A program note on Dhrupad
The classical music of the Indian subcontinent is divided in to two main traditions: the northern, known generally as Hindustani, and the southern, known generally as Carnatic. The Hindustani tradition prevails not only in northern and central India, but in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. It should be noted that vocal music is the heart of the Indian classical tradition.
Dhrupad is the oldest and most profound form of classical Hindustani vocal music. Dhrupad developed in India in medieval times, and we have examples of distinct compositions attributed to the legendary Tan Sen (or Tansen), who as both a player of the rudra vina (also known as been) and a vocalist was one of the nine jewels of the royal court of the great Mughal emperor Akbar (1542-1605). Dhrupad was subsequently the dominant form of vocal music in northern India until the eighteenth century, when it was gradually overtaken by the lighter, more florid vocal style as Khayal (literally, imagination).
A customary full performance of Dhrupad is in two parts: the alap, an extended melodic improvisation that explores the mood of the raga, and the dhrupad or dhamar, a composition set to distinct poetic text with pakhawaj (barrel drum) accompaniment.
The alap itself goes through three states known as vilambit, madhya and drut. The vilambit alap explores the distinctive melodic features of the raga without recourse to rhythm. The customary vocal range of Dhrupad is two to two-and-a-half octaves, and the alap begins with the tonic (do or C in western terms) of the middle octave as its center. The vocalist (or vocalists–Dhrupad is sometimes sung in duet) sings in extended improvised passages, and generally begins by moving downward, note by note, exploring the lowest octave, and sometimes finally reaching a distinctly dramatic point by touching the deep tonic of that octave. Although there no lyrics to this singing, certain syllables–ri, na, ra, num, te, ta, ra, and na–are used to articulate the melody. After exploring the lowest octave, the singer moves up into the middle octave-–again singing in improvisations that set new progressively higher watermarks–ultimate reaching another dramatic stage by ascending to the tonic of the highest octave. This gradual, progressive ascent is what is most dramatic about the Dhrupad alap, and the longer the vocalist can sustain creativity in keeping the listeners engaged, the more liberating is the resolution in reaching the highest octave.
Next come the madhya (literally “middle”) or dugun (“double) alap in which there is the introduction of slow, regular pulse. This section is the vocal counterpart to the jor in instrumental music. Using the same syllables in singing the notes of the raga, the singer(s) alternate in their improvisation by traversing–now with a slow rhythmic pulse–somewhat the same range covered earlier, though usually concentrating on the central octave. The notes come with the power added of gradually accelerating rhythm.
At some point in madhya/dugun alap, the double pulse bursts into a quadruple pattern, and the drut or chaugun (quadruple) alap begins; this section is the vocal equivalent of jhala in instrumental music. Here, the rhythmic element comes to dominate the melody with increasingly complex phrases, ornamentation (including distinctive, heavy oscillations called gamakas), and rhythmic patterns that contrast with the elegant calm and simplicity of beginning alap. The conclusion of the drut alap is usually marked by a gliding \, downward slide through the entire middle octave, and ends on the same tonic around which the improvisation began.
Throughout the development of the alap, a periodic punctuation device, the mohra, separates the improvisatory phrases. In the simple alap , such a device anticipates the coming rhythm where as in the madhya and drut, and serves as a kind of brake, interrupting the increasing rhythmic momentum.
The performance of the raga concludes with the song, set with pakhawaj accompaniment to one of the distinctive Dhrupad talas, or rhythmic cycles, a song in a ten or twelve beat composition called a dhrupad, while the song in the fourteen-beat dhamar tala is known eponymousely as a dhamar. The performance begins with a straightforward statement of the fixed song composition, which is traditional and may sometimes be extremely old, even dating to the time of Tansen. The song itself consists of two to four parts based on the poetic text, and once these parts have been stated in their fixed form, the singers engage in an improvisatory process known as a bol-baant (literally, “word division”), in which the words are used in increasingly complex and richly syncopated rhythmic patterns (which play against the powerful cross-rhythms of the pakhawaj) to conclude the performance of the raga.
