1.2 Morning Raga

Season 1: Ep 1, Ep 2, Ep 3, Ep 4, Ep 5, Ep 6

Now that neither of us live in Manipal, both Preetham and I often spend a lot of time reminiscing about the days spent birdwatching there. This episode takes us to a place where we want to be, and we hope to take you there with us. So come and join us for a morning of birdwatching in Manipal and immerse yourself in the sounds of the region.

The song composed for this episode can be played separately and downloaded - please go through this post for the music widgets/players and look for the download link.

Transcript, links to bird calls used in the podcast, and all other relevant information (including sources) below. We welcome feedback and critique, do let us know in the comments section.

Transcript

Intro: Welcome, you’re listening to Having a Lark. A podcast by Ramit Singal and Preetham Meher.

Ramit: Hello again. This is Ramit and Preetham, and on Having a Lark, we explore the intersection of music and birdsong.

Preetham and I mostly went birdwatching around this small town called Manipal; it’s on the south-west coast of India, in the state of Karnataka. It is a gorgeous place, with a diverse array of birds – in fact, I even wrote a book about it. You can check it out. Anyway, right from the initial stages of working on this podcast, we knew we definitely wanted to create something that conveys the feeling of watching birds in that region; it is a green, very well-wooded landscape, and the morning is filled with the sounds of birds and religious music.

I want to take you there with us, and it might need a bit of your imagination. Imagine. It is dawn and the shapes of the palm fronds are clearly etched against the sky. The koels announce the start of the day with their liquid, rolling notes <Asian Koel calls>. We look up at the sky and we can see the flocks of starlings and egrets leaving their roosts to kick things off. In the distance, peafowl awaken the neighbourhood with their loud trumpets. <Indian Peafowl calls>

There are paddyfields ahead of us. The humid air is heavy with the dry rattling sound of the territorial Jerdon’s Bushlark. <Jerdon’s Bushlark song>. All around us, the calls of White-cheeked Barbets <White-cheeked Barbet calls> resonate from the nearby groves and woodlands.

The verandahs are being swept as the village begins its daily routine. We greet a man who lets his cows loose to graze in the fields. The dawn chorus of the birds is joined by the pleasant hymns from the temples around us. These hymns are prayer and music with their composition rooted in Carnatic music. Here’s Preetham with more.

Preetham: Carnatic music is a South Indian form of music derived from Sanskrit words. Carna means ear and ataka means pleasing. Basically, ear-pleasing.

A raga, in the simplest words, refers to a melody which is used to express a feeling.

This piece you will listen to towards the end of this podcast is inspired by a famous composition, Vaishnav Janato, which was written by the 15th century poet-composer Narsinh Mehta. The flute rendition is based on Raaga Hamsadhwani. Hamsadhwani literally means the “call of the swan”.

The reason I chose this composition is mainly because since my childhood, I’ve mostly woken up to hymns and bhajans, and listening to Indian music in the mornings has been a part of my routine. So I relate this composition to a regular morning in my life.

Carnatic music began as a vocal-based composition with the instruments present as the accompaniments to it. Here, the flute is the accompaniment to the birds. But I also see the flute as the melody and the birds as accompaniment. This makes it more special to see that flute and birds both play the role of melody and accompaniment.

Ramit: Thanks for that, Preetham. In fact, it is quite possible that several ragas may directly or indirectly be derived from the sounds of birds and nature – I’ve put up some interesting links in the episode notes for you to look at.

Now, back to our imagination… As the morning progresses, other birds keep joining in. We hear the fluty whistles of the Black-hooded Oriole <Black-hooded Oriole call> and the impressive repertoire of the Racket-tailed Drongo <Greater Racket-tailed Drongo sound>. Every now and then, the Greater Coucal announces itself with a series of deep hooting notes <Greater Coucal call>.

The sun rises higher. A distant coppersmith barbet delivers <Coppersmith Barbet call> its metallic notes. The humidity and the heat are very noticeable, almost unbearable now. And just then, another familiar song pierces through the soundscape. <Common Hawk-Cuckoo sings>

The Brainfever Bird, or the Common Hawk-Cuckoo, starts up. Its notes escalating to a crescendo - almost as if rising with the temperature. The Brainfever bird is so-called because its call sounds like a repeated “Brain-fever, brain-fever, brain-fever”, and given the rather mental pattern of the song, sung at the hottest times in the day, one would be forgiven to think that it’s indeed suffering from brainfever. My favourite transcription of the call, however, is that by Hugh Whistler, an ornithologist in the early 1900s who described the call as “Oh lord, oh lord, oh lord, how very hot it is getting - we feel it, we feel it, we feel it,…”. Listen for yourself. <Common Hawk-Cuckoo song>

It is indeed too hot now, and we head home to cool down under a fan, I personally prefer a plate of vada and dosa, with some nice coconut chutney and a cold lime drink in my hand. The sounds of the Coppersmith Barbet and the Brainfever Bird still ring in our ears.

This is our first track, and we are calling it Morning Raga.

Credits and notes: We hope you enjoyed that. You can download this track using the link in the episode notes, where you will also find the transcript, images, links to other sounds, and other useful information. We want to thank Savithri Singh for letting us use her image of the Oriental Skylark for the podcast logo. And thank you for listening. Feedback and comments are welcome.