In a 2 part series starting this month, The Big M brings to you traditional musical instruments that form the essence of Indian Classical Music.

A number of musical instruments have come to be associated with Indian classical music. These have a rich history and literature surrounding them. The veena, a string instrument, was traditionally regarded as the most important, but few play it today and it has largely been put out of fashion by its cousins the sitar and the sarod, both of which owe their origin to Persian influences. Other plucked/struck string instruments include the surbahar, sursringar, santoor and various versions of the modern day slide guitar. Among bowed instruments, the sarangi, esraj and violin are popular. The bansuri (bamboo flute), shehnai and harmonium are important wind instruments. In the percussion ensemble, the tabla and the pakhavaj are the most popular. Various other instruments have also been used in varying degrees.

VEENA

A veena can be traced back to the lute family of the European stringed instruments.

It is by far one of the most revered of traditional instruments. A veena player is called a Vainika.

It first mention on written records dates back to 1500 BC.

Playing

The Veena

It can be plucked, bowed or struck. A Vainik plays by sitting cross-legged with the instrument held tilted slightly away from the player. The small gourd on the left rests on the player’s left thigh, the left arm passing beneath the neck with the hand curving up and around so that the fingers rest upon the frets. The palm of the right hand rests on the edge of the top plank so that the fingers (usually index and middle) can pluck the strings. The drone strings are played with the little finger. The veena’s large resonator is placed on the floor, beyond the right thigh.

Construction

About four feet in length, its design consists of a large resonator (kudam) carved and hollowed out of a log (usually of jackwood), a tapering hollow neck (dandi) topped with 24 brass or bell-metal frets set in scalloped black wax on wooden tracks, and a tuning box culminating in a downward curve and an ornamental dragon’s head (yali). A small table-like wooden bridge (kudurai)—about 2 x 2½ x 2 inches – is topped by a convex brass plate glued in place with resin. Two rosettes, formerly of ivory, now of plastic or horn, are on the top board (palakai) of the resonator. Four main playing strings tuned to the tonic and the fifth in two octaves (for example B flat, E flat below bass clef & B flat, E flat in bass clef) stretch from fine tuning connectors attached to the end of the resonator across the bridge and above the fretboard to four large-headed pegs in the tuning box. Three subsidiary drone strings tuned to the tonic, fifth, and upper tonic cross a curving side bridge leaning against the main bridge, and stretch on the player’s side of the neck to three pegs matching those of the main playing strings. All seven strings today are of steel, with the lower strings either of solid thick gauge wire or round wound.

Acoustics

The veena has a unique construction. The string terminations at both ends are curved and not sharp. Also, the frets have much more curvature than any other instrument. Unlike in guitar, the string does not have to be pushed down to the very base of the neck, so no rattling sound is generated. This design enables a continuous control over the string tension, which is important for glissandi, producing more harmonics than any other instruments.

Fun fact

The veena has a recorded history that dates back to the Vedic period (approximately 1500 B.C.). Earlier veenas ranged from one string to one hundred, and were composed of many different materials like eagle bone, bamboo, wood and coconut shells.

Maestros

• Veena Dhanammal
• Desamangalam Subramanya Iyer
• K.S. Narayanaswamy
• Rugmini Gopalakrishnan

The sitar is often said to have been developed in the thirteenth century AD by Amir Khusro, the Godfather of Hindustani Classical, from a member of the veena family of Indian musical instruments called the tritantri veena and to has been named by him after the Persian setar. The sitar is, like the setar, a member of the lute family while the north Indian veena is a zither, but it shares the veena‘s resonating gourds and sympathetic strings. Amir Khusro does not mention the sitar but he does mention the tanbur and, by the mid 18th century, Indian tanburs were referred to as sitars.

In his Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya, Dr. Lalmani Misra traces its development from the tritantri veena through the nibaddh and anibaddh tanpuras and later the jantra. Construction of the similar tanpura was described by Tansen. During the time of Moghul rule, Persian lutes were played at courts and may have provided a basis for the sitar. However, there is no physical evidence for the sitar until the time of the collapse of the Mughal Empire.

Construction

The sitar’s curved frets are movable, allowing fine tuning, and raised so that sympathetic strings (tarb, also known as ‘taarif’ or ‘tarafdaar’) can run underneath them. A sitar can have 21, 22, or 23 strings, among which are six or seven playable strings which run over the frets: the Gandhaar-pancham sitar (used by Vilayat Khan and his disciples) has six playable strings, whereas the Kharaj-pancham sitar, used in the Maihar gharana, to which Pt. Ravi Shankar belongs, has seven. Three of these (or four on a Kharaj-pancham sitar), called the chikaari, simply provide a drone; the rest are used to play the melody , though the first string (baajtaar) is most used.

The Sitar

The instrument has two bridges; the large bridge (badaa goraa) for the playing and drone strings and the small bridge (chota goraa) for the sympathetic strings. Its timbre results from the way the strings interact with the wide, sloping bridge. As a string reverberates its length changes slightly as its edge touches the bridge, causing the creation of overtones and giving the sound its distinctive tone. The maintenance of this specific tone by shaping the bridge is called jawari. Many musicians rely on instrument makers to adjust this.

Playing

The instrument is balanced between the player’s left foot and right knee. The hands move freely without having to carry any of the instrument’s weight. The player plucks the strings using a metallic pick or plectrum called a mizraab. The thumb stays anchored on the top of the fretboard just above the main gourd. Generally only the index and middle fingers are used for fingering although a few players occasionally use the third. A specialized technique called ‘meand’ involves pulling the main melody string down over the bottom portion of the sitar’s curved frets, with which the sitarist can achieve a 7 semitone range of microtonal notes (it should be noted, however, that because of the sitar’s movable frets, sometimes a fret may be set to a microtone already, and no bending would be required).

Fun Fact:

Sitar has a cousin called the Surbahar which can count as a bass sitar, downtuned by 2 – 5 steps.

Sitar has been used in western pop music more than one can imagine. Pt. Ravi Shankar playing on The Beatle’s ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is the most noticeable and of course The Rolling Stones using it in ‘Paint it Black’.

Niladri Kumar has also put pick-ups on his sitar! Any takers for an Electric Sitar?

Maestros:

• Ravi Shnakar
• Enayat Khan
• Krishna Bhatt
• Anoushka Shankar
• Niladri Kumar
• Vilayat Khan

Images and Content Courtesy: Furtados Music