- Khyal
Khyal (or Khayal:
Hindi : ख़्याल,Urdu : خیال) is the modern genre of classical singing inNorth India . Its name comes from an Arabic word meaning "imagination". It appeared more recently thandhrupad . Like allIndian classical music , khyal is modal, with a singlemelodic line and no harmonic parts. The modes are calledraga , and each raga is a complicated framework of melodic rules.Khyal bases itself on a repertoire of short songs (two to sixteen lines). The singer uses these as raw material for
improvisation , accompanied by a set of two hand drums, the "tabla ", and usually aharmonium or bowedstring instrument such as the "sarangi ",violin or "dilruba " playing off the singer's melody line. A typical khyal performance uses two songs, one slow ("vilambit ") and one fast ("drut "). The slow song, the "bada khyal" or great khyal, comprises most of the performance; the fast song ("chhota khyal", small khyal) is used as a finale. The songs are sometimes preceded by improvised "alap " without drum accompaniment; alap is given much less room in khyal than in other forms of classical music in north India.As the songs are short, and performances long (half an hour or more), the lyrics lose some of their importance. Improvisation is added to the songs in a number of ways: for example improvising new melodies to the words, using the syllables of the songs to improvise material ("
bol-bant ", "bol-taan s"), singing the names of the scale degrees — sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha and ni ("sargam") — or simply interspersing phrases sung on the vowel A, "akar taans". Now and then, the singer returns to the song, especially its first line, as a point of reference.History
Khayal was popularized by Sadarang (who was initially a beenkar in the court of Muhammad Shah (1719-48), by name Niyamat Khan). Sadarang was a true reformer of vocal music, one who restored the essential form of Hindustani music from its decadent Dhrupad form of the time. In the compositions of Sadarang, you see the themes of Hindi love-poetry which uses popular social relations as allegoric rendition of a Bhakt's(worshipper's) relationship with his deity. Khayal of sadarang also inherited the dignity of Dhrupad, the fluency of the Hindi and Persian languages and the manner (paddhati) of the been in its glide or meend, plus a number of musical alankars that were introduced into the body of the composition.Study of the compositions of Sadarang with respect to their musical form shows how each alankar is exactly suited to the meaning of the word it embellishes. Sadarang's music at once attractive and meaningful and rasika Muhammad Shah was impressed enough to accord royal status (darbar gayaki) to the Khyal immediately.
The gharana system arose out of stylistic rendering of Sadarang's khayals by various subsequent generations of musicians. The most original being the Gwalior gharana. Ustad Ghagge Khuda Baksh was sent to Gwalior Khayal and went back to establish the Agra Gharana. Most of the gharanas owe some learning from the original Gharana of Gwalior that followed Sadarang's music in its purity.
With India united and royal courts abolished, and with modern communications and recording technology, stylistic borders have become blurred and many singers today have studied with teachers from more than one gharana. This used to be uncommon, and a few decades ago teachers used to forbid students to even hear other gharana singers perform, not allowing them to buy records or listen to the radio. Today, as always, a singer is expected to develop an individual style, albeit one that is demonstrably linked to tradition.
In recent years, the trend has been towards more extreme tempos in khyal. Instead of slow and fast (vilambit and drut), a performance may include ati-vilambit, vilambit, madhya, drut and ati-drut - that is, ultra-slow, medium speed and super-fast songs as well. Other song forms, often with nonsense syllables, such as "
tarana s" or "tappa s", can also be used to round off a khyal performance.Another trend, lamented by many, is the demise of the bowed-string
sarangi as an accompanying instrument. Today one more often hears the harmonium organ, which is relatively inflexible in that it cannot follow the singer'sglissando . Thesarangi is on the remove because it is extremely difficult to play and because it has become associated with a lower-class prostitution milieu; in the absence of a violin tradition in North India, the harmonium was there to fill the gap. Experiments with simplified, fretted sarangi clones such as the dilruba have not become very popular.The harmonium was for many years banned on
All India Radio but is accepted today. Almost universally, though, bowed-string accompaniment is appreciated as more genuine.References
* [http://www.medieval.org/music/world/warvij.html Some words about Khyal] Retrieved 2007-06-10
* [http://www.amc.org.uk/education/articles/Khyal%20-%20Fantasy%20in%20Music.htm Khyal - Fantasy in Music] Retrieved 2007-06-10
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