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There are many musical actions applied to
beautify notes. These ornamentations are called Alankars. Here are
some examples: Krintans produce two successive notes in
descending order in one stroke. Krintans can take you only from a
higher to a lower note but not vice versa. Here is a demo of a
Krintan
 and
this is how it is applied
.
Sparsh is just the opposite of krintan – producing 2
successive notes in ascending order with 1 stroke only – from a
lower to a higher note – but not vice versa. Here is a demo of a
Sparsh
and
this is how it is applied
.
A Meend joins 2 successive or distant notes with a glide,
there being only 1 stroke on the first. Here is a slow meend
connecting distant notes
, followed by
examples of middle tempo meends
and fast
meends
.
Now all these meends can be further classified into aarohi and
avrohi meends. A meend going from a lower to a higher note is
Aarohi Meend
, and the
reverse Avrohi Meend
.
Here are some complex, multi directional meends
.
A Ghaseet is a quickly executed meend joining 2 notes,
generally in ascending order
A Khatka reaches a note by encircling it with notes before and after
it
. Gitkari
is same as khatka applied to vocal music.
Now for the various kinds of gats: Slow tempo gats are mostly played
in Masitkhani style. (Previously however, they were played in medium
tempo. Allaudin Khan was the first to play them at a slower speed
and in so doing, introduced different alankars into the gat or the
taal section of the performance – Perera , 1994). Masitkhani gats
are played with the following sequence of bols
Just the reverse of Masitkhani gats are the Razakhani gats of drut
tempo
.
Both the Masitkhani and Razakhani gats are completed within 1 cycle
of the tala
. In Razakhani gats, a raga cannot always be fully
demonstrated. Listen to the previous Razakhani gat in Raga Desh
. But if other features of Raga Desh were to be played,
, it would not be possible to house all these expressions
of the raga in just 1 cycle.
That is why longer compositions have been made – Firozkhani gats
. This was
played out within 2 cycles. There are also longer gats played in 3
or even 4 cycles
After the main body of the gat is played, the rest of the
performance consists of elaborations and improvisations called taans
and todas
which have been
described earlier.
The concluding part of the performance is “jhala”. Jhala is a mode
of playing in which the notes of the various phrases of the raga are
placed on a canvas or backdrop of pluckings on the chikara strings
(two strings specially meant for this purpose), with various
improvisations. The speed (laya) of execution becomes faster and
faster, till there is a “tihai” to finish the climax. |
