Many listeners at an AFA concert do not recognize every composition, and some recognize none. Knowing ragas, composers and forms does change what you hear, and that knowledge usually builds slowly, one concert at a time. Some features of the music, though, are open to anyone from the first evening.
Who is playing
Start with texture: which sounds are present at a given moment, and which have dropped out. In a Carnatic concert the drums usually fall silent during an alapana, the unmetered exploration of a raga, and come back with the composition. The violinist plays along in the songs and answers the singer in turn during the improvised passages (see The Violinist Is Listening, Too). When two violinists share the stage, as V. V. Subrahmanyam and V. V. S. Murari did for AFA in September 2024, try following one instrument for a while, then the other.
Accompaniment is not fixed either. The tabla player and writer Aneesh Pradhan has compared several tabla players keeping the same rhythmic cycle. Each adds embellishments of their own, shaped by training, taste and the exchange with the soloist.
What comes back
Many Carnatic compositions repeat by design. In a kriti, the opening section, called the pallavi, returns after each later section. Its first line is often sung several times in a row, each time in a new variation called a sangati. The music theorist Michael Schachter describes these as progressively more complex. You do not need the words to hear a line grow fuller each time it comes round, and counting the returns is a simple way to keep your bearings.
Where the sound stops
Pauses belong to the music. Writing about a recording by Ravi Shankar, Pradhan suggests that performers can be told apart by “the proportion they maintain between sound and silence.” Listen for how long a phrase is left to hang before the next begins, and for the drone that carries on when everyone else has stopped.
Building on it
None of this replaces knowing the repertoire. The writer Shoba Narayan has described concertgoers who can explain the difference between Anandabhairavi and Reetigowla, two closely related ragas. That kind of hearing comes from years of listening. The features above are a way to start.
For broader ways into the music, see Start Listening. For the practical side of the evening, see What to Expect.
