Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

IV. Semi-classical genres.

Thumrī and ghazal are two of the most popular urban forms of song in north India. Both genres are referred to as ‘light’ or ‘light-classical’ because of their emphasis on the melodic elaboration of lyrics, rather than on displays of virtuosity or scrupulously correct rendition of rāga, and because of their use of modes and metres resembling those of regional folk musics, that is, regionally distinct, nonélite traditional musics lacking bases in theoretical treatises. Until the mid 20th century, both genres were also associated with courtesan dance. While the lyric content of both genres is predominantly amatory, thumrī is usually composed in the Braj Bhāsā dialect of Hindi and reflects the influence of the devotional Hindu movement, bhakti. Ghazal is usually composed in Urdu and is strongly influenced by the Sufi mystic movement of Islam.

1. Thumrī, dādrā and tappā.

Although the origin of thumrī has commonly been ascribed to the Lucknow court of Wajid Ali Shah (ruler of Avadh, 1847–56), thumrī considerably predates this era. Precedents can be found in related genres such as pānika, nādavatī, carcarī and caccarī (catuspadī), dating from the first millennium ce, in which female dancers would choreographically interpret erotic and/or devotional texts. Numerous references to ćarćarī in subsequent centuries suggest strong affinities with modern thumrī in the association with Krsna-worship, the use of the Braj Bhāsā dialect, and performance by courtesans. Extant references to thumrī proper date from the 1660s and 70s, and by the early 1800s the genre had emerged as a light song-type accompanying amatory courtesan dance. In subsquent decades, as patronage shifted from the declining Mughal elite to Lucknow-based landlords and courtiers, thumrī evolved rapidly, and male as well as female classical musicians came to cultivate it as a musical genre in its own right. The prevailing contemporary style was the bandiś (‘composition’) thumrī, which featured lively textual-melodic variations (bol bānt) on a composition generally set in Tīntāl, often in conjunction with kathak dance.

In the first half of the 20th century, the modern style of thumrī coalesced, predominantly in Varanasi, emphasizing a more sentimental style of melodic-textual elaboration (bol banāo), typically set to 14- or 16-beat cycles variously called Dīpcandī, cāñcar or Jat. Despite the evident derivation of these metres from folk musics and the use of a fast, folk-influenced concluding or intermittent laggī section also influenced by local traditions, the modern thumrī acquired a semi-classical sophistication that enabled it to adapt well to the transition from feudal to bourgeois patronage and from the courtesan salon to the modern concert hall. In the mid-20th century, Punjabi vocalists popularized a somewhat lighter style of thumrī, featuring more lavish ornamentation and greater usage of the six-beat Dādrā and eight-beat Kaharvā tālas.

The text of thumrī is not restricted to any precise rules of versification and, in some instances, even takes the form of a prose-poem. The subject-matter of these songs is often based on the legends of Krsna, an incarnation of the Hindu deity Visnu, particularly those that concern his relationship with Rādhā and the other gopī (milkmaids). In the songs, it is generally Rādhā or an unnamed woman who is expressing her feelings, either directly to her beloved or to a friend. In spite of this, thumrī may be rendered by either a male or female singer. The songs have specific topics, such as description and praise of the beloved, the lover lamenting the absence or anticipating the arrival of the beloved, and the pangs of separation. The dominant ethos (rasa) of these songs is amorous (śrngāra) and pathetic (karuna). In connection with bhakti, however, these themes are thought to be allegorical, God being the beloved; they represent man’s search for union with God.

Thumrī generally employs a specific set of rāgas and tālas that are unique to light-classical music and that bear affinities to those used in north Indian folk musics. As in other north Indian vocal forms, a thumrī has two composed sections, sthāyī and antarā, each consisting of one or two lines of poetry. These two sections are based on different registers of the rāga in which the thumrī is composed, the antarā generally being the higher.

There are several features that distinguish thumrī from other north Indian vocal forms such as khayāl. The ornaments used in thumrī are generally quicker and lighter in character, and there is greater freedom in the use of alternative notes, some of which would not be acceptable in the performance of a khayāl. Moreover, it is not unusual for a thumrī singer to introduce a temporary change of rāga. Thumrī and khayāl are both largely improvised, but the type of improvisation in thumrī is mainly bol banāo, which may take the form of overt word-painting or, more typically, affective lyric elaboration via repeated melismatic variation of a fragment of text. Ex.16 illustrates bol banāo in thumrī.

The thumrī begins virtually without a prelude (ālāp). The text lines are repeated as often as the singer wishes, each time with a different melodic interpretation. Typically, at the conclusion of the song the singer returns to the first line, repeating it while the player of the tablā, who has until this moment been marking time, improvises at a considerably faster tempo. This section, called laggī, is generally in a cycle of eight beats (Kaharvā) or 16 beats (Tīntāl) even though the thumrī itself may have been sung in a different time measure. At the end of the tablā improvisation the musicians revert to the original tempo and time measure, at which point the song may be concluded or repeated in its entirety with new improvisations.

Vocal thumrī is accompanied by tablā, tanpūrā (tambūrā) and a melodic instrument, traditionally the sārangī or, more commonly today, the harmonium. Although thumrī is primarily a vocal form it can often be heard as an instrumental piece, the voice being replaced by one of the solo instruments used in Hindustani music such as the sitār, sarod, śahnāī or basurī. While instrumental thumrī cannot incorporate bol banāo, it employs the ornamentation, phrasing and raga and tāla repertory of the vocal thumrī style.

The term dādrā, aside from referring to a common six-beat cycle, also denotes a semi-classical vocal genre, closely related to thumrī but having a somewhat lighter character. In dādrā the singer generally employs Dādrā or Kaharvā tāla and maintains a more lively rhythmic lilt; dādrā lyrics are exclusively amatory and often include verses in Urdu as well as Braj-bhāśā.

Tappā represents a quite distinct genre of semi-classical music. Its origin is generally attributed to Shori Mian, believed to be the pen-name of Ghulam Nabi, a singer in the Lucknow court of Asaf-ud-daulā, nawab of Avadh (1776–97). In tappā, the vocalist sings an incessant series of frenetic fast runs (tāna) characterized by circular, zigzag melodic motion (zamzamā), generally set to the 16-beat Sitārkhāni tāla. Both improvisations as well as the compositions themselves are rendered in this style, which is said to have been inspired originally by the rapid ornamentation found in Punjabi music. Tappā survived until the mid-20th century as a demanding and difficult genre, cultivated especially by Varanasi-based courtesan singers; it is now seldom heard.

2. Ghazal.

Ghazal is a form of Urdu poetry that was introduced into India by the conquering Muslims as part of their Persian cultural heritage. The word ghazal is derived from the Arabic root that denotes ‘to talk amorously with women’, and thus the poetry is, superficially, sensual and erotic. However, it is much influenced by the mystic ideas of Sufism, where the beloved is really God and the poet yearns for union with Him. One of the great attractions of this poetic form is its appeal on different levels: the erotic, the mystical and the philosophical. Modern poems in the genre occasionally contain social and political comment.

The formal occasion for the recitation of this poetry was the muśāirā (‘poetic symposium’), where poets were invited to recite their poems to a critical audience, a practice that still continues. Urdu poetry developed under court patronage, as did much north Indian classical music, but the two appear to have had little influence on each other. It is generally stated that Amir Khusrau introduced the musical form of the ghazal at the end of the 13th century. The singing of ghazal, however, only gained prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries at the courts of the rulers of Delhi, Lucknow and Rampur, where it was the preserve of the court dancing-girls and courtesans. Thus there was, until modern times, a social stigma associated with the singing of ghazal, which was also a reflection of the censure of music by the orthodox Muslim community.

The ghazal consists of an indeterminate number of couplets (śer), which are thematically independent and united only by the metre and rhyme-scheme. In order to achieve epigrammatic condensation of expression, couplets generally rely on a stock set of conventional metaphors, imagery and topics – especially unrequited love – most of which derive from the Persian poetic tradition. Both couplets of the first lines rhyme; in the succeeding couplets the original rhyme scheme is maintained in the second line. The rhyme scheme is thus aa, ba, ca etc. This pattern is generally reflected in the melody, the line with rhyme a being sung to one tune, the other lines (b, c etc.) being sung to a second related tune generally in a higher register. Typically, each verse is followed by an instrumental interlude, which in the light-classical style would take the form of laggī. The most common metres used are variants of the eight-beat Kaharvā, the six-beat Dādrā, and, less often, the seven-beat Rūpak tālas.

Given its versatility and its suitability to musical rendering, ghazal has thrived as a musical genre in various forms. Hindi-language poems in a loose ghazal form have been widely sung in Hindu devotional contexts. The Urdu ghazal, however, is more extensively cultivated, both as a musical and literary genre. In the muśāirā the ghazal is either recited or chanted in a style called tarannum (see §V, 1 below), probably introduced in the 19th century. There are many similarities between this style of chanting and ghazal song as described above, the main difference being that the tarannum is not in a fixed time measure and follows the metre of the poem more closely than does the song. Also, the tarannum is chanted without instrumental accompaniment. The courtesan tradition of ghazal singing is gradually dying out, but may still be heard in private homes, small concerts and, occasionally, on the radio. The singing of ghazal is also practised by Qavvāls (professional Muslim religious singers); this tradition appears to be thriving. A typical Qavvāl group consists of three or four singers accompanied by dholak, harmonium and bulbultarang (a plucked board zither). A considerable element of spontaneity is provided by the interpolation or improvisation of new verses. At the end of each verse the singers often introduce purely melodic vocalizations, while the audience assimilates the verse content. These improvisations are generally classical in style and often involve a change of rāga.

While knowledge of Urdu-based styles practised in the 19th century is limited, it is clear that ghazal flourished as a related genre to thumrī, performed, especially in Lucknow, primarily by courtesans and often accompanying interpretive mimetic dance. Early 20th-century phonograph recordings of ghazal reveal a somewhat classical orientation in the usage of virtuoso tāna (fast melodic run) techniques. In subsequent generations, singers such as Begum Akhtar (d 1974) cultivated a more distinctively light-classical style, which resembled thumrī in its emphasis on bol banāo (rendered on the non-rhyming lines) and the use of a standard accompaniment of tablā, tanpūrā and sārangī and/or harmonium. In its greater emphasis on the text and its correspondingly lesser scope for abstract melodic elaboration, ghazal has been regarded as ‘lighter’ than thumrī. As such, it has generally been performed not by classical singers but by specialists in light music, whose ranks, since the mid-20th century, are no longer dominated by courtesans.

With the advent of sound film in 1931 ghazal became an important component of north Indian film music, and distinctive styles of film ghazal soon emerged. Since the emergence of a mainstream film music style in the 1940s, film ghazal came to be distinguished by the absence of improvisation, the use of more accessible tunes and diction, the replacement of the laggī interlude with a pre-composed instrumental passage and the use of an extensive accompanying ensemble typically containing both Western and Indian instruments. Accordingly, the film ghazal, unlike its connoisseur-orientated counterpart, came to enjoy mass popularity. By the 1970s, however, ghazal became less common in film music, perhaps due to the incompatability of its romantic character with the popularity of action-orientated films and disco-influenced soundtracks.

Nevertheless, during this decade a new style of ghazal -singing was popularized by Pakistani singers Mehdi Hasan and Ghulam Ali, combining the leisurely pace and improvisatory approach of the light-classical style with, to some extent, the accessibility of film music. The new ‘pop’ ghazal emerged in association both with cassette technology, which enabled it to bypass the film industry, and with the emergence of a more extensive and self-aware north Indian bourgeoisie (Manuel, 1993). The new ghazal is performed and listened to widely by Hindi and Urdu-speaking Hindus as well as Muslims throughout the subcontinent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

thumrī

P.L. Sharma: ‘The Origin of Thumari’, Aspects of Indian Music (New Delhi, 1957, enlarged 2/1970), 73

C. Desai: ‘Thumri through the Ages’, Journal of the Indian Musicological Society, vii/3 (1976), 41–51

J. Singh: ‘The Evolution of Thumri’, National Centre for the Performing Arts Quarterly Journal, v/2 (1976), 10–15

P. Manuel: ‘The Evolution of Modern Thumri ’, EthM, xxx (1983), 470–90

S. Shukla: Thumrī kī utpattī, vikās aur śailiyān [The origin, development and styles of thumrī ] (Delhi, 1983)

P. Banerjee: Dance in Thumri (New Delhi, 1986)

P. Manuel: Thumri in Historical and Stylistic Perspectives (Delhi, 1989)

R.C. Mehta: Thumri: Tradition and Trends (Bombay, 1990)

V. Rao: ‘Thumri as Feminine Voice’, Economic and Political Weekly (28 April 1990), 31–9

ghazal

N.A. Jairazbhoy: ‘L’Islam en Inde et au Pakistan’, Encyclopédie des musiques sacrées, ed. J. Porte, i (Paris, 1968), 454–63, esp. 460

P. Manuel: ‘A Historical Survey of the Urdu Gazal-Song in India’, AsM, xx/1 (1988–9), 93–113

P. Manuel: ‘Cassettes and the Modern Ghazal ’, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India (Chicago, 1993), 89–104

R.B. Qureshi: ‘Musical Gesture and Extra-Musical Meaning: Words and Music in Urdu Ghazal’, JAMS, xliii (1990), 472–96

India, Subcontinent of