Manodharma in carnatic music

INDIAN CLASSICALS -CARNATIC MUSIC

SCOPE FOR MANODHARMA, BHAVA AND RASAS UNLIMITED HOW IT IS STRUCTURALLY BUILT INTO BY OUR NADHA BRIHMAMS

This write up restricts itself- to illustrate how unlimited scope for MANODHARMA is built into our musical systems, especially in carnatic music-- as the introductory material- to experimentally establish and illustrate the same.

What is Manodharma? I feel that it is it is better grasped and appreciated by comparing the glows of a pushparaga stone and a diamond. While Pushparaga has a constant brightness, diamond simply scintillates. Tilt diamond, the spectrum of colours emitted is non repeatable, unpredictable, not definable and limitless. This is generally spoken off as “Poorippu” in Tamil which in my reckoning is Manodharma . Veteran connoisseurs of our music, in yester years used to rate the vidwans by their ability to scintillate like diamond through frequency variations, explained below to convey rasas and bhavas in synchrony with the emotions conveyed by the composer in his lyrics. In addition selection of ragas, keerthans, talas, gamakas also played their parts on which sufficient literature is already available. Vidwans like Tnr, Tiruvengadu, Tiruvazhimazhalai, Sembanarkoi Rramaswamy, Thirukkodikaval Krishna iyer, Saraba Sastrigal, Tnk, Dwaram, Lalgudi, Ariyakkudi, Madrai mani iyer, Maharajapuram,veena dhanammal and the likes excelled in these aspects and veterans will nod their heads in appreciation only when these vidwans scintillate with such poorippoos through their Manodharmas usually late at night between 11pm and 3am when they perform serious ULATHU (meanderings) with few swaras and ending the concerts at 6am with a Boopalam. But during this period of ULATHU all sangathis and gamakas, and bhabas/rasa like kozhavu, gambeera, anger, dainya,sadness,extreme bakthi, ET al handled in a highly skilled manner will be new and dazzling but never repeated nor can be anticipated. It is largly their musical legacy which has given the present day momentum for the growth of our music influenced by such ardent classical musicians, but the manodharma aspect has still to catch up a lot with most of the present day artists.

How this manodharma is built into? As we all know a raga or keertana is only juxtaposition of proper frequencies i.e. sruties with their intonations and modulations. In the Indian musical systems any artist can choose a particular frequency ( Within the range of audibility from 16-20000 cycles per second ) as Adhara Sadja and twice its value is the sadja for the next octave and so on called Stayies with swara PA as the midpoint of a stayee to facilitate proper reference stone for orientation . This is the same in the western classical too but with the exception other swaras are fixed frequencies like do,re,me in the western but these are small frequency bands called suddha rishabham, kakali nishadam etc on the Indian classicals. This is where the scope for unlimited manodharma is built in using the natural inability of musicians to reproduce the exactly same frequency. By way of elucidation let us imagine an artist sings Andhra gandhara on his chosen sadja in a given stayee in a controlled lab in front of an oscilloscope and repeats the same swara a few minutes later under the same controlled conditions. Will both these oscilloscopic pictures be identically same with ordinary effort? Certainly not. This, in my opinion holds the key. Can we draw a line say exactly 10cm? Impossible -it will always be 10 + or - and never exactly 10

Any raga or keertana is nothing but permitted permutations and combinations of swaras and so the artists ability to use such values of frequencies in a given band say suddha deivatam along with its intonation ie the decibel value admixed with gamakams to produce the bhava of the lyric which is the quintessence of our system and that is why it is not possible to Coney it through notations

We can set up such experiments with male, female voices, musical instruments et al and prove our point through a scientifically prepared paper / demonstration etc

We need to organize it taking into account all the logistics needed

If you find there is some worth and if you are interested in proceeding further Pl come out to. We can discuss further and plan out in detail.

It may kindly be noted that im not at all a musicologist but one who can appreciate the sciences in all the fields of human endeavor

Respectful regards

Gopalan, cell 9790937334,land line 044-24935559

AGM, BHEL Rand D, Retd, age 76 yrs

And ex jt secretary, kalasagaram, Hyderabad