fixed things. Okay. Thank you Rob Bish.
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Sad Marcus.
So this is a class right we meet uh the beginning class is always winter quarter and we meet Tuesday Thursdays in this hall at 10 at 9:00 a.m. 9 to 11. Um when Tuesday and Thursday, winter's quarter, so the first uh week of school in January, we'd love to have a huge number of people come out. We have like 23 centuries on campus. So you don't have to have any experience or have an instrument. We'd love to have you come out. So we thank the first group and we thank the second group. We are the music of India ensemble for 2526.
Thank you.
>> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
For those in my class, I have a sign of chief sign.
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