As note is not swara, melody is not raga. At the most, melody is a loose arrangement of single notes. Raga, on the other hand, is a tighter fusion of swaras, making it a ‘total sound’ or a ‘tonal complex’. The individuality of notes in a range is totally merged to assume a totally different form or personality.
Translators, it is said, are traitors. While this statement could be arguable, it appears that it holds true in as far as musical texts go.
For nada is not just music. Music as commonly understood, refers to vibrations organized by mental faculties. It gives rise to differentiation from a sound matrix, say an octave into several overtones and semitones, as the human ear could perceive, whose range is pegged anywhere between 20 – 20,000 Hz. Sound waves, which are actually a series of compressions and rarefactions, causing alternative pressure disturbance that travel through a medium (e.g., air) by particle – interaction.
Nada, unlike music, can be interpreted as consisting of vibrations sui generis. It is not mentally sculpted or determined, nor is it differentiated from a sound-matrix. It is holistic and absolute. While it is sensory, it can be uplifted along with one’s awareness to reach into new terrains of consciousness.
According to nada yoga, the ancient system of resonance, it is nada which is the primordial energy source in the Universe, and which forms the building block within the reach (or beyond) of the human senses. Nada actually refers to the prolongation of sound due to synchronous vibrations. Known to physicists as ‘resonance’, it refers to an emanation of life-principle with a ‘big-bang- origin’ which the Western Science seems to reluctantly acknowledge.
Enthusiastic translators of musicology have not only done injustice to the term nada, but also for a host of other terms stemming from the Indian music traditions.
There is a gulf of difference between the two words, note and swara although both are casually dealt with as interchangeable.
The Western School of Music envisages a note with a strict eye on its purity. It envisages a definite pitch and character to each note. Note is invariably taken as an instrumental or a mechanical sound and never the human voice. It is the connoisseur’s ear that discriminates the quality and purity of a note. The Indian ‘swara’ (which means ‘self-shining’) is based on an entirely different understanding. Swaras, unlike the Western notes, ought to be based on the human utterance.
To talk about purity of a swara, is a blasphemy in Indian aesthetics. Its pitch and character are deliberately kept blurred (due to allowance of neighboring overtones and semitones. This allowance intensifies the bhava in music, which assumes a greater system as in Carnatic system. It is this bhava which paves the way in achieving what is called intuitive or meditative music.
As note is not swara, melody is not raga. At the most, melody is a loose arrangement of single notes. Raga, on the other hand, is a tighter fusion of swaras, making it a ‘total sound’ or a ‘tonal complex’. The individuality of notes in a raga is totally merged to assume a totally different form or personality.
The western music however, celebrates this individuality of notes, be it played singly or collectively. In the western system, the purity of notes has given rise to new vistas in music. Besides, single melodic events, wherein a melody flows in a track through there may be ups and downs due to variations in notes, this system has given rise to yet another possibility, to yet another possibility, namely, multi-melodic events.
Here several notes and melodies are sounded at the same moment or duration, which gives an option to the listeners to split the streams of music and visualize them the way he wants to. While the sounds emanate from the same source i.e. a human voice or a musical instrument, the way it is tackled and utilized makes the difference.
As a rule, Western melodies are ‘smarter’ than the Indian raga. The ‘smartness’ here is due to the analytical intelligence which determines the purity of notes, which stand apart. Ragas, as compared to melodies, are ‘emotional’ and thanks to the bhava-laden approach, they are not ‘smart’ enough. The lack of ‘smartness’ of a raga is compensated by the Indian tala system, which is highly mathematical and analytical. The singer’s struggle with the tala while singing an emotional piece, proves the dedication one has to develop to remain alert of the beats while emoting at the same time! This indeed is yoga!
As in Indian schools, Western school combines its ‘smart’ melodies with ‘emotional’ beats. Further; Western beats are not as developed as in the Indian system, for melody has been given full prominence coupled with built-in rhythms. Unlike Indian ragas which are impromptu (except in songs), western melodies are present and insist on clearly shared teamwork. East is East, West is west; when it comes to music, both are the best!
This article was published in Bhavan’s Journal, Oct 31, 2003, pages 141 to 143
Edited by Geeta Shreedar, Feb 22, 2021