The Music of Hindostan c6: Chapter I. A Musical Diary

The Music of Hindostan c6

Language: English

Chapter I. A Musical Diary

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THE following pages give an account of musical experiences during a tour through India extending over half a dozen months of 1910–11. The route, determined by other than musical reasons, lay through the Central Provinces, Madras, Bangalore, Mysore, Trichur (exhibition), Travancore, Tanjore, Calcutta, Allahabad (exhibition), Dehra Dun, Lahore, Jhelum, Bhavnagar, Poona. It is hoped that the reader will excuse the use of the first personal pronoun to distinguish a traveller's actual experience from information otherwise obtained.

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It must be understood that though many of these melodies were in queer scales, no attempt has been made, beyond an occasional superscript ♯, ♭, or ♮,¹ where the effect was characteristic, to represent niceties of intonation. Where such signs are not appended it does not necessarily mean that the songs were in the normal scale; perhaps the singers were finding their voice and the initial vagaries were not worth recording, or the tune only came once or twice—though generally it came a great many times—or perhaps I was not attending. It would have been good to have been able to note the exact pitch in each case; but the absence of the proper means made this, except in a few instances, impossible. A phonograph cannot be carried on the person or unlimbered and brought into action in half a minute, like a camera; there are also conditions, such as distance of the sound, or movement of the producer (e. g. in dancing) with attendant dust, which preclude its employment altogether. Secondly, as it is impossible for the European reader to reproduce the local colour which is imparted by curiosities of grace-note or of intonation, it is unnecessary to trouble him with them at this stage. And, lastly in attacking a new subject, as for Europeans, in spite of Captain Day’s excellent book, this must be called, it is better to treat intonation by itself (see Chapter IV). It is but little, in any case, of language, whether spoken or chanted, that symbols can recreate for us; and when, as here, the choice lies between symbols which falsify but are understood and symbols which tell the truth but are not readily intelligible, there is no doubt which must be adopted to convey a first general impression.

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¹ They mean in each case an alteration of less than a semitone, and they are in force, like ordinary accidentals, only till the end of the bar.

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The very simple melodies here recorded may seem to some too trivial to have been worth while. But if art is ‘doing common things in an uncommon way’, it seems clear that we must be familiar with the common things before we can appreciate the uncommon way of doing them. It is just for lack of this, of familiarity with such simple things as nursery rhymes and games, that we often fail to understand the poetry of a foreign country. It does not, however, occur to us that the same is true of music, because European music, which is all that most of us know, is cosmopolitan, and to understand a foreign composer it is seldom necessary to study the Folk-song of his country. He is using a familiar language, but doing unfamiliar things with it. But as soon as we leave Europe the language of music is not familiar to us, and our first object must be to learn it. We have to be humble, and begin with a ‘simple exercise’ book.

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One caution with regard to these tunes. It would be a mistake to play them on a keyed instrument: they should be played on the violin, or sung, or whistled, or merely thought. Not only because there is then a hope of their being rendered in natural intonation and of getting the sharp edges of the tones rounded by some sort of portamento, but also because the temperament of a keyed instrument, in Europe the piano, in India the harmonium, has a unique power of making an unharmonized melody sound invincibly commonplace.

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In all the melodies the tonic is C unless otherwise stated. It may be asked what decided in each case which note was the tonic. At the time of hearing the song there was seldom any doubt about it, and the doubtful cases are those for which no special note of the tonic was made at the time. What exactly decided the point at the time is a little difficult to particularize: it was something almost personal—just as when we read a book written by a man whom we actually know we get a better idea of his meaning than others would who do not know him. Tonality depends upon such things as the particular turn of phrase, the repetitions, the accompanying words, and these may, of course, be reproduced on paper. But it is, further, suggested in the extent to which particular notes are made essential or accidental, the exact amount of strength given to a leading note or to an appoggiatura, the emphasis in the accompanying percussion, minute retardations and anticipations, grace-notes at particular places, even the mere expression of face and hand—and most of these defy notation. The sum total of all these guides us, without our quite knowing how, to the general plan of the music, and thereby to its tonic. For a tonic is a tendency rather than a fact. All we could say of our own music is that in proportion as it exists for its own sake, and not for the sake of some other thing—words, or situation, or programme—it has a tendency to centre round some one note. Harmony can mark this note with exceptional precision; and we are apt therefore in looking for the tonic in an unharmonized melody to supply those harmonies mentally, and so to bring what we hope to find. In the Arab tunes, Nos. 52-4, for instance, it is impossible to say without having heard a good deal of Arabian music what they would regard as the tonic.

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Except in street cries and sailors' chanties—the former in order to make the voice carry and to secure prompt recognition, the latter to ensure precision of movement—we hardly know in Europe that melodic impulse which finds vent in the occupation songs¹ of the East. The contrast of the two worlds is epitomized for us even before we actually land at Bombay. The A.B. seaman jolts out in a gruff practical voice his

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¹ See Karl Bücher, *Arbeit und Rhythmus*, Teubner, Leipzig, 1909.

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Lights are bright and áll's wéll!

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and the Lascar follows with a smooth, dreamy

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Ex. 2. ♩= 80. Khūb dekh-ta hai (Good watch is kept)

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It is an allegory. On the one hand, the essentials in the fewest possible words, with stress and energy, in matter of fact tones; on the other, pitch substituted for stress, a generalization for a statement of fact, and through it all a suggestion that Time has no meaning as opposed to Eternity, with the implication that we are in Eternity all the time, though we are apt to forget it.

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Neither street cries nor chanties are common in India in the sense in which we understand them. The typical mode of selling wares is not to take them to the customer, but to let him come to them, sit down, and open an interminable bargain. A small amount of coolie labour requires concerted action it is true, and that sometimes necessitates rhythmical motion: but the typical method of work is individual—innumerable baskets, buckets, bamboo poles, contribute their quota, but severally; many shoulders lift the dhooly (palanquin) or many heads the grand piano, but the feet break step; many hundreds of hands man the ropes of the god's car, but the effort, at the instigation of voice or even whip of perambulating priests, is spasmodic.

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At any rate, I heard very few songs intended as rhythmical accompaniment to effort, and seem only to have recorded one. Six men were on a roof lifting a block of building stone. The foreman sang the solo.

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Ex. 3. Solo. Chorus. Ar ju - re ja-na-wa-ra jā Ar ju - re ja-na-wa-ra jā 1

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The pull was on the last note of the chorus.

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A common use of song is to give words of command to domesticated animals. At a well at Poona the water was drawn by a skin let down by two ropes. When the skin reached the water one rope was slacked and the mouth of the skin opened. The cattle marched slowly down an incline, pulling on the ropes, and, as soon as the contents of the skin had been emptied into the trough which carried the water out over a neighbouring field, backed again up the incline a little slower still. When the well-man started them down he sang and when, after a minute's interval he backed them up again, he sang

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¹ The spelling is phonetic.

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² When the superscript accidental is in brackets it means that the note was sung sometimes one way, sometimes the other.

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Ex. 4.

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Ex. 5.

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This process went on to my knowledge for three hours, and probably many more.

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In the neighbourhood of Madras the wells are worked by the *picotta*. A bamboo pole is balanced crosswise on another; at one end is a weight, at the other a bucket. A man stands at the junction of the poles and throws his weight against the full bucket. Here there is no rhythmic motion to emphasize, and there are no animals to direct; it is merely a question of half a dozen hours and hundreds of bucketfuls. I was unable in a short stay to find a man actually working and singing; so one was persuaded to come to me and sing, a very different thing. This was his melody. The C was slightly sharp; the intervals C–B and B–A seemed to be about equal.

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Ex. 6.

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Get up on the picotta, Pillaiyar¹ made of cow dung, Pillaiyar made of mud. I offer rice, cocoanut, cake, wheat, grain. (counts buckets) . . 9, 10, 11 . . Have I come here, O maiden, only to sleep? The fields all wet are ready to receive seedlings. Get bullocks ready to plough, Reddish brown, with white horns, The central bullock black, with white horns. Harness four together, Drive them over the wet fields; After the ground is prepared The seedlings will grow on the bank of the lake. (counts) . . 27, 28 . . The river is dammed, There are vegetables in the gardens And mangoes on the trees;

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¹ Pillaiyar = Ganesh, the belly god.

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I mix these with wheat and curd. I have a long distance to go, But I am happy with you here my dear. Where is your husband ? (counts) . . 63, 64 . . He is not to be found here. He married me and went on board ship. If I am a chaste woman, The ship will return with my husband. (counts) . . 101, 102 . . My beloved had sore eyes, He was jealous and avaricious, (counts) . . 116, 117, &c., &c.

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Melodies like these are appropriate to particular occupations, and new words are fitted to them from time to time. For the traditional occupations a new tune is seldom invented. The tune for each occupation has a special name. In Behār, every mill-song is a *jātsār*, every cowherd’s song a *chāchar*, and so on.¹

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¹ See an article by G. A. Grierson in the *J. R. A. S.*, vol. xviii, p. 210.

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But one comes across tunes in the making from beggars, fakirs, reciters. Some boy acrobats at Bombay gradually formed their petitions into

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Ex. 7.

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We have played and sung to you; let our words be heard.

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On tour with an Indian civilian we inspected a village school. After the boys had gone through their gymnastics, the ‘monkey-leap’, the ‘crocodile crawl’, and the like, we received the pungent and in my case vicarious tribute of marigold wreaths, and the schoolmaster recited a Sanskrit poem of his own composition in honour of the presiding dignitary. Beginning with a mere rise and fall of the voice it settled gradually into a set melody.

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Tonic G. ? Ex. 8.

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Fakirs at the annual fair at Allahabad, the junction of the two rivers, evolved:

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Ex. 9. d=60. Solo. Gan-gā Ja-mu-nā ti-ra-ṭhe ka-ra-le Rām-ghāta ās-an-ān Ha-ri Chorus. Rā-ma mi-la Rām-ghāta ās-an-ān Ha-ri Rā-ma mi-la.

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To the Ganges and Jumna pilgrimage make; at the Rāmghat bathing the name of the god Rāma you have got (i.e. if you bathe you will get).

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A beggar woman one hundred yards off had a variant of this:

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Ex. 10.

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A little further on some boy beggars sang:

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Ex. 11.

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This turned out however to be, apparently, a rendering of a song which was being sung at the time by a celebrated singer at the exhibition, of which two versions were:

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(1) d=56.

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Ex. 12.

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(2) d=150.

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and further developments:

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(3) d.=48.

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so that it does not do to be too sure that every beggar is a composer also.

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¹ The italicized *a*’s are inorganic; they are freely inserted for vocalization.

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Half a mile away two beggar girls were singing words of which I only made out Sārīnā, at the beginning and end:

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Ex. 13. d=100. Sā - rī - nā . . . Sā - rī - nā . Sā - rī - nā

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Two coolies at Mussouri, driving ponies up the hill with loads, answered each other with

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Ex. 14. d=90.

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Ex. 15. d=80.

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There is a slight resemblance in these, as regards melodic figure, to a tune sung by some boys coming home from their work across the Maidān at Calcutta—though that was rather a song from lack of occupation:

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Ex. 16. d=75.

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At Bangalore men and women were pulling a roller over a new made road. The voices were rough; the solo enthusiastic but of poor tone, and the chorus consequently took some time to settle down to the tune. Several of the men punctuated the first of the songs with boos and poohs to represent the drum at the places marked *; they were started by the man who scraped the mud off the roller. (Alternate four and six-bar sections.)

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Ex. 17. d=60. Solo. * * * * * &c.

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Chorus.

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Ex. 18.

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Women.

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Men.

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Chorus.

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Solo. (b) (b) Chorus.

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Ex. 19.

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&c.

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The words of No. 19 were:

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Draupadī, wife of the Pāndava king, disguised herself as a beggar to get paddy seed for her race to plant in the wilderness. She was afraid of her enemies and cousins, the Kauravas. If she was caught her race would have to spend another twelve years in the wilderness. If gods fare so, what shall we poor mortals do?

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The next day, after much searching and delay, I found a woman who was famous for her songs at rāgi-grinding. She sat with a friend on the ground before a large mortar, and each stirred with her pestle sometimes in time with the song, sometimes not.¹

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¹ See illustration, p. 62.

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Ex. 20.

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(Tamil.) Think of Rāma. Do not waste time. It is short. Always sing of Rāma.

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Ex. 21.

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About Krishna. He used to plague the girls. They complained to his mother. His mother told him to be better behaved.

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Ex. 22.

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Sin not; or you will go to hell (Naraka).

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Ex. 23.

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(Sanskrit.) Rāma is the only true God whom every one thinks of.

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Ex. 24.

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(Canarese.) We have several avatārs. This is a world of pain, there is no happiness here. Therefore do meritorious deeds.

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Ex. 25.

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A Rajah’s son sees a beauty in the street and offers her a lakh of rupees.

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Ex. 26.

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About a wicked Brahman who married a Pariah girl.

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With the last dozen songs or so we have begun to cross the rather shadowy line which divides Occupation Songs from ordinary Folk-song.

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It was not till I had been some months in India that I found the opportunity I had been waiting for of overhearing a folk-melody. I awoke at Madras, about 5.30 a.m., to the sound of singing; it was next door, and seemed to come from a woman about her household duties. In the dim light I scribbled down the following:

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EX. 27.

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Most of the phrases were repeated many times, as many as ten; a few only once or twice. The variations were introduced piecemeal; both sections were seldom varied at the same time, though they are shown so here for brevity. The flattening of the D appeared to take place only when there was no mordent, and not always then. I don't know how long she had been going on; what is given took about half an hour to sing.

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This humble melody, improvised without shyness on the one hand or any idea of showing off on the other, may serve as an introduction to the tribal songs which follow. It shows the way in which they were varied and expanded, or would have been if there had been time; and the bare themes which are set down in the following pages must be imagined as having been so treated. The rapid succession of variations made it often difficult to note the tune at all, especially as regards that very elusive point, rhythm. The earlier melodies may, like eldest sons, be to some extent experiments; but nothing has been given that I did not satisfy myself was substantially correct. The question of quarter-tones will be dealt with later; any conclusions that may be drawn from these examples as to the general structure of folk-melody will not be vitiated by assuming them all to have been as they are written, and as in fact many of them appeared to be sung, in the (untempered) tones and semitones of the European just scale.

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From Nāgpur, where my tour began, I went to Wārsa, a few hours distant by train, where a party of Mārĭă Gōnds were to march in from Moholi, a couple of dozen miles away. Owing to some misunderstanding they failed to appear that day at all, and arrived only at nine the next morning at the station, our train, the only one in the day, being due at ten.¹ We found there a crowd of twenty-two under Rainu Patel of Chingli (east of Moholi), a man of fifty, with a striking face full of humour and character, the flat nose and thick lips of the Gond, and a thick-set figure on bow legs. He marshalled his pupils and divided them for singing into two parties of ten and twelve. These songs, being the first of the kind I had heard, could not be noted with any accuracy. The words of three of them were:

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¹ I mention this not to reproach them or the Malguzar (village headman) who organized the meeting and no doubt did his best, but to show by a typical instance the sort of difficulties, over and above the mistakes one made oneself, which have rendered these records necessarily imperfect.

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1. The bird is crying. Why is the bird crying? It is crying with grief for its mate. Nowhere can she find her mate. The friend is in grief for the friend. She does not find the friend here. In this country he is not found. She must go to the lower country and seek him. If she will go far then she will find him.

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2. Quickly, sister, make the *pej* (gruel). For twenty or thirty years you have not asked me to make the *pej*: why do you ask me now? Where are you going? I am taking the black bullock to the *bazar*. If you go I will go too. No, you must not go. If you go they will say ‘See, the brother and sister go together’. It is like a man and wife going together, and that will be a scandal. No, you must not come.

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3. The clouds look like rain. There are big drops falling. Rain has fallen in the upper country; the *nalas* are full. Everywhere there is rain. *Dhīmār* (boatman), bring quickly your boat. What pay will you give me? I will give you the bracelet on my arm. I am not married; what use is a bracelet to me? I have no money in my hand. I will go with (i. e. marry) you. Launch your boat.

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They next arranged themselves in a close packed circle for dancing, with Rainu sometimes in the middle, sometimes prowling round outside and exhorting individuals. In the second dance they linked hands behind each others backs; in the third they broke from their circular into a serpentine movement, and looked like a section of a giant centipede crawling about. Most of the dancing consisted, here as elsewhere, merely in revolving slowly ‘widdershins’ with a shuffling gait, bending their bodies towards the centre and clapping their hands in rhythm. The interesting point in the dancing was the treatment of the blank beat (khāli). Thus, putting R for right foot, L for left, F for forwards, and B for backwards, the ordinary rhythms were danced thus:

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*Three time* 1 2 (3), 1 2 (3), R F L F R B, L F R F L B

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*Four time* 1 2 (3) 4, 1 2 (3) 4, R F L F R B L F, R F L F R B L F

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*Five time* 1 2 (3) 4 (5), 1 2 (3) 4 (5), R F L F R B L F R B, L F R F L B R F L B

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And similarly with *Six time* 1 (2) 3 (4) 5 6 (our 3/4, not 6/8) *Seven time* 1 2 (3) 4 (5) 6 (7)

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Another dance of which I was too busy noting the tune to watch the feet was in slow tripleted seven rhythm.

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Ex. 28.

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It was full of grace notes of course, but as most of the performers chose their own graces, and their own moments to apply them, it was impossible to distinguish more than two which enjoyed a consensus of opinion.

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Then followed an interval for putting rice on their dhols. These are barrel-shaped drums with terminal diameters of seven and eight inches respectively. Boiled rice mixed with wood-ash was applied to the larger end,¹ thereby giving more resonance to the tone and lowering the pitch by anything up to an octave. They did not tune the dhols to the same note by tightening the braces, nor did they aim at any definite interval between the two ends of the dhol, by the application of the rice. They brought no wind or strings; they would have played the bamboo flute, but ‘would have had to make one’, and there was no time.

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¹ The lump so affixed is generally made of flour (ātā), and goes by that name. Iron filings are added when obtainable, for greater resonance.

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They then formed in a large circle, each with his drum slung, with two peacock feathers rising straight up from his *pagrī*, and a bunch that looked like grass with beans or pods at the end hanging down behind. Between man and man was a distance of two feet, which each kept accurate by touching his right-hand neighbour during the silent beats of the rhythm, beating in fact the silent beat on him. Rainu now danced amongst his men, shouting directions every now and then. He was distinguished not only by his absence of ornament, but by his abundant good humour and zest. The dance began with a wild prolonged shriek; this was followed by a steady monotonous beat on the drums as they walked round, apparently to settle themselves at their proper distances. Next they adopted a stealthy crouching step, all eyeing the centre, to a four-rhythm. The next dance, in three-rhythm, six beats, with the fifth and later on the sixth also omitted, or rather supplied only on a single drum, showed a limping gait. These were wedding dances, and without singing: the only sound beyond the pattering and shuffling of feet in the deep sand being an occasional whoop after the manner of Scotch reels. Then there was a funeral dance: nine men facing another row of nine and advancing as they retreated, and vice versa, with linked arms. This should have been at night; and they protested that it was ‘a foolish dance’ in the garishness of day. They chanted, without drums.

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At Raipur a Gond played the bamboo flute (*bānsrī*), an instrument with the tone of the clarinet, and blown at the end but without reed: it had six holes covered by the left finger tips and right knuckle joints. A characteristic of these tunes was the very long crescendoed tonic. Assuming the C to be in tune the higher notes were all a little flat, the F most so, and the lower one a little sharp; the C itself sharpened a good deal under the overblowing of the crescendo.

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Phonogram. *Allegro.*

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Ex. 29.

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Gonds and Kanwars. Slow dance, with anklets.

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Malayan women dancing.

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Maria Gonds. Circular dance; central figure, Rainu.

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Malyas dancing.

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A Kanwar also played the *singāra*, a sort of attenuated kit. It had two strings which the player tuned to C and F♯, and then began to play. I asked if they were right, and he altered them with a smile to C and G and said they were right now. The G was used as drone, so that the tune was below it; each section closed on two G’s. They had also a slow dance with bells fastened below the knee like morris-dancers. (See illustration, preceding page.)

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At Trichur (west coast) there was an exhibition of local industries, and tribal musicians had been brought in. The *Malyas*, from the spurs of the neighbouring hills, sang:

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‘A handsome girl makes her appearance with joy.’

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and two of them alternately:

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‘A handsome maiden became a mother and had a son. She had a dream’—but it appeared to pass the wit of my interpreter to say what manner of dream it was.

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In this there was one short passage in fourths which however only occurred once, and was gone before I could note it. It is impossible of course to get any particular passage repeated unless you know and can ask for the words of it: they repeated the whole song by request, but the passage did not recur.

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In their dance the left foot, slightly advanced, came on the beat, and the weight of the body, a little bowed, was placed on it. Then the leg, and with a serpentine movement the whole body, straightened again.¹

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¹ See illustration, p. 30.

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Ex. 33.

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Towards the end there was more action; the feet flung higher, the right foot turned out, the body facing alternately right and left, and so on. Then a *pas seul*. The dancer could not get his accompaniment (a single singer) to his satisfaction for a long time, and they wrangled as to how the tune went. The *Kadars* who were to sing next were sitting by; and one of these broke in with a wildly different tune as a suggestion; but the *Malya* was not in the least put out, and got his way in the end, which was this,

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Ex. 34.

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sung alternately by himself and his accompanist.

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It was now the *Kadars'* turn. One played the *kuzhal*.² He had great trouble in getting his reed to speak the tonic (C) properly, and cut several before he was satisfied; the *Malya* dancer did not fail to note his distress. It is curious how hard it was to arrive at the scale of this instrument. The player had no notion of playing a single note by itself, he invariably played a grace with it, showing how inseparable grace is from even the simplest phrase. It was achieved at last by my holding down his fingers in succession. A phrase which frequently occurred in his playing was:

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² Pronounce, *kŭrāl*. *Kurāl* is the name in Tamil for the first note of the scale (Sa).

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Ex. 35.

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Two Kadars sang:

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Ex. 36.

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‘A maiden chewed betel nut, and walked gaily round the streets of Coimbatore.’

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Ex. 37. Maddale.

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A wedding song: the drum was the *maddale* of p. 42.

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Next came the Boatmen of Ernakulam, called *Velans*.¹ First a long song with six variations—‘seven ways’ of singing, he called it,

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¹ *Vel*- rhymes with ‘pale’.

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Ex. 38.

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II.

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III.

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Hand-clapping.

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IV.

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VI.

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VII.

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the first four minor, the last three major. No. VII got faster at each repetition. The general sense was: Invocation to a deity to inspire the singer; description of a town; of a palace; of a temple;

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in praise of the Rajah of Cochin (who had opened the exhibition); rowing in a boat. Fragments of other boatmen’s songs were:

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Ex. 39.

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Ex. 40.

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Two Pāṇans now appeared. This tribe formed in old days the band of the Rajah, but has sunk now into the position of an inferior caste. They are recognized magicians. An astrologer settles what is the form (mūrti) of the demon, and the Pāṇans are called in to exorcise it. They perform the exorcism (teyāttam) with drum and pipe; occasionally they wear masks. Their pollution distance, that, namely, within which they may not approach a Brahman, is 36 feet. The usual time of year for exorcism is July and August, when demons are apt to be specially prevalent and malicious, when in fact the rains have developed a certain amount of malaria.

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A man and his wife sang alternately with a chakravādya¹ and a triangle, which divided the eight quavers respectively as 3 + 2 + 3 and 2 + 2 + 4, thus:

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¹ ‘Circular tambourine’, 9 inches diameter, 2 inches deep; the laces cross the back, and are held in the left hand; see illustration, p. 42.

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Ex. 41. Drum. 4/4 Triangle. 4/4

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Two other of their tunes are these:

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Two Pāṇan men. (Phonogram.)

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Tāla. Chorus. Solo. Ex. 42. Dr.

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Chorus. Solo.

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(Phonogram ends.)

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Pāṇan woman. (Phonogram.)

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They are quite different from the neighbouring tunes; both have a large compass, ten or eleven notes, and both oscillate from tonic to dominant, each section closing on the tonic. The woman also definitely closed her tune on the tonic, making a pause, which an Indian seldom does; and it is rare to find instances of such disjunct motion as in bar 4, where the dominant chord is distinctly formed twice. Lastly the arrangement of bars in Ex. 43 is elaborate—4 + 3 + 4 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3; and the quick tripleted rhythm unusual.

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Next day I started for Paddikad, ten uncomfortable miles by ekka. Malayans (different from Malyas) were to come in to the Traveller's Bungalow and receive their annual present from the Sirkar of cloth, rice, coco-nuts, coco-nut oil, chilis, and tobacco. They sang, with drum. First a boy of ten as solo with a chorus of men and women:

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Ex. 44.

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Ex. 45.

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Ex. 46.

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Ex. 47.

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Then the men alone:

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Ex. 48. Maddale.

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Ex. 49.

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Lastly the women danced. Alternate feet were placed behind, the body inclined to that side, and the corresponding hand made a motion as if sowing paddy¹: meanwhile the men sang

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¹ See illustration, p. 30.

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Ex. 50.

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Of course all these skeleton themes were considerably varied. As to the thirds, though they oscillated a good deal between major and minor, there was little doubt by the time the tune was finished as to which was intended. Most of the tunes quickened towards the end. The performers clapped the time; but as they differed from one another it was not easy, on one or two occasions, to make out whether they were beating 2 + 2, 2 + 3, or 3 + 3. Probably Ex. 44 was intended for 2 + 3, but the drag of the chorus soon settled it into a 3 + 3.

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At Alleppey, further down the coast, there were Hindu boatmen landing Arabs at the pier. The boatmen sang:

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Ex. 51.

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The Arabs

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Ex. 52.

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Ex. 53.

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Ex. 54.

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quite a different scale. These were short phrases between the strokes.

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From Quilon to Trivandrum is a series of lakes and canals formed by the silting, in early times, of the alluvium of five rivers. Alleppey is about half way; and the method of cultivation there is this. The fields, surrounded by low banks, are, during the rains, inundated, and coated with fresh soil. The water is then pumped out, and paddy sown. Practically a large part of the country is most of the year under water of shallow depth, and locomotion is almost entirely by boat. This lends itself to singing. I had two opportunities. Once, in an open boat with four men. I was innocent of their language and had no interpreter, so that I was unable to tell what view they were taking of their passenger, who is usually the topic of their song. I had merely armed myself with the Malayalam for ‘sing’ and ‘repeat’.

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Ex. 55.

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Ex. 56.

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Ex. 57.

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Most of these began with a short colloquy in monotone between a soloist and a chorus. The abrupt ending of Ex. 58 was character-

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Ex. 58.

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istic. Sometimes, not always, the chorus would come in with the last phrase, snapped out with emphasis. In Ex. 59 the B and E

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Ex. 59.

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were distinctly flat, the D appreciably so. The whole gave the impression of three approximately ¾ tones, with tonic C. Other tunes were:

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Ex. 60.

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Ex. 61.

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Ex. 62.

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The other opportunity was on a night journey by *valam*¹ from Trivandrum to Quilon. A *valam* is a covered boat in which you may balance yourself during the day on a semicircular roof and watch a slowly moving panorama of palms, Chinese fishing nets, wheel pumps, and naked children, and at night recline inside making such account as you may with heat, smells, and mosquitos, or other inmates. There were two boatmen, punting; one in the bows with a bass, the other in the stern with a tenor voice. Each kept his own pitch accurately : their tonics were a fourth apart, though for readiness of comparison all are given here with the same tonic.