Of Beauty and Deities: Music and Dance of India

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Music and dance. Music and dance. A way of expressing our deepest thoughts and feelings.

Music and dance mean different things to different people. The meaning can be religious, or it can be a way of guys and girls getting together, or a way of telling a story, or preserving a community heritage. There are as many possibilities as there are varieties of human experience.

Join us now, for the languages of sound and movement, as we look at the music and dance traditions of the world"s diverse community.

In this episode, we"ll look at two of music and dance traditions of India. My name is Eve Ma, and I"ll be your host. Let"s go to the studio, and we"ll start with a solo dance dedicated to Mother Earth.

Most of the dances we"ll be seeing on this show are literally hundreds of years old. This dance, however, has a different history. Kalanjali"s artistic directors, K.P. And Katherine Khorana explain it this way.

That is actually a contemporary choreography by V.P. Dhananjayan, who"s the director of Bharatanatyam [INAUDIBLE] to us. And that piece, in order to create the music for it, he took verses from traditional Indian prayer and had them set to music and then choreographed it, and put rhythmic intervals in it, and made it into a dance.

And that"s how these dances are created. So it looks like it could have been 200 or 600 or 1,000 years old. But it"s in the traditional style, but it"s completely new. It"s just a few years old.

You may also have noticed that the dancer is bare-footed. This is because shoes are considered dirty in India, much dirtier than out bare feet. For nearly 2,000 years, these dances were presented to the deity, and so the bare feet were a form of respect.

I was also fascinated to learn that the dances are actually a form of sign language. Each movement means something specific, and the dancers spell out various stories, poems, or prayers to a deity. Later in the show there"s a dance in which we"ve translated these movements.

It"s a special instrument from south Indiana--

--called mridangam.

Why don"t you play one short, fast sequence on the drums.

For sure.

In the past several decades, hundreds of thousands of people from India have immigrated to English-speaking countries, including the United States. Many have become shopkeepers, cabdrivers, and restaurant owners, while others are scientists, computer specialists, or medical doctors.

It is said that a deep involvement in religion is one of the hallmarks of a person from India. There are Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, and Jains, to mention only a few. And many of America"s cities now have Muslim mosques, and Hindu, and Sikh temples.

India itself is a complex country where hundreds of different languages are spoken, and which have cultural roots that go back for many thousands of years.

One of the biggest divisions in India is between the South and the North. The North has been heavily influenced by the Persians and other groups, but in the South there has been less outside influence.

The music and dance on this show comes primarily from the bharatanatyam tradition of the Hindus, which has especially strong roots in the South of India. Bharatanatyam is an ancient art form, based on a classical text on music, dance and drama called the Natya Shastra. It dates back to the second century after Christ.

In addition to the classical bharatanatyam, we"ll also see one folk dance. Our performers come from a group called Kalanjali Dances of India, led by K.P. and Katherine Kunhiraman.

In the days before the British Rush, every, or almost every temple, had its dances and musicians. And on ordinary days, the music and dance were performed in the early morning, at midday, and in the evening.

The artistic directors also had interesting things to say about this dance, the Tillana.

The Tillana is about 200 years old, and all of these dances, it"s important to know, are originally intended as solo dancing. They"re choreographed for single dancers who would have performed before the alter in the temple. And sort of an American compromise, and actually in India it happens a lot, too, to put everybody in it and give everybody a chance to fill up the stage and make it a big colorful blast on the stage.

The bharatanatyam is basically an expressive dance form, storytelling, and the music and the vocals, they"re also telling a story. And one part of the expression is called [INAUDIBLE] which is the beauty of the costume. That"s a very important part of the dance. And this dance is traditionally done by a specific group of women called devadasis in the temples.

And this is actually, this jewelry is bridal jewelry, so what the brides in South India wear on their wedding day. And that"s significant because the women who dance in the temple, the devadasis, are supposed to be married to the god of the temple in a sense. They consider him like their husband, which in Hindu tradition, made them forever auspicious-- very auspicious women because their husbands could never die because their husbands were the gods.

The red on our fingers and teeth, it"s called alta, and it"s made with henna, traditionally, which in all of India, henna is a paste made from plants. People use to dye their hair. And they apply that on the skin and dye the skin. And in South India they do it just on the tip of the finger in a circle. But in North India they do very elaborate henna design.

And that"s also just a general decorative item that any woman does any time, so it"s not limited to dance. But it works really well with dance because then it elaborates the movement of the fingers and the hands and the feet, which is very important to the dance.

So It has a stage quality as well, which is probably why it stuck. Now we just use a red dye because the Henna takes many hours to dye the skin, and it takes some time to move. It takes days and weeks, so it looks a little odd here.

Red is an auspicious color. Brides wear red, the dot on her forehead is red. It"s supposed to denote prosperity, and prosperity in any kind of way, auspicious.

Although the dancers were considered the wives of the deities, a dancer might be patronized by a local man of importance, whose relationship to her was celebrated by a ritual similar to marriage. The children of these unions were considered legitimate.

In another vein, the artistic directors also explained to me how this music and dance were nearly lost.

The British ruled India for 200 years, and they were even there before they were actually physically ruling it. And during that time the educated Indians became disenchanted with it, with the influence of the British. And by the time independence was just a few years off, the educated Indians and the British, who were still in power, actually outlawed temple dancing. And those laws are still on the books, and they"re trying to turn it over.

But meanwhile, the whole support system for the temple dancers and musicians waned, because the kings were no longer in power, because the British were in power. They were just puppets and symbols. And the dancers had no work, had no support.

And slowly-- it actually, within another generation after independence, if it weren"t for the work of [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE], and people who supported them, it would have become extinct.

The performers have become involved in this dance for different reasons.

Well, I"ve always been interested in dance since I was five, and we went to a dance performance at UC Berkeley, and there was a dance [INAUDIBLE] in bharatanatyam, which is the style. And it was really interesting and I liked it a lot, and I was about seven at the time. And my Mom was really glad that I liked it too, because she wanted me to learn about the Indian culture, since we"re in America, so I started dancing when I was seven, and I"ve been dancing for the past 10 years now.

You say that she wanted you to learn about Indian culture since you"re in America. Is your family originally from India?

Actually, my great grandparents moved from India to Malaysia, and then my parents moved from Malaysia to here, so it"s been a long time since any of us have been to India.

I went to India with my family when I was 10 years old, and there I saw dance performed at many different functions. And the dance performance that struck me the most was at this beautiful temple called Chidambaram in South India. And at that moment when I saw-- there were four girls on stage and they were dancing so beautifully and the atmosphere was so beautiful, I really was moved by the beauty of the dance.

My parents got very interested in Hinduism before I was born, so we were raised in that tradition. And then, when it came time to teach us more about the tradition, besides the religion itself, we took classes, their group was for about 10 years.

Well, I grew up in India until I was 15 years old, and I have seen bharatanatyam in the school festivals and things like that. And because my family was Catholic and I grew up in a strict Catholic religion, my Uncle is a Catholic priest, so this became a religious issue whether my daughter should learn a Hindu dance or not. So because of that, I was restricted to learn bharatanatyam.

Then, after we came to United States and I got married and I was like living on my own, that"s when I decided to start bharatanatyam.

I"m here with K.P. Kunhiraman and Katherine Kunhiraman, the directors of Kalanjali Dances of India. I believe both of you all are dancers. If you can tell me a little bit about that, where you learned to dance.

We wanted to study in the school. And our director, [INAUDIBLE] turned my fate. He asked us, where do you want to go to school? I didn"t go to school, so you learn art. Your father is a very, very great artist.

Your father was a dancer?

Father, yeah, yeah. Very great and famous.

All right. All right.

We just follow his tradition.

All right. And what dance was it that he did? What kind of dance, and what dance did you learn?

Actually, I started with bharatanatyam.

Uh-huh.

Then I learned kathakali.

OK, so you know both, bharatanatyam and kathakali.

Yeah, right.

And did your father do both of them?

No. Only kathakali.

All right.

Yeah, he"s a very famous actor.

All right.

So then she said, look here, you better keep the tradition and to follow. And we need artists. Those days, I think it was 1947.

So, just after the war.

Yeah. After Independence, right.

Yeah.

Same year. Then he said to continue. I will give you a scholarship, and free boarding, and lodging and everything. So that"s where I started.

And so then you started formal training in a school.

Right. Uh-huh.

And that was a famous school, wasn"t it?

It was famous, really famous.

Yes. What"s the name of it?

Kalakshetra.

Kalakshetra.

Kala means art. Shetra was the temple of art.

All right. All right. And Katherine, what about you?

Well, I started dancing in Calcutta, because that"s where my family was living when we first went to India. My father was with the Ford Foundation. And I became more and more seriously interested in it. Then I went to Madras to study in kalakshetra. And I was majoring in bharatanatyam with kathakali as a secondary subject, and we met and fell in love.

All right. Wonderful. Can you explain a little bit about when music and dance fit into the Hindu tradition?

That style used to be, in its earliest form, as part of the rituals in the Hindu temples. So it was actually part of the routine of temple worship. And it was done by women who were, by heredity, dedicated to service in the temple.

They were a separate cast of temple dancers and musicians. And it was passed from generation to generation within that community. And their whole service was to the temple, and the temple supported them and their dependents.

The temples at that time owned vast amounts of agricultural land, and jewels, and people donated money to them. The king give money to them, and the temples were very, very wealthy. They had, maybe 400 years ago, hundreds of dancers on the payroll.

What is the deity on the alter, and why do you have the alter here with the dancers?

See, the deity is Shiva, and he"s known also as nataraja, which means the lord of dance. And all the elements of the figure, and all details in Indian art, are symbolic of something. Each thing-- the hand that blesses, the hand that comes, the hand that says come, and trods on ignorance, and certain parts of him represent throwing away all earthly attachments and becoming a mendicant.

So, Shiva symbolizes many things. And because he is lord of the dance, it"s said that he created rhythm, he invented dance. Through his dance he created the universe.

There"s a vocabulary of at least 50 different codified hand gestures, they"re called mudras. And there"s at least nine, actually, basic facial expressions called neva-- neva means nine, and rasa means feeling or expression.

The very first of the codified hand gestures in mudras is called patakas. And you have a whole list--

So it"s--

It"s just a flat hand pressed back, and you have a whole list of what you can do with the mudra patakas to tell a story. The first four of them are [? nateumbe, ?] the stance of dance. [? Vade ?] [? vahe, ?] clouds. [? Vene ?], a forest. [INAUDIBLE], to say no. Some of the basic facial expressions are anger-- I can"t--

Bad time for anger.

Disgust. [? Shringata ?], love. Also, you can combine hand gestures and facial expressions to tell stories.

What instrument is that? It looks like a flute. What is it called.

Bamboo flute.

Uh-huh. So you have two of them.

Yeah. This is a bass flute. This is normal thing.

1. And what is the name in Tamil?

Tamil? [TAMIL]

[TAMIL]. And can you play us a scale on that?

Oh sure.

I understand that a dancer in the bharatanatyam tradition, after going to an apprenticeship, has kind of a coming out ceremony, has a special dance that she does. Can you tell us about that?

Yes. It"s called [INAUDIBLE]. That"s the first solo performance the students do after their intern training, like how many years you do. Like I did it in Kalashetra Institution where I studied. I did my [INAUDIBLE] after four years.

I wanted to ask you how can you tell if a dancer is truly proficient? What are some of the hallmarks?

For us, like the kalashetra style, it"s like we look for the [INAUDIBLE], the perfection of movements, and sitting postures, and expressions in their face, things like that. So their musical knowledge and rhythm-- all that.

What is scale-- I mean we have certain major and minor and harmonic minor, et cetera, scales. But I think that the scales in Indian classical music are different. So, if I"m correct, could you play a scale on the violin for us?

Definitely. Actually, I just play like minor scale, and like in Western style, and after it in what I was studying in [INAUDIBLE] style, both styles.

OK, great.

This is just like Western style. So now I"m going to play Indian style, South Indian style.

I think we should present our non-musician, which you heard with the flute, which is the drone. And you can, of course, have a human being playing an instrument that does this, but you don"t have to. And so, you can have this very nice machine. And the drone does what? Does it give the beat? Does it give a pitch?

No, no. It gives the pitch. The drone gives the pitch. This is the basic instrument for every Indian music.

Vocal musician leads the show because we follow the music with words. So that we have different languages in India, for example, Hindi. When you go to North India, we go for Hindi. When you go to India"s Southern parts, we have Kerala, they"ll be speaking Malayalam. You go to Teluguram. Likewise, we have so many languages in India.

So, we start with words, so one more advantage with that is the people can understand the music, what we are singing. But generally, vocallists in a concert take the lead role, mostly. Supposing if you want to perform, for five minutes, I just can sing a song.

The same song, if you wanted to do it for half an hour, I can improvise it by singing a ragam. The ragam will be followed by the violinists and flutists. And then I"ll sing the song, the percussionist will follow me, and he will play an individual role. So it"s like spreading of music. So, all ragams, all rhythms, can be improvised for how much time you want. That"s the specialty of South Indian classical music.

Kalanjali brings these musicians over from India once a year.

The [INAUDIBLE] they are performing, like jazz, allows each musician a chance to improvise a solo.

The music, just like the dancers, follows the structure set out in the ancient text, the Natya Shastra. Most practical Indian performance is based on the Natya Shastra, including [INAUDIBLE], [? Orissi, ?] and [INAUDIBLE], and, of course, [INAUDIBLE].

The Natya Shastra not only dictates the dance moves in musical patterns, but also the performance dress, the preferred human audience, that is, in addition to the deities, and other details.

[INAUDIBLE] that you just did, you were the lead.

Yes, I took the lead.

And they have to follow you.

Yes, they accompanied me.

You give the rhythm. You give the-- And I believe that classical Indian music is made up of ragas and talas.

Exactly.

And ragas are the melodic segments, and talas are the rhythmic. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Aren"t there lots and lots of ragas, and lots and lots of talas?

Two ways. When you go to South India, we have, up to now, more than 5,000 ragas.

More than 5,000 ragas.

Yeah. In existence.

And you have to learn all of those to be an actual musician?

No, no, no. You can"t do that. You can"t do that. If you can master 100 ragas in your lifetime, that"s more than enough for you. That"s the maximum you can learn.

But we have 72 major ragas direct. We call them megatones. We segregate them into two-- 36 minor tones, and 36 megatones. Those are called 72 ragas.

From that 72 ragas, in one way we call them mother ragas also. So from them, we [INAUDIBLE] so many ragas, up to, what I said, 5,000 ragas [INAUDIBLE].

But when you go to the Northern side of India, they have called the [INAUDIBLE] of the way of singing. They call it-- the maximum scales, when you take them, there are 30 or 35 scales of them. The lengthier [? of ragam ?] singing in [INAUDIBLE] scale is more than what South Indian scales are doing today.

For you, yourself, how did you learn singing? How long did it take you? Do you come from a family of musicians?

Yeah. My mother was a good singer. She still sings, actually. In my house, a lot of people to sing. But I started learning at the very early age of seven, because singing is-- but you, yourself, it"s hard to get the talent. And the inclination to learn is much more important, you know?

So, at the very beginning of seven, I was not so very interested in learning. But by 14, I told my parents I started learning. But when I became 12 or 13, I just made an interest in learning that. But I"ve been learning for nearly 20 years or so. But it"s music-- what we say is [INAUDIBLE]. How long is very-- you have to learn so many things. Even now I"m learning, learning, learning--

--today.

For our last performance, a group of dancers will do a folk dance from Orissa, which is a state on the Eastern Coast of India.

Katherine Kunhiraman provided some interesting background information about this folk dance.

All the States of India have different languages and different cultures, different costumes, different textiles. And when we were learning in [INAUDIBLE], it"s very important to the institution and the directors that India be viewed as a whole by all of us.

We"ve said all Indians are our brothers and sisters, and so we wanted to share each other"s culture from state to state. And so, some students from Orissa taught Orissa folk dances to us. We chose that one to do today because we"d just done it in the [INAUDIBLE] dance festival, and it was ready and everybody was keen and rehearsed.