|
(b) Khayāl.
The second main genre of Hindustani music, khayāl, had almost completely eclipsed dhrupad by the mid-20th century. The ethos of khayāl is one of stylistic variety and freedom of improvisation (khayāl means ‘imagination, fantasy’) as opposed to the strictness of dhrupad. Nevertheless, many features of dhrupad have been taken into khayāl performance. Depending on the gharānā, khayāl performance may resemble dhrupad quite closely (especially in the Agra gharānā) or diverge from it more or less radically. Khayāl texts are normally in Hindi and comprise only two rhyming, unmetred lines, corresponding to the musical sthāyī and antarā sections (see §(i) above). They range over a wide variety of love themes, often expressed in a feminine persona and including the amorous adventures of Krsna or those of the emperor, and devotion to a lover or to a Muslim holy man. There are three varieties of khayāl distinguished by tempo: slow (vilambit), also known as ‘big’ (barā) khayāl, medium (madhya) khayāl and fast (drut) or ‘small’ (chotā) khayāl. A slow khayāl is always followed by a fast khayāl, but a medium-tempo or a fast khayāl may be sung alone as an independent item. Only the more serious rāgas are employed in khayāl, since light rāgas will be sung in thumrī style. The typical tālas are different from those employed in dhrupad and include Ektāl, Jhūmrā, Tilvādā and Tīntāl for slow compositions, Ektāl, Tīntāl, Jhaptāl, Rūpak and Ādā-cautāl in medium and fast compositions. Khayāl is accompanied by tablā, tambūrā and often sārangī and/or harmonium.
The vocal style of khayāl is characterized by a type of fioritura called tān, in which a rapid sequence of pitches, or repetitions of the same pitch, is sung to a single text syllable or to the vowel ‘ā’. This technique, and other ornaments involving rapid movement used in khayāl, require a greater tension of the throat muscles than is permitted in dhrupad. The style is reproduced on the sitār by rapid deflections of the string with the stopping finger, so that an elaborate sequence of pitches is produced from one stroke (see §6 below).
A khayāl performance usually dispenses with the opening nom-tom ālāp of dhrupad; a few phrases may be sufficient to introduce the rāga before the composition is commenced. The composition may be sung in its entirety at this point, or the second section (antarā) may be postponed until later. The tāla is indicated by the tablā, which plays a more or less embellished form of the cyclically repeated basic drum-pattern (thekā) for the tāla in question. If the tempo is slow, the singer's rhythm may be very free, necessarily coinciding with the drum only at the first beat (sam) of the tāla. At medium and fast tempo the rhythmic style is less melismatic (see §4(iv) above).
Improvisation on the composition involves departing from and repeatedly returning to the first phrase of the composition, the mukhrā, which includes beat 1 of the first complete cycle of the composition but often starts with an anacrusis. The tempo gradually increases, and different styles and techniques of melodic and rhythmic improvisation are introduced at appropriate tempos. In slow khayāl the first stage of improvisation is normally that called ālāp or barhat (‘expansion’). This closely resembles the slow ālāp of dhrupad in its gradual unfolding of the rāga phrases and the quasi-unpulsed rhythm of the vocalist. However, here the tablā maintains the tāla throughout, using the thekā, and the singer uses syllables from the composition and/or vocalization to ‘ā’ rather than the nom-tom syllables of dhrupad ālāp. Where in dhrupad ālāp the singer makes periodic returns to the mohrā of the rāga, here he returns to the mukhrā of the composition. In both cases this re-establishes rhythmic congruence after a period of ambiguity. At the climax of the ālāp where the upper tonic is reached, the antarā of the composition may be introduced (or reintroduced), since this section of the composition always begins with an ascent to the upper tonic.
The quasi-free rhythm of the ālāp may be followed by more rhythmic improvisation using the words of the composition, in a style more or less close to the bol-bat of dhrupad. Other options include sargam, where each of a sequence of pitches is sung to its appropriate solmization syllable (sa, re, ga etc.; see Table 1 above). Finally, improvised passages of tān are introduced. These bravura passages may be sung either with or (in slow khayāl) without clear reference to the underlying pulse. Many kinds of tān are distinguished by separate names, such as sapāt tān (‘smooth’, i.e. straight, scalar passages), phirat tān (‘returning’, i.e. involuted passages), gamak tān (passages sung with a heavy shake on each degree) and so on. Tān may be sung to ‘ā’ (ākār tān) or with syllables of the song-text (bol-tān). As before, each tān passage must return to the mukhrā of the composition, leading to beat 1 of the tāla.
If the tempo was initially slow, the fast-tempo ‘small’ khayāl will be introduced at this point, to be followed with more tān and other fast-tempo improvisation. The development of this composition is much shorter than that of the ‘big’ khayāl. A medium-tempo khayāl may be elaborated with all the stages of improvisation and without any following fast-tempo composition.
Of the several other types of composition performed by khayāl singers, the most distinctive is the tarānā. The texts employ a special set of non-lexical syllables, such as ‘tom ta na na, u dāna dīm, dere na, dira dira’ and ‘yalalī yalā’. Sometimes drum syllables or dance syllables are incorporated. The various syllable combinations lend themselves to rhythmic improvisatory permutations at very fast speeds. Sometimes a tarānā includes a line or two of Persian text, and it seems more than probable that the present genre originated from ecstatic Sufi songs using cryptic expressions in Persian such as ‘tū dānī’ (‘thou knowest’) and Shī‘a cries like ‘yā alī’ (‘O Ali’). Ma‘danu‘l-mūsīqī alludes to tarānā as an item performed before khayāl (rather than ālāp) by members of the Qavvāl community, although in current practice it is sung as a medium- or fast-tempo khayāl by classical singers. The word tarānā itself is merely Persian for ‘song’. Tarānā is one of the Hindustani genres that has been enthusiastically adopted in south India, where it is called tillānā. Tillānā compositions are used both in concerts and in dance recitals, as light items for the last portions of a programme.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
