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Talam Page
Foundations of Talam
To understand the primary
basic of South Indian rhythm, understanding the fundamental blocks is
imperative. Just like the North Indian talas, the Carnatic talas have the fundamental
unit known as the matra, which is the equivalent to a
“beat” in Western music. As mentioned earlier, the main performer usually keeps
track of rhythm, while the talam instrument
improvises according to the way the main artist sings. In order for the main
artist to keep track of rhythm, the artist will use the hand clapping and
counting method known as the “kriya.” The kriya will consist of
various angams,
or dividers of the tala which mark the aksarams, or the
“measures” of the tala. This is the Carnatic equivalent of the Hindustani vibhag.
In comparison to North Indian music, the kriya is the
hand movements which count, clap, or wave to mark the vibhags
of the tala.
There are many types of angams, but three of them are very popular. The anudrutam is one matra
in length. Thus, the aksaram is also one matra. It is represented by a clap which is known as sasabdam. It is the Carantic
equivalent of the Hindustani tali. The next type is
the drutam, which contains two matras. It is a clap with the palm facing down (sasabdam), followed by a clap with the palm facing upwards
(nisabdam). The second type of clap is
somewhat similar to the concept of the North Indian khali,
though not exactly interchangeable. The last type of angam
is known as the laghu. The laghu
is going to be one of the more difficult concepts to understand for a North Indian music. The duration of a laghu
depends on the jati of the tala.
The “jati” (lit. “caste”) is
the family of rhythms based on multiples. There are five jatis.
The tisra jati
(based on multiples of three), caturasra jati (based on multiples of four), khanda
jati (based on multiples of five), misra jati (based
on multiples of seven), and sankirna jati (based on multiples of nine). For example, if a talam had a laghu and it was a caturasra jati talam, the laghu would have the
value of four matras. In terms of the clapping kriya, the laghu will initiated
by a clap (sasabdam) followed by counting by fingers
of the remainder of the laghu. Using the laghu in Caturasra jati as an example, you clap for the first matra, and use fingers to count matras
2 through 4.
The angams
can be represented graphically. In North Indian music, tali
is represented by an X and khali is represented by a
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