Korvai - coming from the tamil word means to join. We join adavus that we learnt to make longer sequences. Just as the we form words with letters and sentences with words.
Of course like with any language there is a grammar to such Korvais. It is basically guided by thalam. Recall from one of the earlier posts that Thalam is a part of "Bha-ra-tha" natyam and possibly the most important part.
In Carnatic music there are 35 different thalams. How? There are 7 basic talas
1. Dhruva
2. Matya
3. Rupaka
4. Ata
5. Jhampa
6. Triputa
7. Eka
There are also 5 jaathis (types). These are
1. Tisram or 3
2. Chatushram or 4
3. Khandam or 5
4. Misram or 7
5. Sankeernam or 9
and hence you get 7*5 = 35 thalams. For a detailed discussion of thalams please refer to <insert shameless plug to self's blogpost on thalams>
So why this detailed discussion about thalams you ask. Because that determines the meter of the song and hence the meter of the korvai sequence you want to create. Take example of adi talam. It is 4+2+2 = 8. In pure terminology you can call it as Chatushra jaathi Triputa Thalam (Just as you can call water as H20). So what does it mean to you, it means that each cycle is 8 beats so you have to make sure that you create sequences that are multiples of 8 (or 4 sometimes). How do you do that? For that you need to identify the adavus that are intrinsically chatushram (NOTE: this is not a requirement. As you gain more experience you will be able to use other jaathis to form 8 counts, we will see an example towards the end of this post). For now let's take only chatushra adavus -
- Naatadavu - tha thai tha ha, dhi thai tha ha (notice the 4 count)
- tha thai thai tha
- tha hath thai hi
- thai ya thai yi
- thai thai dhi dhi thai (This one is a tricky one. Though it looks like it's 5 count by the way I have written the syllables, the dhi-dhi-thai actually only takes 2 counts). It is left as an exercise to the reader to dance dhi-dhi-thai and tha-ki-ta to notice the timing difference between the two.
Now your job is simple. Take any combination of the above and you have a sequence that can fit chatushra triputam (or adi talam). Which is really simple to understand because you can taking multiples of 4 and adding together to form multiples of 8 or 4.
Here are some adavus of Tisram:
- tha thai tham dhi thai tham (6)
- tha ki ta
- thai dhi dhi thai
- thai thaindha tha
So now if you needed to do say Chatusra Rupaka ( or Tisra Eka) - for ex the Kalyani Jatiswaram is Rupakam - you just form sequences of Tisrams.
This is all great, sounds super simple. The biggest downside to this is that such choreography when used in regular dances will become monotonic and mundane aka BORING. So we use other ways of creating these sequences.
For example 8 = 4+4 but also 3+5 (so we can do tha-ki-ta, tha-ka tha-ki-ta).
16 = 8+8 but also 4*3 + 4 = 4X(tha-ki-ta) + thai thai dhi dhi thai.
See how it becomes way more interesting quickly.
This has become a much longer post than I intended but I want to sign off with my most favorite sequence so far. It is
thai dhi dhi thai
thai thai dhi dhi thai
thai thai thai dhi dhi thai.
Why? It is 3+4+5 = 12 (Equally applicable to adi talam and rupaka thalam which covers almost 80-90% of the pieces that we learn). The one other variation would be misra chapu (or tisra triputa) which is 7 which can be easily extended to by adding dhi-dhi-thai in front. Sankeernam can be covered by removing thai dhi dhi thai and khandam can be covered by adding an extra thai dhidhi thai. Talk about versatility :)
Until next time.
