OTHERLANDS COLLABORATION #17
Date: Feb. 12, 2020 • Location: Bengaluru, India
Every collaboration presents a few challenges, and some are more in my wheelhouse. I pretty much jumped off the deep end with this one. And to continue with the swimming analogy, I either sank to the bottom a couple of times, or hit my head on the diving board while attempting an unqualified reverse (which did happen once).
*To learn more about Bengalore Amrit's music and projects, please visit his:
I was introduced to Amrit by a mutual friend who was a former student of mine from Berklee Valencia, Bharath Ranganathan. He is from Bengaluru and knew that I was looking for interesting people to collaborate with. He nailed this.
Back when I was a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, I took a class called "Percussion for Non-Percussionists" with multi-faceted percussionist and jazz drummer Jamey Haddad. He had studied in India and taught Carnatic (South Indian Classical) rhythmic concepts, including konnokol syllables to his students. That one semester changed how I think about rhythm to this day.
This is to say that I wasn't exactly starting from 0 today...perhaps 9 out of 100...and I can't even imagine what it would have happened if I was at 0. On second thought, 9 may have made me a danger to myself. Today was my first lesson from a Carnatic rhythm master, and my first time playing with the khanjira. I cried, I laughed, I tried to put square pegs in round holes, and I cried a little more. I emerged a bit bruised, but with new concepts and big growth potential for the future.
The khanjira is a small wooden drum, traditionally covered in a lizard skin, with one set of jingles made from two coins. It is held upright by one hand underneath, fingers in the front, thumb in the back, both using pressure against the skin to change the pitch. The other hand plays the rhythm on the skin by using different patterns of thumb, first finger, middle/ring/pinky together as one big finger, and the palm. Amrit described it as a full drum kit, demonstrating examples of kick, snare, and tom sounds. The skin is also very sensitive to climate changes so he kept a small bowl of water near to dampen it and lower the pitch.
I took two big conceptual lessons away today.
The first was a compositional technique to create a "tihai," or rhythmic conclusion to a phrase. At my beginner level, the phrase ends with three repetitions of a rhythm. Variations of group of five syllables can be expanded to create the rhythms which have 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 beats. To do this, the syllables at times will receive an extra "beat," making them twice as long. See below...
5 Beats: Ta, Di, Ki, Na, Thom (x3 = 15 beats)
6 Beats: Ta, Di - i, Ki, Na, Thom (x3 = 18 beats)
7 Beats: Ta - a, Di, Ki - i, Na, Thom (x3 = 21 beats)
8 Beats: Ta, Di - i, Ki - i, Na - a, Thom (x3 = 24 beats)
9 Beats: Ta - a , Di - i, Ki - i, Na - a, Thom (x3 = 27 beats)
To see how this fits into a phrase, we'll need a bit of math, so lets take an 8-count phrase broken equally into 32 beats. To use the 5-Beat tihai (15 beats total when repeated 3 times), you will first need to precede it with 17 beats (32-15=17) before starting. The preceding beats can be broken up however you want (8+4+2+3 for example) before starting the three repetitions of 5. To use the 6-beat tihai (18 beats), you would precede it with 14 beats (32-18=14). And so on.
We spoke through all the examples, and I'll need time to practice on my own before exploring this with melodic phrases or chopping patterns.
And then we ventured into a concept that became the basis for what we played. Lacking Carnatic vocabulary, I'll call it a rhythmic scale. I was familiar with the basic concept, developing a related melodic scale exercise for myself many years ago, but hadn't yet applied it to a tune, which is what we spent half of our day doing.
To explain the concept, you'll need to imagine one consistent equal pulse of rhythm. That pulse can be broken equally into smaller beats. In western musical terms, a 4-beat division could feel like 8th-notes or a 6-beat division would feel like 8th-note triplets. You can also divide that pulse with equal 5, 7, and 9 beat divisions. To see what this would feel like, Amrit asked for a tune, and I chose an old-time American one that has been borrowed by bluegrass-ers called “Garfield's Blackberry.”
I started by trying to keep the small pulses equal (think of the quarter note remaining consistent), but that is not quite the idea. The big beat must stay equal, and as a result, at the smaller end of the divisions, the melody has less notes and feels "slower." At the higher end, the melody has more notes between the pulses and feels "faster" — but amazingly, the length of the melody never really changes.
The musical exercise we created was to run it through the various subdivisions, or time signatures. We would begin with the tune in a 4/4 half time. Then we’d transition to 5, 6, 7, and finally 8 subdivisions (finishing with the full tune as I knew it). My first challenge was how to reimagine the melody, while retaining its skeletal essence, in the different divisions in a way that felt natural. My second challenge was to transition from one time division to the next fluidly. This was my idea for our piece (meaning that I did this to myself) and I found it extremely difficult, even though I conceptually understood. There were times that I locked in and flowed in a particular subdivision, and then we'd try it again and I couldn't find it. We had to stop and start many times and Amrit was very patient and helpful. I felt like an unfrozen caveman fiddler and thankfully lives were not on the line.
Eventually we made it through our exercise, and I emerged wounded and barely victorious. This project is about musically and culturally challenging myself, and finding new inspiration. On the one hand I felt defeated, on the other I felt rejuvenated. Without a doubt, I will work on these concepts for years to come.
CREDITS
Song: Garfield's Blackberry (Traditional)
Recorded at: Raghu Dixit Studios (rooftop), Bengaluru, India
Music Arranged by: Casey Driessen & Bangalore Amrit
Khanjira: Bangalore Amrit
Fiddle, Audio & Video: Casey Driessen
Production Assistant: Emmette Driessen
SPECIAL THANKS
Bharath Ranganathan
Ragu Dixit