Korvais in Karnatak Music - Improvisation through Training

Korvai is a Tamil word meaning joining or beading. When rhythmic syllables are joined or beaded together in a logical development and culminate in a structural format of definable Purvanga and Uttaranga then they can be termed as Korvai. Korvais form an essential part of every Karnatak concert. They are being extensively used by Vocalists, Instrumentalists and various types of percussion artistes also. Since, Korvai is an integral and important aspect of a concert, there is a necessity to analyze the process of making them and also quantify them for easier approaches to its various types. There are two parts in a Korvai, that are generally being used to identify them distinctively. They are Purvanga (the first part or the introductory part) and Uttaranga (the ending part or the subsequent part). The purvanga and uttaranga are constant factors irrespective of the rhythmic structure or Tala structure. Same Purvanga can be used with different Uttarangas for same tala or extended to other talas as well. Such being the case, the purvangas and uttarangas are clearly quantifiable in terms of numbers and rhythmic phrases or combination of phrases. When a number is being used, there can be logical build up and hence this article explores such logical build-up using numbers in a structured way converted as cognizable rhythmic varieties. Talas are cyclical in nature having specified fixed number of beats per cycle. For a tala which is having 9 beats per cycle, the total number for 3 or 4 cycles can be calculated by simple multiplication. For example, for 4 cycles the total would be 36 beats. Whenever calculations are made mostly they are done on either as number of beats or on pulses. Both methods can be employed for quick results. In the above case, there were 36 beats which can give us 144 pulses (36 X 4).The purvanga can be anything like 108 and the uttaranga can be 36. The general ratio of purvanga and uttaranga could be 60:40 or 70:30 for. Longer Purvangas of 90:10 or shorter purvangas of 20:80 are generally not preferred. This article also covers various examples where different combinations are improvised. Different types of korvais can also be made using such improvisations.