Indian classical music is usually described as two traditions: Carnatic music, associated with the south, and Hindustani music, associated with the north. They share a vocabulary and a theoretical past. Heard side by side, they shape a performance differently, and neither is a regional variant of the other.
Common ground
Both traditions build melody on raga and rhythm on tala, and both combine composition with improvisation. Both look back to older treatises as foundations, among them Śārṅgadeva’s Saṅgītaratnākara (c. 1240). The two separated gradually. Musicologists describe a gradual divergence and point to distinctions in theoretical writing from about the mid-sixteenth century, though historians still debate how it came about.
Organizing ragas
Each tradition built its own system for classifying ragas. Carnatic music groups them under 72 parent scales, the melakartas, a scheme traced to Venkatamakhi’s Caturdandi Prakasika (c. 1620). Hindustani music commonly uses the ten thaats set out by V. N. Bhatkhande in the early twentieth century. Raga names do not always correspond. Carnatic Mohanam and Hindustani Bhupali share the same five notes and are close relatives, yet each tradition treats its raga in its own way.
Shaping a performance
Carnatic music rests on a vast repertoire of composed songs, with the kritis of Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri prominent among them. Much of its improvisation grows out of these compositions. The voice is often described as the tradition’s model, and instrumental playing tends to follow the shape of singing.
In dhrupad and instrumental music, a Hindustani performance often begins with an extended, unmetered alap, which lets the raga emerge before the composition and the drums enter. Khayal singers usually keep it short. The tempo tends to rise over the course of the performance. In Carnatic music, by contrast, the pulse usually holds steady, and intensity comes from fitting more notes into each beat.
The ensemble
A Carnatic singer is typically joined by violin and mridangam, often with ghatam or kanjira. Hindustani music is most often heard with tabla, or with pakhawaj in dhrupad. In both traditions a drone, traditionally the tanpura, holds the tonal center.
Hearing both
In a Hindustani recital, give the raga time to unfold before the rhythm arrives. In a Carnatic concert, notice how improvisation grows out of a composition and returns to it.
For short introductions to both traditions, see Meet the Art Forms.
Image: Arun Kashalkar with Vibhav Nageshkar (tabla), 2010. Photo: Mukul Kulkarni, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
