Kathakalipadam

[kathakali]

As many of you know that Kathakalipadam is one of the many components of Kerala's celebrated classical art form Kathakali, and is the brand of music which accompanies the dance and percussion on the stage. Kathakalipadams are composed in sopanam style and has its literature coined in a mixture of Sanskrit and Malayalam.

As this music is used for supporting the actors on the stage, it is more particular on it's 'Bhava' aspect, the music reflects the Bhava of the actor on stage on that particular instance of the story.. So to summaries it is 'bhava sangeetham'

Though you cannot actually compare Classical music to Kathakalipadam, it uses lot of the ragas which is common in carnatic and hindustani music. But there are certain 'sopanam' based ragas as well which is quite unique and really absorbing one. The most famous of such ragas is 'PAADI' that gives highly unique background for 'veera' rasa of navarasams..

Also to mention, the rendering of common ragas might be bit different from classical music, in fact classical music buffs can even feel certain sancharams are wrong as per the principles of classical music , so no point you should try to compare these both.. but to tell you it's a different feel of music ..

Some of the ragas are specifically used to support certain bhavas/rasas, kalyani is mainly used to support 'Sringara' , while 'Thodi' is mainly used to support viraha.. Shankarabharanam is used in different levels, some to support Sringara while to support Veera, so as 'kamboji (in kathakali it is also called as Kamodari). "mohanam" ,"Bhoopalam" and sometimes Sreeragam are used to enlighten 'Bhakti' bhava.

You can feel this music @ http://kathakalipadam.com/index.php/en/ , a dedicated site for kathakalipadams. It has search features based on ragams ( apart from the artist and Story -which many of the kathakali buffs will be interested on) .. Still in it early days, so some searches won't result in any, but the collection is getting larger day by day .

[kathakali]

Pasting the link again: http://kathakalipadam.com/index.php/en/