Coarticulation and Gesture: An Analysis of Melodic Movement in South Indian Raga Performance

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of small-scale melodic movement in South Indian rāga performance employing the concept of coarticulation, defined here as the tendency for the performance of a unit to be influenced by that which precedes or follows it. Coarticulation has been much studied in phonetics and also explored to some extent in sign language and the kinematics of instrumental performance. Here I seek to account for variation in the performance of Karnatak musical units known as svaras (the scale degrees of a rāga) and gamakas (ornaments) through the phenomenon of coarticulation, thus providing an analysis of small-scale melodic movement that focuses on the dynamic processes which form the style rather than on the categorisation of discrete elements. The material investigated is a video recording of ālāpana (improvisation) in rāga Toḍi performed by the Karnatak violinist T. V. Ramanujacharlu in Tamil Nadu, South India. A section of the recording is transcribed into staff notation and visualised through pitch-contour graphs created in Praat sound-analysis software. The hand movements required to produce the musical phrases are described from observation of the video alongside figures showing motion-tracking data. Interviews with musicians, participant observation and the author's experience as a student of Karnatak violin provide the foundation for interpretation of the material. Results show that coarticulation can be seen between svaras through the oscillatory gamakas with which they are performed. Atomistic and gestural conceptions of South Indian music are discussed, following which suggestions are made for the implications of this research in modelling the Karnatak style, as well as for potential applications in musical information retrieval (MIR).