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Melody In Carnatic Music By- Kiranavali Vidyasankar Kiranavali, the granddaughter of the late legendary Gotuvadyam Narayana Iyengar, was born on 2nd Jan. 1973. Her father, N Narasimhan, is a musician of great merit, and has nurtured the musical talents of Kiranavali and her illustrious brothers, Chitravina N Ravikiran and K N Shashikiran. When hardly three years old, Kiranavali was able to identify more than 200 Ràgas and the 175 Tàlas, besides answering numerous technical questions pertaining to Carnatic music. If Indian Express called her "astounding in her precocity" (14 June 1975), the music critic of The Hindu wrote, "More fantastic is the manner in which Kiranavali, the three-year old sister of Ravikiran and Shashikiran is able to tell the Ràga even at the commencement of its outline." Kiranavali's performing career began at the age of eleven. Both her solo recitals and the duets with her brother, Shashikiran, won the hearts of the knowledgeable and laymen alike. In her quest for excellence, Kiranavali pursued advanced vocal music training under the late Sangita Kalanidhi T Brinda, the highest authority on the works of many a great composer. Under her guidance, Kiranavali has matured into a sensitive musician with a deep commitment to highly refined musical values. At the young age of twenty-eight, she brings a degree of maturity and involvement to Carnatic music that is commensurate with her professional experience of over two decades. Kiranavali also plays the Chitravina, true to her family tradition. She has performed solo, and has also accompanied Ravikiran. Her concerts have been featured by many leading organisations like the Madras Music Academy, Krishna Gana Sabha, Narada Gana Sabha and Shanmukhananda Fine Arts (Mumbai). The first artiste to be graded high for both Vocal and the Chitravina by AIR and Doordarshan, her music is regularly featured in broadcasts.

As I said in my introduction, Carnatic music is ruled by the Sanskrit saying, Srutir mata, layah pitameaning, Melody is mother, Rhythm is father. In the next few columns, I shall deal with the first part of the saying, Srutir mata, or the melodic aspects.

Any lover of Indian music would have definitely come across the word Raga. Needless to say, this concept is a very ancient one. But what exactly is it and how did it evolve? Before we go into it, we need to know some basic stuff. Let's start with the skeleton of the Raga, which are the notes or swara-s, as they are called in Indian music.

Well, like most systems of music across the world, Carnatic music also has seven basic notes, the Sapta (seven) Swaras (notes) in an octave. They are Shadja (Sa), Rishabha (Ri), Gandhara (Ga), Madhyama (Ma), Panchama (Pa), Dhaivata (Dha) and Nishada (Ni). While Sa and Pa are the constant notes that remain fixed in any given pitch, the rest of the five notes have variable values of two each. That gives us a total of twelve notes or swarasthana-s in the octave (sthana literally means place or position). Isn't it amazing that different civilizations across the globe have arrived at the same results through the centuries?

Anyway, here's what makes Carnatic music different. Although there are twelve swarasthana-s, they are called by sixteen different names. This obviously means that there is some overlapping of the notes. This probably happened only to accommodate peculiar ragas like Nata or Varali which already existed before all these theories were propounded. So it was not with a view to be different that this idea was conceived, but only to properly classify these differences. Here's a table of the sixteen notes with their Hindustani equivalents:

The interesting thing here is that Chatusrtui Rishabha (Ri 2) and Suddha Gandhara (Ga 1) share the same place values. i.e., you would render them in the same place, but just call them by different names depending upon the context. The same thing happens in the case of Shatsruti Rishabha (Ri 3) and Sadharana Gandhara (Ga 2); Chatusruti Dhaivata (Da 2) and Suddha Nishada (Ni 1); and Shatsruti Dhaivata (Da 3) and Kaisika Nishada (Ni 2). This unique feature is more obvious from the table of the Hindustani notes where Shudh Rishabh, Komal Gandhar, Shudh Dhaivat and Komal Nishad occur twice.

Simply put,