The instrumental voice

The advent of veena is considered one of the most important milestones in the evolution of music as it introduced the concept of ‘ghamakas’. Prior to this, music was sung to a few scales. The idea of the 22 srutis(while some feel it is many more) which emerged  from the veena led to a more revolutionary concept called the ‘ragas’ which is the soul of carnatic music. So it is well established that the basic singing style evolved from the veena. The influence of veena on vocal music continued for several decades, be it the Jaru ghamakas in Dikshithar’s compositions or the‘Tanam’ or  ‘madyamakalam’ sung before rendering a pallavi. The manodharma of musicians were usually staccatos, until the late Sri GN Balasubramaniam introduced the nadaswara bani(style). This involved singing of lengthy phrases(long karvais). This was probably one of the greatest contributions to carnatic music. This style of presentation does not fail to charm the rasika even to this date. ‘Tanam’ or  ‘madyamakalam’ is another contribution of veena to music.

These days we find senior musicians introducing a lot of instrumental accents in raga exposition such as that of a nadaswaram or a violin.  Many musicians use a lot of fast phrases or glides similar to that of a violin in the exposition of a raga. The adage-‘the singing violin’ could now be extrapolated to the concert stage as ‘singing like a violin’. Such is the versatility of vocalists in the current era. Neverthless, the  human voice is the best musical instrument.