from my study of the mrdangam under T. Ranganathan (1925–1987), himself a disciple of Palani Sri M. Subramania Pillai (1908–1962). Sri Ranganathan’s teaching career in the United States spanned more than twenty years at Wesleyan University and the California Institute of the Arts. I was his student at both schools and served as his teaching apprentice during my residency as a Ph.D. candidate at Wesleyan from 1980 to 1983. It was at these two institutions that Ranganathan first taught solkaṭṭu as a subject separate from drumming. My vocabulary of syllables has also been influenced by more than six years of teaching solkaṭṭu at Wesleyan.
TĀḶAS
Our sources regarding tāḷas are more convoluted. The biggest difficulty in tracing the practical history of tāḷa is the lack of written music; Indian music has always been an oral tradition. The earliest writings about Indian music, beginning with the Nāṭyaśāstra, describe tāḷas as sets of hand gestures. From the thirteenth century on, tāḷas seem to have been cyclic. The best sources from the history of performance practice are the songs that form the repertoire of Karnatak music and the pedagogical exercises teachers use to prepare students to learn them. We can gather from these that tāḷas have been used as regular, cyclic meters since at least the sixteenth century.
For the last hundred years or so, conventional wisdom has assumed the existence of thirty-five tāḷas, although no one seems to know who originated them. A group of seven tāḷa structures (sets of hand gestures) is typically presented as the suladi sapta tāḷas. Each of these includes at least one laghu, a tāḷa segment made up of a clap and finger counts. By allowing five different durations for the laghu (four, three, seven, five, and nine beats, using the traditional order), each of these seven can have five possible beat totals, for a total of thirty-five. According to the noted music scholar N. Ramanathan (personal communication, 2006), the thirty-five-tāḷa scheme first appeared in “Oriental Music in Western Notation,” a journal written by A. M. Chinnaswamy Mudaliar in 1893. Since that time a table of thirty-five tāḷas may be seen in nearly every book on South Indian music and need not be reproduced in this introductory text.
The main body of material here is in the eight-beat cycle ādi tāḷa, which occurs among the thirty-five as caturaśra jāti tripuṭa tāḷa. The name ādi (Sanskrit: ancient, primordial) suggests that this meter has importance beyond its existence as one among five possibilities for tripuṭa tāḷa, one of the suladi sapta tāḷas mentioned above. Indeed, more than 80 percent of the songs in the Karnatak music repertoire are composed in this tāḷa, and the bulk of any mrdangam student’s training is in this dominant meter.
While the thirty-five-tāḷa scheme is preeminent in writings on Karnatak music, modern performance practice tells a different story. Ādi tāḷa is the only one of the four most commonly performed tāḷas that is represented among the thirty-five. The others, rūpaka (three beats), miśra cāpu (seven beats), and khaṇḍa cāpu (five beats), are counted by means of simple claps and waves and omit the laghu (clap plus finger counts) that makes the thirty-five-tāḷa scheme possible. The three principal composers of Karnatak music, Tyagaraja (1767–1847), Muttuswami Diksitar (1775–1835), and Syama Sastri (1762–1827), composed their songs mainly in these four meters; they used only a few tāḷas out of the thirty-five. But as I said above, musicological writings can influence performance practice, and this has been the case with the thirty-five-tāḷa scheme. Some teachers use them for composing voice and instrumental exercises, and many musicians use them for composing the brief, challenging pieces known as pallavi. I have used the simplest tāḷa in the scheme, ēka, which consists of a solitary laghu, in its five possible values to compose exercises for this book.
Solkaṭṭu, then, is a real-time, embodied rhythmic notation that can be a powerful and enjoyable tool in rhythm training. The lessons in this book begin with fundamental exercises designed to build rhythmic skills in the simplest Karnatak tāḷa. The next lessons develop two core concepts of Karnatak rhythm, flow and design, and add advanced exercises in three more tāḷas. The largest section, entirely in ādi tāḷa, generates a range of possible percussion solo and ensemble pieces in the modern Karnatak idiom. A glossary and pronunciation guide accompanies each section. The material in this book will develop and strengthen one’s sense of rhythm in energetic and fascinating ways while providing a personal, palpable appreciation of the Indian musicians whose command of musical time has mesmerized and delighted us for the last half-century.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE LESSONS
These lessons are designed to build a practical understanding of rhythm in South Indian music from the ground up and assume no previous exposure to Karnatak music. Because solkaṭṭu is not taught as a separate subject in India, there is no pedagogical paradigm to guide a beginner. I have spent two decades refining my own teaching method, however, which is aimed at American musicians and college students. What follows is a brief outline of my method as presented in this book.
Part I: Tiśra Jāti Ēka Tāḷa
The first series of lessons is in the deceptively simple three-beat cycle tiśra jāti ēka tāḷa, the shortest in the thirty-five-tāḷa scheme. A three-syllable pattern introduces a fundamental process, the trikāla (three speeds), and seven related exercises.
The second series of lessons in tiśra jāti ēka tāḷa combines patterns from the first series into phrases. These phrases are arranged into a rudimentary rhythmic composition, ending with a simple mōrā (ending design), along with an explanation of the mōrā form. Two core concepts, flow (sarvalaghu) and design (kaṇakku), are introduced.
Mōrā series 1 uses the mōrā that ended the second series composition to develop a further series of six mōrās, designed to be performed in sequence. This series includes allowable exceptions to the mōrā form, as defined in the previous section.
Mōrā series 2 develops another series of mōrās using a different principle of expansion.
Part II: Exercise Mōrās
This series of thirteen mōrās in four tāḷas is designed to develop two areas of strength. First, it introduces persistent offbeat accents and includes practice strategies for mastering them. Second, since the mōrās themselves are substantially more complex than those in the previous section, it develops a more highly developed sense of form and rhythmic design.
Part III: Ādi Tāḷa Lessons
The main section of this book follows a typical mrdangam student’s training in Karnatak music’s predominant tāḷa. These lessons take the form of a tani āvartanam, the percussion solo included in every concert. They begin with a series of mōrās that introduces the notion of the compound mōrā. Subsequent lessons include other types of Karnatak rhythmic design, such as kōrvai and koraippu, as well as sections that shift the internal pulse of each beat from four to three and five. The ādi tāḷa lessons conclude with a stylized ending section characteristic of the tani āvartanam.
Conclusion: Putting It All Together
The concluding section provides a written account of three pieces made from the ādi tāḷa lessons. These pieces, included on the accompanying video, are examples of how the student might arrange the material for his or her own needs.
Video Examples and Notation
Throughout the text are links to the 150 examples found on the accompanying video at www.wesleyan.edu/wespress/solkattu. These are indicated by numeric codes in bold type, such as (01-001).
