Manodharma in carnatic music

[l.gopalan]

INDIAN CLASSICALS - CARNATIC MUSIC

SCOPE FOR MANODHARMA, BHAVA AND RASAS ARE UNLIMITED- HOW IT IS STRUCTURALLY BUILT INTO BY OUR NADHA BRIHMAMS

This write up restricts itself to illustrate how unlimited scope for MANODHARMA is built into our musical systems, especially in Carnatic music-- as the introductory material- to experimentally establish and illustrate the same.
What is Manodharma? I feel that it is it is better grasped and appreciated by comparing the glows of a pushparaga stone and a diamond. While Pushparaga has a constant brightness, diamond simply scintillates. Tilt diamond, the spectrum of colours emitted is non repeatable, unpredictable, not definable and limitless. This is generally spoken off as “Poorippu” in Tamil which in my reckoning is Manodharma . Veteran connoisseurs of our music, in yester years used to rate the vidwans by their ability to scintillate like diamond through frequency variations, explained below to convey rasas and bhavas in synchrony with the emotions conveyed by the composer in his lyrics. In addition selection of ragas, keerthans, talas, gamakas also played their parts on which sufficient literature is already available. Vidwans like Tnr, Tiruvengadu, Tiruvazhimazhalai, Sembanarkoil Rramaswamy, Thirukkodikaval Krishna iyer, Saraba Sastrigal, TNk, Dwaram, Lalgudi, Ariyakkudi, Madrai mani iyer, Maharajapuram,veena dhanammal and the likes excelled in these aspects and veteran rasikas will nod their heads in appreciation only when these vidwans scintillate with such poorippoos through their Manodharmas usually late at night between 11pm and 3am when they perform serious ULATHU (meanderings) with few swaras and ending the concerts at 6am with a Boopalam. But during this period of ULATHU all sangathis and gamakas, and bhabas/rasa like kozhavu, gambeeram, anger, dainya,sadness, bakthi, ET al handled in a highly skilled manner will be new and dazzling but never repeated nor can be anticipated. It is largly their musical legacy which has given the present day momentum for the growth of our music influenced by such ardent classical musicians, but the manodharma aspect has still to catch up a lot with most of the present day artists.

How this manodharma is built into?

As we all know a raga or keertana is only juxtaposition of proper frequencies i.e. sruties with their intonations and modulations. In the Indian musical systems any artist can choose a particular frequency ( Within the range of audibility from 16-20000 cycles per second ) as Adhara Sadja and twice its value is the sadja for the next octave and so on called Stayies with swara PA as the midpoint of a stayee to facilitate proper reference stone for orientation . This is the same in the western classical too but with the exception other swaras are fixed frequencies like do,re,me in the western but these are small frequency bands called suddha rishabham, kakali nishadam etc on the Indian classicals. This is where the scope for unlimited manodharma is built in using the natural inability of musicians to reproduce the exactly same frequency. By way of elucidation let us imagine an artist sings Andhra gandhara on his chosen sadja in a given stayee in a controlled lab in front of an oscilloscope and repeats the same swara a few minutes later under the same controlled conditions. Will both these oscilloscopic pictures be identically same with ordinary effort? Certainly not. This, in my opinion holds the key. Can we draw a line say exactly 10cm? Impossible -it will always be 10 + or - and never exactly 10

Any raga or keertana is nothing but permitted permutations and combinations of swaras and so the artists ability to use such values of frequencies in a given band say suddha deivatam along with its intonation ie the decibel value admixed with gamakams to produce the bhava of the lyric which is the quintessence of our system and that is why it is not possible to convey it through notations

We can set up such experiments with male, female voices, musical instruments et al and prove our point through a scientifically prepared paper / demonstration etc
We need to organize it taking into account all the logistics needed
If you find there is some worth and if you are interested in proceeding further Pl come out to. We can discuss further and plan out in detail.

It may kindly be noted that im not at all a musicologist but one who can appreciate the sciences in some of the fields of human endeavor

Respectful regards

Gopalan, cell 9790937334,land line 044-24935559
Mail- gopalan@gmail.com
AGM, BHEL Rand D, Retd, age 76 yrs
And ex jt secretary, kalasagaram, Hyderabad

[vasanthakokilam]

Sri. Gopalan, welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your thoughts on this central topic.

[l.gopalan]

thank you

[varsha]

After all is over with these experiments , what remains beyond the reach of analysis , is what Manodharma is . Perhaps .

It is the feeling that a reader gets after finishing reading a classic . A feeling that makes you stare into the night wondering about the wind that can be only harnessed in the wings of a turbine . But never in the grasp of a palm .

A feeling that leaves you wondering how beautifully the artist allows you to peep into his mind and its workings .

A raga is ONLY a juxtaposition of ........ ?

I would reckon that manodharma is closer to mercury , than it is to diamond . To whiskey , than it is to Honey . To a nap under a tree on a bright sunny day . Than in an airconditioned room in ones own house .

The beauty of the art , in its highest forms , is its ability to avoid such analysis and type casting .

[narayan]

I tend to agree that manodharma (what I understand by the term) is a holistic concept and cannot be really broken down into frequencies and analysis of that kind. The starting point for 'analysing' the concept for me would be the big picture. You would find that most of the people who are successful in manodharma take quite a few technical liberties and no one really minds. Except for a few geniuses, most have learned the basics formally and started out constructing music based on rules, but the true creative flavour came when the rules were not the main concern.

The interesting question is how to break the rules when one does not know the rules? That is where the genius part comes in, I guess.

[l.gopalan]

The intent and purpose of my write up, it seems needs better lucidity.Hence I hasten to say that it is not meant that the artist must practice and pay very serious attention not to repeat exactly the same frequency within the band width of the permissible/ desired swara while singing or playing the instruments. That exactly is not warranted. I have also emphasized that that natural inability to repeat the same swara has been taken advantage to produce the scintillating effects that compel the connoisseurs to say “sabash” involuntarily. But certainly would like to show that our music is not mere "Tharanana" but is backed by such deep thoughts by our “Musicologist Rishis “of yore, if i may call so. That is why CM is ever fresh even though the same raga,keerthana et al have been repeated by so many artists ere long for hundreds of years and in contrast to many film songs which do not linger for long and even amongst them those which adopt some tinge of ragas etc tend to live a little longer. This write up uderrights the the same view that manodharma is a holistic concept and cannot be really broken down. While concurring with varsha that manodharma should infuse “a feeling that leaves you wondering how beautifully the artist allows you to peep into his mind and its workings” my understanding of it reproduced for ready reference “i feel that it is it is better grasped and appreciated by comparing the glows of a pushparaga stone and a diamond. while pushparaga has a constant brightness, diamond simply scintillates. tilt diamond, the spectrum of colours emitted is non repeatable, unpredictable, not definable and limitless. this is generally spoken off as “poorippu” in tamil which in my reckoning is manodharma----- “covers, supports and adds more in the self same direction.
For better appreciation i would also like to add that a concert which is so, scintillating lingers for a long time even after you leave the hall. in this context i would like to relate an anecdote as told to me by my father and others who attended Saraba Sastrigals performances at kodimangalam and neighbouring village koerirajapuram of kumbakonam taluk.The celebrated artist performed a week before at kodimangalam, Sankarabarana raga elaborately extending hours and later at konerirajapuram where a rasika requested him to render a glimpse of his earlier performance at kodimangalam. He is said to have responded “Here after his flute will not sing Sankarabaranam and the rasika can hear ant time its reverberations at the pandal where i performed last at week." A music rich in manodharma should linger for ever. i have in fact attended some of such kacheries which are still ringing in my ears
Further, i invite you to a para from my intended book on Gayatri Mantra just nearing completion “---it is really encouraging to find that scientists now evince increasing appetite to comprehend consciousness and its components, budhi, manas, chitta et al thoroughly as another primary dimension in addition to space- time. With the advent of advancements and compelling need to understand nature, they are also realizing that this is a dimension/link which they had missed all along, and till recently, whereas, all schools of indian philosophy had over countless years given mind and consciousness the primacy of place in their search for truth. Since science and vedanta both deal with very many common subjects, now there is increasing awareness to reconcile both the approaches. ------ we now know that there are some striking examples of such trends where sciences have reached or poised to reach at the same conclusions enunciated in our scriptures through different routes, sciences adopting inductive and vedantic truths essentially through intuition. it would be interesting to briefly enumerate some such examples
Unified Field paying the role of DNA and governing the Multiverse as against Brahma tatvam and Akashic field , present theories of multiverse and Brihmanda Koti Akilanda Nayaki, consciousness and not materialism is supreme and the rest are its epiphenomenon, maya and our perception of the world as we see it and not as it is out there, Hiranyagarbha and Big bang, vimanas,space travels, astras like brihmasiras, brihmastra, agni astra ,nagastra, et al and nuclear weapons ,chemical weapons etc as scientists uncover more and more of the sukshmas of the micro and macrocosmic domains one wonders how much of these are already been spoken off in our scriptures.” Many more such astonishing contributions which have been spoken highly by even foreigners of late too, available in several published documents and websits, in almost every field of human endevours. Based on such achievements that i do not have any apprehension that our early Musicologist Rishis would not have thought in the lines of the swara bands and frequencies and giving freedom for the artist to navigate with Manodharma and all its components as i have earlier stated
i have more to add but await further views from others-- gopalan