Music and Me

Neeraval & Thanam

Neeraval is another  kind of improvisation in carnatic music. Here, the singer sings one line of the song repeatedly with different notes…of course maintaining the raagam, the rhythm…

 Thanam is usually sung as part of the central ‘ragam-tanam-pallavi’ piece. Thanam has no thalam as such but has a distinct rhythm. The music is usually in the medium tempo. The singer can introduce complicated rhythmic patterns in counts of  3, 4, 5, 7 and  9 while singing thanam. Syllables such as tanamta, anamdamta, nomtomta and namta are often used. As these syllables are sounded, Anandam (bliss) is said to reverberate in the listener’s ears.

 I missed these improvisation aspects in my previous post….

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