Voice that transcends your vocal chords

Apr 24, 2010, 12.00am IST
BINDU CHAWLA.



Your voice could help you establish a direct connection with the Divine.

In Hindustani music, this is called sakshatkar . It is the development of a voice that sings using the halak or full breath rather than the vocal chords alone.

This is easier said than done. Singing aa-wise, mouth opened in the aakaar is to be replaced by singing haa-wise, mouth opened to the haakaar , so as to open the voice channel and make space for the breath to flow without constriction or congestion. For the sound must travel from the umbilicus, and through the entire thoracic sound box, before the vocal chords and the mouth will articulate it. In gharana language, this is the cultivation of the halak awaaz , the voice of egolessness, or the true voice.

In the Indore gharana, voice culture begins with a unique preliminary exercise. The student is asked to sing the Haa, not the Saa, after inserting, between the front teeth, the bone between the two knuckles of any finger of the hand. This is done to measure how wide the mouth has to be opened throughout. Care is taken to make sure that the voice moves through the tract without hitting the sides of the thoracic cage, so as not to pick up any kind of materiality. With long hours of practice the voice unites with the naada , the sound of timelessness that lies at the innermost recesses of each human being, and runs through all of God’s creation. An easy way to hear naada externally is to put your ear to the heart of any large seashell – the strong sound of the ocean running through it is this sound of the naada .

In earlier days when there were no tanpuras , ustads would have four to six disciples around them singing the Haa- Saa, to provide the pitch or drone for their singing, which later came to develop into the four- or six-stringed tanpura , now commonly used in the singing of classical music. Though it has a material body, the tanpura is actually an abstract instrument, the symbolic sound of your own naada that helps you tune in with yourself when you sing.

Indian voice culture includes vocalism known as the gamak , developed by using the breath rather than just the vocal chords, which is also developed through the halak . In Living Idioms in Hindustani Music, Pandit Amarnath says gamak comes from the root gama , meaning to acquire pace. Referring to a movement in which each note begins from the note preceding it, this vocalism fills out each note with a heavy, rich and rounded quality of tone. The word comes from garmana , i.e., to heat up – when the note gains momentum by the energy of the naada , and comes to life. The swaras or notes themselves are the stirrings of the naada .

It is only when the student is established in the Haa-Saa, that he is guided into singing the notes with gamak , for this is how all classical music will be sung.
When naada speaks through the voice, it endows it with a spiritual character. Ordinarily the speaking voice is both congested and constricted, but even so, all voices have it in them. Some realise the naada , others don’t. The voice that does, acquires an eternal beauty, a honey-like intonation, a deep layer of peace, and the hush of eternal silence. This is the saintly voice, deeply consoling, the voice of a realised soul.