Chande

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Chande with a body made of soft coconut palm wood. Small round rod for the left mallet

Chande ( kannada ಚಂಡೆ) also chende , denotes a cylindrical double- skin drum that is played in some regions in southern Indian folk music and at Hindu temple festivals. The chande , together with the barrel drum maddale, accompanies the dance drama Yakshagana in Karnataka , while the closely related chenda , ( malayalam , also cenda ) and the hourglass drum idakka are beaten at temple festivals in Kerala . The loudest-sounding beats in the Yakshagana percussion orchestra come from the chande and symbolically illustrate bravery and heroism.

Design and style of play

The one-piece body ( kalasige ) of a chande is made from the trunk section of a coconut palm , the umbrella acacia species Albizia amara (kannada: bilkambi ) or gerber acacia ( Acacia catechu, kannada: khadira ), Calophyllum inophyllum ( honne ) or a tubular cassia ( kakke ) pried out. The length of the cylinder is between 48 and 63 centimeters, the diameter on both sides 18 centimeters with a wall thickness of almost 1.5 centimeters. The membranes are stretched over iron rings 30 centimeters in diameter, the upper membrane ( mucchige ) consists of thin calf skin, the lower ( adimucchige ) of thick buffalo skin. The diameter of the scraped and sun-dried animal hides should be about 10 centimeters larger than the rings. After the skins have been lying in the water for four hours and have become soft, they are pulled wet over the iron rings and sewn in a circle with the folded end in two passes. The skins tighten as they dry. Twelve holes ( tutu ) are drilled into the skins at regular intervals between the seam and the ring. Now the two finished eardrums are placed over the openings and braced against each other in a V-shape with a thick cotton cord ( hagga ) pulled through the holes . As with the idakka , they are not firmly connected to the body and only hold their position thanks to the removable lacing.

Only the upper skin is beaten, the lower one provides the necessary counter-pull and serves as a resonance amplifier. To increase the skin tension, rings ( baru ) made of leather or iron are moved laterally between two cords . If this is not enough to stretch a certain pair of cords, this can be untwisted once or twice with a piece of wood inserted in between. The drum is tuned to the basic tone ( tonic ) of the singer. If accompanied by a harmonium , this determines the pitch.

The player ( chandegara ) uses two sticks ( kolu ) that are thickened towards the outside and are 30 centimeters long made of solid wood. In close interaction with the barrel drum maddale , which is beaten on both sides , he produces the tone “ddim” with the left hand and the tone “ttom” with the right hand. The two mallets are gripped differently. The right hand holds the end of the rod between the thumb and forefinger with the palm facing down, which allows long, strong blows. The left mallet is held with the tips of the thumb, index finger and middle finger so that more fine blows and whirls can be performed. For this purpose, a round rod about ten centimeters long is tied to a point on the edge of the membrane in order to act as a hinge point to cushion rapid hits with the left hand. Depending on the region, elastic rattan mallets with a heavy head, a thin long rod and a thicker handle end are also used. A fabric covering sometimes wrapped around the entire body only has a decorative function.

If the drum is played while standing, it hangs on a strap over the left shoulder vertically with the membrane at hip height so that it can be played with sticks in both free hands. The musician sits on a chair on the stage and fixes the drum on the floor with his knees. With his feet half pushed underneath, he brings the chenda into a slightly forward-tilted position, which allows the lower membrane to swing freely.

Origin and Distribution

The only difference between the chenda and the chande is that it has a differently shaped and attached tension ring and its regionally and musically different area of ​​application. At the temple festivals in Kerala, the chenda is one of the five musical instruments in a Panchavadyam performance.

Of the multitude of Indian drum types, the hourglass-shaped drums like the idakka enjoy a special religious veneration because they are associated with one of Shiva's attributes , the damaru . Cylinder drums with a wooden body are historically older than hourglass drums and go back to Vedic times. They were made in the 1st millennium BC. Called dundubhi in the scriptures , although it cannot be ruled out that this was a collective term for other drum types as well. Because of their far-reaching volume, they were mainly used as war drums. An early illustration of a cylinder drum can be found on a Buddhist relief on the stupa of Bharhut from the 2nd / 1st. Century BC Chr. One of several monkeys has a cylinder drum hung on a belt and hits it with a big mallet.

More common than straight cylinder drums are slightly bulbous barrel drums, the best-known representatives of which are the pakhawaj in North Indian classical music and the dhol in North Indian folk music . The maddale , which is used together with the chande in the yakshagana orchestra, has a similar structure to the pakhawaj .

Chande in the Yakshagana dance theater

Children learn by imitation. Some boys in yakshagana groups are members of the performers, others left school around the age of ten and come to events as stage assistants or travel around with the dance groups

The Yakshagana Theater is held outdoors and lasts all night. From the earlier religious ritual in honor of Vishnu , which is derived in particular from the heavenly musicians, the yakshas , and Sanskrit gana ("music"), a folk theater developed whose sequence is strictly ritualized and whose form is aesthetically designed.

Music is an integral part of the sequence of scenes offered by brightly colored make-up and costumed actors. The most important task is assigned to the singer and director of the performance, the bhagavata . After the indispensable invocation ceremony for Ganesha, he leads the performers onto the open-air stage marked with four posts, where the musicians take their places in front of the rear curtain and behind a low curtain ( tere ). The orchestra consists of the maddalegara (the maddale player), the chandegara ( chande player) and the srutigara . The latter plays a musical instrument that produces a drone that corresponds to the basic tone ( tonic , shruti in India ) of the singer. The usual shruti instrument is the pungi, otherwise known from snake charmers, with only one playing tube, which in recent times has mostly been replaced by the Indian harmonium or a shruti box. The bhagavata accentuates the beats with a talavadya ( clock-setting instrument). During the dance interludes ( nritta ), the performers orient their footwork to the given rhythm.

The traditional costume for the orchestra leader and the two drum players consisted of a red wrapped turban. a white shirt and baggy white trousers. In 1918, a singer introduced a red-striped turban, long-sleeved white shirt, and white dhoti . The gentlemen were adorned with gold necklaces, earrings ( galivanti ) and bangles on their wrists. The chandegara was the only one on the right side of the stage. The stage equipment included a table that consisted of four boards with four wheels and was called a ratha . The performers took their places on it during breaks and occasionally the bhagavata and the maddalegara. Today the dance groups also perform on concert stages, the chandegara sits at the side separated from the other musicians or they sit at the back of the stage.

There are two regional styles of performance, the differences between which also affect the accompanying orchestra. In the “northern style” ( badagatittu ) the bhagavata uses small cymbals ( tala ), in the “southern style” ( tenkutittu ) a brass gong instead . The rhythmic structures ( talas ) that are played have names that are partly known from classical music, but denote other structures here. Yakshagana music knows seven, according to other sources, more Yakshagana-talas (kannada ಯಕ್ಷಗಾನ ತಾಳ), including: adi (16 beats = matra ), rupaka (7 beats), jampe (5 beats), trivude (7 beats), eka ( 4 strokes) and kore (3 ½ strokes). The spoken syllables for the basic rhythms are called badtige (comparable to the bols in North Indian classical music).

One of the roots of Yakshagana is the Nagamandala , where the leading musician and singer holds the hourglass drum dakke in his hand and several companions play chande and cymbals.

literature

  • Richard Emmert et al. a. (Ed.): Dance and Music in South Asian Drama. Chhau, Mahākāli pyākhan and Yakshagāna. Report of Asian Traditional Performing Arts 1981. Academia Music Ltd., Tokyo 1983, pp. 192f, 260-263

Web links

Commons : Chande  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hiriyadka Gopala Rao: Rhythm and Drums in Badagatittu Yakshagāna Dance-Drama. In: Emmert, p. 192f
  2. ↑ Richard Emmert et al. a .: Description of Musical Instruments. In: Emmert, p. 261
  3. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume II. Ancient Music. Delivery 8. Ed. Werner Bachmann. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, pp. 32, 48
  4. ^ Rao, in: Emmert, p. 204
  5. ↑ Shivarama Karanth, in: Emmert, p. 32