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Swaras, Ragas, and Rasas
Swaras, Ragas, and Rasas
The Path of Indian Music ..Steven Landsberg
Swara, the Sanskrit word for tonal center, forms the fundamental basis for the
Indian path of music. Although it is difficult to be precise about the
etymological meaning, there are references elucidating ‘swara’ as a tone which
can shine or resonate by itself. Perhaps this means that a swara can stand by
itself as opposed to a shruti, or audible element, which can ornament another
note but cannot stand alone because it would not be considered tuneful. In any
case, swara suggests tunefulness, and moreover, a tunefulness that arises from
within. There is of course technique, however, technique alone will not
suffice. There must initially be observation and analytical presence, but
ultimately there must be an inherent presence to reveal the swara in its
fullness as a tonal center with an ever-expanding periphery. When fully
matured, the swara shines by itself without any pillar in the same way that
natural awareness or a brilliant seed syllable radiates spontaneously without
any support or control. In fact the more one just ‘lets the swara be’ the more
luminous it becomes.
The main point here is that swara has a presence of its own and the experience
of its resonance must allow for the swara to reveal itself, totally open and
without force. The manifestation of swara brings along with it a natural
calming of internal movement and a corresponding tuning of our own instrument
as body, energy and mind. Without this fundamental relaxation of internal
movement and a wider opening to the surrounding space, swara remains as a
lifeless corpse.
Along with the comfort that the process of internal loosening allows for, a
tunefulness arises whereby the swara effortlessly begins to pervade one’s
entire being and the space around oneself. As one is no longer trying to
improve, modify, control, or in any way alter one’s natural tunefulness, the
swara takes on a life of its own and resonates without any limit to its clarity
and power.
Tunefulness never arises simply on the basis of technique. Underlying the
technique there must be an internal ease which is neither too concentrated nor
diffused. If it is too concentrated the swara tends to become too hard and if
it is diffused, the swara loses its dynamic quality. This necessary understanding
of swara is the reason why months and years are devoted to cultivating
tunefulness through posture, breath control, and concentration.
To insure that tunefulness is genuine it is sometimes useful to ritualize the
introduction to the nature of swara. Traditionally, a student offered a gold
coin to the master, and in return the master would sing or play one note, after
which the student would imitate whatever the master sang or played. Through
this ritual process of exchange the master would directly introduce the
disciple to the swaras. One may question whether this ritual is important or
not. The ritual does more than just introduce the swaras to the student. It
opens the door to the whole lineage of transmission, so that one’s tunefulness no
longer remains something that one has just invented but is connected to the
power of the tunefulness of previous musical masters, and especially to one’s
own teacher.
When awakened tunefulness arises, the whole environment is transformed into a
vibratory field characterized by the qualities of a particular tonal center. As
the vibration continues, the periphery expands until the sound becomes
inseparable from space. When the vibration stops, the boundary between struck
and unstruck sound dissolves and there is a seamless unification of one’s
awareness and and disappearance of the vibration. Somehow there is a sound to
this silence.
Comprehension of the ground of tunefulness brings insight into the
characteristic tonal meanings of the various swaras. In Indian music there are
seven shuddha swaras or ‘natural’ tonal centers: Shadja, Rishab, Gandhar,
Madyam, Pancham, Dhaivat, and Nishad. As the second, third, fourth, sixth, and
seventh have altered possibilities, we generally say that there are twelve swaras
in all. When all the scatterings of mind are gathered in, absorbed and relaxed,
the fundamental swara Shadja reveals itself as total balance, equilibrium, and
equality. Shadja is the ground and fundamental basis for all the other notes
and the perfect mirror in which all the other swaras are reflected. Without
this tonal mirror in fact, the qualities of the other notes will not be
reflected. All the other swaras, when produced in front of this mirror, reveal
the clarity and qualities of the respective swara. It is not the case that we
hear Sa and Gandhar, for example, as some chord, but rather that Sa, the
mirror, begins to resonate as Gandhar. No other swara has this capacity.
This relation between Shadja and the other tonal centers is metaphorically significant
to our own experience. As long as awareness is naturally balanced and we are
vibrating with our own ‘SA’, all experience will manifest as some kind of
reflection with our natural awareness integrating with appearance without ever
distorting it. It is only when that natural awareness appears clouded, that all
experience never seems satisfactory or meaningful. On a relative level
intonation of swaras can improve ones health, calm the mind, and balance
untuneful vibration and energy. On a deeper spiritual level, marga sangeet, or
the musical path, was offered to the human dimension to establish an alternate
path, a key to untying the knot of samsara. The goddesss Saraswati is
considered as an enlightened being who bestowed the secrets of music upon Narada
Muni who then propagated them throughout the human dimension.
This exercise of internal balance and the resulting musical harmony ignites a
creative spark fired with precision, flexibility, expansiveness, and emotive
expression. Precision refers to the perfect communication that arises between
body and mind and the way in which technique spontaneously responds to creative
impulse. As a result, there is perfection in intonation merely through
directing one’s mind at the desired note. There is no obstacle to clarity as
each swara shines the natural brilliance of one’s awareness.
Flexibility is the ease with which energy shapes itself into tuneful patterns
according to the melodic structure and method. As the internal balance of
tunefulness spreads throughout one’s body, obstructions are automatically
removed and creative expression arises without effort. There is a sense of
freedom and ease about patterning the notes as if what once felt stiff like
steel is now more stretchable like rubber.
Expansiveness is the manifestation of infinite possibility once one is no
longer struggling with the internal or external environment. A spontaneous flow
of limitless possibility emerges and one simply rides the wave of creative
experience without any judgment regarding the quality of what is arising. The
swara flows smoothly, evenly, and improvisation occurs naturally and without
force. Patterns arise without any semblance of a cause-- randomly,
spontaneously, yet ordered with inherent meaning.
If one understands this ground of tunefulness, the architectural forms of
Indian music, known as ragas and raginis can arise clearly. Even if one’s
understanding and knowledge of Indian melodic form is incomplete or limited;
tunefulness will compensate and no matter how far one strays from the pure form
of the raga, the raga’s fragrance will somehow pervade. This is not an excuse
for ignoring the purity of a raga’s form but rather a testament to the power of
having realized ‘swara’ through yogic process within the body and contemplatively
in the mind. On the other hand, if one only infuses one’s play with the raga’s
grammar, no matter how intricate, and ignores the fundamental source of swara;
the raga will remain as only a lifeless shadow without color, fragrance,
taste,or texture.
According to the ideals of traditional Indian music, the combination of
tunefulness with a true understanding of a raga’s unique melodic patterning is
the process through which music really becomes a method of transformation.
Within the context of the raga system each swara has a particular seat. In
fact, the seating arrangement can be said to be very important. Each raga has a
different seating arrangement, and accordingly, some seats will be very stable
and unmoving whilst others are always in motion. The fundamental swara and its
counterpart are generally, but not always, very stable. There is an important
relation, a kind of communication, between the fundamental swara and its
counterpart which sits a fourth or fifth away. One might think of this
counterpart as a minister who is always assisting the king. Then there are
numerous other relations which are created by the multi dimensional seating
arrangement. Each time a particular swara is sounded it immediately triggers a
signal to another note, almost alerting it to get ready to light up. In this
way lines are drawn between all the swaras in a raga creating a tight system of
interconnectedness. This dynamic relationship forms the ground upon which the
character, shape, voice, face, and feelings of the raga will ripen and mature.
When all the swaras are comfortably seated and each one seemingly manifests in
a space where tension and release are perfectly balanced (this is just a way of
saying that they manifest in the right proportion and at the appropriate
moment), the raga shines clearly through its own self potency and assumes its
capacity to transform anything in its vibrational field.
Ragas and their inherent tonality are woven into the daily and nocturnal cycle.
Just as each period of the day and night has its own particular character and
vibration, correspondingly, the ragas portray moods associated with those
times. The power that a raga possesses to transform our vision is more evident
when it is intoned at the appropriate hour. Particular swaras seem to go in and
out of focus according to the time of the day. There are numerous examples of
this process and although it is beyond the scope of this work to go into those
details, suffice it to say that the inclusion or exclusion of a particular
swara, or its emphasis or lack thereof, is influenced by the time of day that
one is playing. Critical moments of the day such as sunrise and sunset also
reveal peculiarities in the raga’s tonal system. Similarly, ragas associated
with seasons such as the spring and monsoon demonstrate identifiable patterned
tonal qualities that define them as seasonal ragas. In fact the scope of a
seasonal raga can become more focused according to the moment of the particular
season one is dealing with. For example, monsoon includes the very active
thunderstorm as well as the moment when the sun reveals itself through the
clouds after the storm is over. These are distinctly different moments-in
color, mood, environmental vibe, etc. Ragas can reflect these changes.
Emotive expression in a raga is not simply a reflection of the vibratory tone
of experience. We can have all kinds of experience in our lives, some good,
some desirable, and some bad that most of us seek to avoid. Each one of those
experiences throughout our daily lives resonates with some kind of vibration,
maybe pleasant, unpleasant, relaxing, tense, sad or joyful. If we reflect on
it, we can notice some kind of tone or vibration. Music is an attempt to infuse
that vibration with emotive presence, and thereby separate the conflicting
tones of ordinary experience from the harmonious balance of emotive presence.
This emotive presence is called rasa in Classical Indian aesthetic terminology.
Rasa is the essential flavor of vocal music, instrumental music, and dramatic
art.
Rasa is more than just some abstract concept and suggests something related to
tactility, vision, smell, sound, and taste. Rasa arises when the structural and
defining limits of conceptualization are relaxed. Somehow we become more
“moist”, our creative juices begin to flow and we lose our grip on what to
accept and what to reject. As the dualistic context and the conflicting
vibration of ordinary emotion is relaxed, an artist has the possibility of
discovering an immediate wakefulness which can lift or separate the emotion
from its contextual limits and arouse profound lucid feeling.
Classical aesthetics considers nine experiences which give rise to this instant
emotive presence. They are actually broad categories and encompass the whole
spectrum of experience. Within the context of Indian music their scope becomes
more specific according to the melodic form one engages. The nine rasas
include:
1)Sringara-love, joyful,happy-the adi rasa because there can be no rasa without
love.
2) Karuna-sadness, longing, grief, resigned acceptance.
3)Shanta-tranquility,balance, sometimes considered the goal of all the other
rasas
4) Vira -noble, dignified, energetic, warrior like
5) Adbhuta-wonder, surprise, astonishment
6) Hasya-laughter, humor
7) Abhyanka –fear, terror
8) Krodha-anger
9) Vibhatsa –disgust, revulsion
If, for example, one considers sringara rasa (love) the Indian musician awakens
this presence by integrating with the melodic patterning of the the raga.
“Massaging” the swaras according to the balance and proportion that the raga
calls for, and allowing the swaras to fall and rest in their seats accordingly
opens the space for this presence to arise. This presence will be colored with
feelings associated with love but free from any dualistic or conflicting
emotion. Even when the raga suggests painful separation, grief, or loss, those
feelings do not condition the clarity of the musicians’ view but become the
pathways for an aesthetic presence to arise. This may not be the condition when
we are speaking of separation or painful loss in real life. We get caught in
the web of thoughts and emotions, clarity is lost, and confusion ensues. The
musician-artist, on the other hand, sheds the ‘corpse’ of conceptual context or
what we may call the ‘storyline’, and reveals the archtypical juice of
emotion-nakedly raw, joyful and awake.
Having separated himself, at least temporarily, from the world of desire, the
artist abandons both acceptance and rejection, recognizes union and separation
as waves of creative play and remains undistracted in a sea of infinite
potential. Similarly, when the musician plays ragas which are associated with
the moods of the nine rasas-whether of painful longing, love, noble, or
tranquil- he is no longer a player in a real life drama trapped and distracted
by conceptual context, but rather a vehicle for pure creative expression
revealing a melodic patterning of swara filled with emotive presence.
…..SL Kathmandu, Nepal