Mus 358 Indian Music

The piece “Devi Niye Tunai” is in kriti genre. The kriti genre is made of three major parts: Pallavi, Anupallavi, and Charanam. There are usually sections that are played before and after these three parts that make a piece that is in kriti genre sound complete, so we can say the kriti section of the piece is in the kriti genre (the whole piece). There is a section that is played before these three sections, and it is called alapana. Alapana does not have rhythm; in other words, it has free rhythm. In the alapana section of Devi Niye Tunai the singer is improvising in the Keeravani raga. She does so in order to warm up, become familiar and explore the notes in the the raga, and make herself ready for the main section of the piece which is the kriti. The alapana section can go on for even half an hour, but in the piece “Dive Niye Tunai” the singer improvises just for a few seconds. After the alapana section, the singer moves on to the kriti section of the genre. The first part of the kriti is pallavi which is when the mridangam player joins the group. In the piece Devi Niye Tunai there are three sound producers that construct the piece: voice, drone (tambura), and maridangam. In this piece, the drone starts and ends the piece, and it harmonizes the piece and provides a unique sound experience for listeners. The voice (singer) plays the melody of the piece, and she also represents the text which has a religious meaning and it is representing the praises of the goddess Meenakshi and asking for protection. The three powers who are being referred to in the text are Lakshmi Devi who represents wealth, Parvati Devi who represents power and love, and Saraswati Devi who represents learning and art.
When the singer enters the pallavi section, she still sings the melody in the Keeravani raga (the notes ga and da are flat), but the difference is that the piece gets metric rhythm in this section. The tala of this piece is Adi which has eight bits and is represented by