In Carnatic music, a note is often sung or played as a movement: a sway, a slide, a quick touch of a neighboring pitch. This movement is called gamaka. A Raga Is More Than a Scale showed how gamaka helps tell two ragas apart.
Part of the note
Many Carnatic writers reject the idea that gamaka is decoration added to a plain melody. The musicologist P. Sambamoorthy called gamaka an essential part of the melodic structure, and T. M. Krishna, in A Southern Music (2013), treats it as an expression of the swara itself. The music theorist Michael Schachter adds that in most ragas very few notes are rendered plainly, and that which gamakas are acceptable is set by the raga.
Different kinds of movement
Treatises have classified them in different ways over the centuries, and musicians still use many of the traditional names. A few are easy to start with:
- Kampita, an oscillation. The pitch swings back and forth, sometimes widely, while the note is sustained.
- Jaru, a slide from one pitch to another, rising or falling.
- Nokku, an accented inflection into a note, often described as a stress from the note above.
- Sphurita, a note sounded twice in quick succession, with the stress on the second.
The same swara can take different gamakas in different ragas. Schachter gives the example of Kambhoji, where Ri is rendered as a slide from Sa up toward Ga.
How to listen
Start with slow music, such as the opening of an alapana or a slow composition. Pick one sustained note and ask whether it holds still, swings, or arrives by sliding.
Then watch the instruments. A veena player produces kampita by pulling the string sideways against the fret. A violinist slides a finger along the string.
Finally, listen as the music speeds up. A 2017 study of Carnatic recordings by Venkata Subramanian Viraraghavan and colleagues found that the movements between notes take roughly the same time whatever the tempo. At speed, musicians therefore compress them into quicker figures, and long oscillations become brief flicks.
For more ways into melody, see Start Listening.
