Gottuvadyam

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Chitravina N. Ravikiran with a navachitravina , a self-developed variant of the gottuvadyam with an electric pickup, but without a second resonator and with a flatter body. Rudolstadt Festival 2017

Gottuvadyam ( Tamil Tamil கோடடு வாத்தியம் gōṭṭu vādyam ), also chitravina, mahanataka vina , is a South Indian long-necked lute with 21 strings and a separate sound box attached to the neck , played in a horizontal position . It belongs to the group of vinas and is the only stringed instrument in South India that, like the North Indian sitar, has drone strings in addition to the melody strings . Its fretless strings are shortened with a sliding stick in the hand , just like on the Hawaiian guitar .

origin

The first literary evidence of string instruments called vina is from the Vedic period before the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Chr. Handed down. According to the description of an instrument with seven strings, a body covered with animal skin and a neck in the Brahmanas (around 800–500 BC), vinas were bow harps at that time . In the course of the 1st millennium AD, staff zither appeared in images, while at the same time bow harps gradually disappeared in India. In the music-theoretical work Natyashastra , the nine-string vipanci-vina bow harp played with a pick is distinguished from the seven-string citra-vina ( chitravina ) plucked with the fingers .

Simple zithers consist of a straight rod over which a string is stretched and an attached calabash that serves as a resonator like a musical bow . The single-stringed stick zither tuila , played in Odisha in Indian folk music, has such a resonance body attached to a stick and its shape corresponds to the Vedic alapina vina , and thus differs from the single-stringed spit lute of the ektara type that is more widespread today .

The eka tantri ( ekatantrika ) should not be confused with the ektara , although both names can be translated as “one string”. The eka tantri , mentioned since the 11th century, seems to have enjoyed a high level of esteem, as it was nicknamed Brahma vina and was associated with the Hindu goddess of music and the arts, Sarasvati . The seated player held the eka tantri in front of him at an angle to his chest like a rudra vina and plucked the string with one hand, while with the other hand he held a bamboo tube ( kamrika ) which he moved over the string. This sliding technique is possibly much older and can already be recognized by a wall relief in cave temple No. 21 in Ellora from the 6th century. The eka tantri had two special features in terms of sound design: The string ran over a piece of bamboo on the bridge , which made the sound a bit more noisy and richer in overtones. The tonal effect of such a bridge widening ( jivari ) can be heard today especially with the tanpura . The bamboo tube was also the model for the sliding stick that is used today at the gottuvadyam and its north Indian counterpart, the vichitra vina .

Except for the eka tantri , the gottuvadyam is probably related to the sirbin from the 16th century. The poem Sringara Savitri , written in Telugu by King Raghunatha Nayak , who ruled Thanjavur from 1614 to 1635 , mentions a goti vadyam for the first time . The Tamil word gotu is of kodu derived "rod" in Tamil and Malayalam is kottu "beat", which is particularly related to the beating of the drum. Vadyam generally means "musical instrument". Gottuvadyam is therefore the musical instrument played with a sliding stick ( bar on the Hawaiian guitar, bottleneck on the guitar ). Gottuvadyam and vichitra vina are relatively modern instruments that did not take shape until the 19th or early 20th century.

The gottuvadyam should not be confused with the rare gettuvadyam (also getchu vadyam ). This simpler long-necked lute is smaller and has two double-choir wire strings that are struck rhythmically with two sticks. At least staccato-like tone sequences can be produced with this. Historically older are idiochorde bamboo tubular zithers with one or a few strings separated from the bamboo epidermis , which are mainly struck with sticks as rhythm instruments. In India, these include the chigring and the gintang in the far northeast as well as the ronzagontam in Andhra Pradesh and others in Oriya .

Design

Saraswati vina

The gottuvadyam corresponds in its design to the more well-known South Indian Saraswati vina . The sound box ( kudam, koda ) and neck ( dandi ) usually consist of several glued pieces of wood from the jackfruit tree , rarer and more expensive are the instruments hollowed out of a piece of wood, called ekanda gottuvadyam or ekadandi gottuvadyam , if only the downward curved head is made of another wood is set. The neck is hollow with a diameter of ten centimeters and about a meter total length. The slightly arched ceiling is glued on. Five, rarely six, melody strings run over the fretless bridge, plus three high-pitched drone strings for rhythmic accompaniment and a further 11–14 sympathetic strings ( tarab ) under the melody strings, which end at small pegs on the side of the neck. The melody strings, two of which are tuned in pairs at octave intervals, lead to large wooden pegs on a pegbox bent downwards. The gottuvadyam is the only South Indian string instrument with sympathetic strings. The second resonance body ( svarakai ) is a large calabash attached to the underside of the neck near the pegbox so that - together with the lute body - the gottuvadyam can lie horizontally on the floor. It is plucked with two or three picks on the fingers of the right hand. The stick used to shorten the strings with the left hand ( gottu, kodu or batta ) is made of hardwood, stone, ivory or water buffalo horn. The latter is now being replaced by a better sliding Teflon rod.

The musician Srinivasa Rao and his son Sakharama Rao (1881–1930) from Thanjavur are credited with introducing the gottuvadyam under this name in southern India. Sakharama Rao constructed a vina modified from the tanpura with four melody and three rhythm strings that did not yet have sympathetic strings. His student Narayana Iyengar (1903-1959) added three more melody strings and twelve sympathetic strings in a layer below. He changed the tuning by introducing the octave spacing of the first two melody strings tuned to the fundamental ( Sa ) and tuning the next two strings a fifth higher (pitch Pa ) also at octave spacing. He placed a jivari under the twelve sympathetic strings on the bridge in order to bring the sound closer to the tanpura and to make it richer. The instrument developed by Iyengar with a total of 22 strings is practically standard today, only one melody string is omitted, so that gottuvadyams usually have 21 strings.

In 2001 the musician N. Ravikiran developed an instrument named navachitravina with an electromagnetic pickup and 20 strings, which consists of a flat body with a neck and does not require an additional resonance body. It produces a clearer tone in the higher registers and is said to be more suitable for jugal bandis (concerts with two or more melody instruments).

Style of play

Left to right: Guruvayur Dorai: mridangam , Ravi Balasubramanian: ghatam , N. Ravikiran: navachitravina and Akkarai S. Subhalakshmi: violin. Concert in Washington, 2007

The musician sits cross- legged with the gottuvadyam across in front of him on the floor. The missing frets and the stick sliding technique make the instrument difficult to play because even the slightest change in pressure of the stick on the strings affects the pitch. Fast tone sequences are hardly playable, the characteristic sound of the gottuvadyam is created by elongated, vibrating glissandi with slow melody lines. The north Indian vichitra vina and the mohan vina , an Indian guitar so called by Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and modified by adding sympathetic strings, are also played with a sliding stick .

The gottuvadyam is used in South India like the Saraswati vina in classical music for raga compositions. Narayana Iyengar's son, Narasimhan, continued the tradition and spread it to southern India. The most famous gottuvadyam player today is his son N. Ravikiran (* 1967). He claims a line of tradition for his instrument that goes back to Vedic times and accordingly names it chitravina . A cousin of his is the gottuvadyam player and singer P. Ganesh. Other well-known names in South India are Duraiyappa Bhagvatar (from Thanjavur), Budalur Krishnamurthy Shastrigal (1894–1978 / 79, who also emerged as a singer), Mannargudi Savithri Ammal (the first known gottuvadyam player), A. Narayana Iyer, MV Varahaswami , Gayatri Kassabaum, Madhavachar and Allam Koteswara Rao (* 1933).

literature

  • Keyword: Gōṭṭu Vādyam. In: Late Pandit Nikhil Ghosh (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Music of India. Saṅgīt Mahābhāratī. Vol. 1 (A – G) Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2011, p. 379
  • Alastair Dick, Gordon Geekie, Richard Widdess: Vinā . In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2. Macmillan Press, London 1984, pp. 728-735, here p. 734
  • P. Sambamurthy: A Dictionary of South Indian Music and Musicians. Vol. 2 (G-K), The Indian Music Publishing House, Madras 1984, pp. 201-204

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume II. Ancient Music. Delivery 8. Ed. Werner Bachmann. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, p. 35
  2. ^ Mantle Hood: Musical Ornamentation as History: The Hawaiian Steel Guitar. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 15, East Asian Musics, International Council for Traditional Music, 1983, pp. 144f
  3. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments. National Book Trust, New Delhi 1977, pp. 88-90
  4. ↑ Alastair Dick, Gordon Geekie, Richard Widdess, p 734; The Oxford Encyclopaedia , p. 379
  5. ↑ David Courtney: Gethuvadyam or Gettuvadyam. chandrakantha.com
  6. ↑ Gettuvadyam. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2. Macmillan Press, London 1984, p. 38
  7. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments of India. Their History and Development. KLM Private Limited, Calcutta 1978, p. 149
  8. ^ The Oxford Encyclopaedia , p. 379
  9. ↑ Keyword: Vina. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Sachteil 9, 1998, col. 1539
  10. ^ N. Ravikiran: Chitravina Ganesh. Homepage
  11. ^ The Oxford Encyclopaedia , p. 379