Naada: The divine sound

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Sounds other than those created by man can be fascinating. When I awake in this concrete jungle city, I am welcomed by a host of morning birds heralding in the day. There’s the higher octave, the lower, the middle range, the sharp trill, the deep grunt, the effervescent chatter. Such a panoply of beautiful sounds so skillfully blended, such neatly synchronised medley!
I often open the window to take in this morning symphony. The magpie robin sits right atop the tree, positioning himself leader-like, quite the chef d’orchestre leading the band. It’s never the same each time a melodious musical passage rolls out of his slender frame. Yet, he definitely is careful enough to sing each phrase twice, lest you should brush it off indifferently as just another bird call. And I am reminded of Robert Browning’s Home Thoughts from Abroad: That’s the wise thrush. He sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture.
The tiny tailor joins in the orchestrated melody. The crow pheasant, somewhere distant, contributes with his low but sharp “oop”. The coppersmith barbet lends rhythm with his well-punctuated, resonant sound. The spring morning, of course, is not complete without the koel’s pathos-filled song. For a bird that elusive, the song is more than powerful. The bulbuls, the fantails, the sunbirds and the sparrows all combine to make this fairytale orchestra come alive. Musicians need to work to compose and arrange pieces for precision and finesse. But here’s a musical tapestry I am treated to each morning for a good hour, so perfect and well- chiseled, with no rehearsals yet total synchrony.
Sometimes man-made sounds attract too. As a child, one of the regular sounds that surrounded my life in my home by the railway tracks was the sound of trains — the trains that ran indefatigably, all day and night long. Each type of train had a sound of its own. There was a regularity on the tracks. I would spend hours sitting at the window, watch and hear the trains ceaselessly eroding the tracks. Sometimes the sounds sounded like phrases of the mridangam, rattling sonorous passages very harmoniously. The uniformity of the suburban trains would be broken by the shrill hoot of a fast train that would speed by — a sound that cascaded in intensity as it approached from afar like tumbling swara passages in Carnatic music. And it was not seldom that one would hear the monotonous, distinct sounds from trains that were shunted on tracks that were reserved for the purpose. Every train had its orbit, its own special sound. A game I often indulged in was to spontaneously equate my pitch with the pitch of the train. Sometimes the sound would hinge on the “sa” note, sometimes on the “pa” note, often on the “ma”. But the sound always had a fixed musical slot, a “sthana”, and I enjoyed being at par, never tiring of this exercise. To most people, trains are cacophony, cause of colossal disturbances. But not to me. I revisited my childhood home recently. The trains still continue to run, still continue to produce sound. I still continue to receive this sound differently.
This is what one calls naada — musical sound, divine sound. The Vedas epitomise naada as sound emanating from the Gods. Tyagaraja the great Carnatic composer is often hailed as a Naadayogi, Naadopasaka, worshipper of naada. He refers to the “ambrosia of sound” in Naada Sudha Rasam. He refers scientifically to the production of musical sound in Sobillu Saptaswara as one that emanates from the navel, travelling upward through the heart and the throat. Elsewhere he refers to naada that as formless and infinite. However, it gets embodied in musical forms that we recognise and helps gain realisation, leading to the “ocean of bliss through music” as Tyagaraja insists. Tyagaraja devoted 15 odd kritis to the art and science of music and extolling it as a means of reaching beyond. It is this naada that I hear in many, everyday sounds around me. Fortunately so, if not, I would be in despair with all the overwhelming noise that engulfs one constantly.

Dr Vasumathi Badrinathan is an eminent Carnatic vocalist based in Mumbai. She can be contacted on vasu@vasumathi.net [3]