Views on Voice

Vocal Music holds a special importance among all the three musical performing arts (Vocal, Instrumental and Dance).

Going into the depth of this subject, one would realize that in vocal music, the human throat is referred to as "gatra-veena", meaning the singing Veena or an instrument which sings.

When I started to relate our throat with the musical qualities of four types of musical instruments (Wind,
String, Bow, and  Percussion), I realized that our throat i.e the "gatra-veena" can uniquely produce aural qualities of the all these instruments. Rendering a sustained "swara" is nothing but the quality of a wind instrument where we are controlling the air flow.

"Ghaseet" for a group of "swaras" is something which is done in Bow instruments. The "gatra-veena" can also produce the effect of the "tat" and which is a characteristic of string instruments.

Pronunciation of different linguistic alphabets and vowels during a musical rendition is related to "aghaat", the method used by percussion instruments to produce sound. Even "meendh" is something which is done regularly in all the musical instruments.

The best part about our "gatra-veena" is that it can produce almost all the aural qualities of all the musical instruments we discussed here. But again, this requires a very careful approach and much understanding so that these qualities enhance our music and don't end up just as aural gimmicks.

My approach is, therefore, to gracefully blend the aural qualities of instruments in our vocal music to add another dimension to our music taking it to the next level.