The music of India and the Indian subcontinent: Indian classical music (raga, tala, the drone), the sitar, tabla and tambura, and the popular dance style bhangra with the dhol, for Area of Study 3.

What this dot point is asking

The music of India and the Indian subcontinent is one of the four regions of Area of Study 3. You need to know Indian classical music (the raga melodic framework, the tala rhythmic cycle and the drone), its main instruments (sitar, tabla, tambura), and the popular dance style bhangra with its dhol drum. The listening paper expects you to recognise this music and explain its key terms.

Indian classical music: the three layers

The texture is unlike Western music. Over a steady drone (held notes, usually the home note and the fifth, played by the tambura), a soloist improvises an ornamented melody following a raga, while the tabla keeps a rhythmic cycle. A typical performance opens with a free, unmetred alap (the soloist exploring the raga slowly, with no fixed beat), then the tala enters and the music becomes metred and rhythmic, building in energy.

The instruments

• Sitar - the main melody instrument, a long-necked plucked string instrument with movable frets and sympathetic strings that resonate, giving its shimmering tone. The player bends and slides the pitch for expression.
• Tabla - a pair of hand drums (a higher wooden drum and a lower metal one) that play the tala, capable of a wide range of pitched and unpitched sounds.
• Tambura (tanpura) - a long-necked string instrument that plays the continuous drone, plucked steadily throughout.

Bhangra

Bhangra is upbeat Punjabi folk and dance music. Its driving force is the dhol, a large double-headed drum that plays loud, energetic rhythms, often a syncopated four-beat pattern. Traditional bhangra is associated with harvest celebrations; modern bhangra fuses it with Western pop, dance and hip-hop, using drum machines, synthesisers and samples alongside the dhol, and it is hugely popular in the UK Asian community. Recognising the loud dhol drumming and the energetic dance feel is the key to identifying bhangra.

Examples in context

A classical performance might begin with a sitar exploring a raga in a slow, free alap over a tambura drone, the player bending pitches expressively, with no fixed pulse. The tabla then enters with a tala, and the music speeds up into rhythmic, increasingly virtuosic improvisation, soloist and drummer trading ideas within the cycle. A bhangra track, by contrast, opens with a punchy dhol pattern, energetic and danceable, perhaps layered with synth bass, samples and a vocal hook, showing the modern fusion of Punjabi folk with Western pop.

Try this

Q1. What are the three layers of Indian classical music? [3 marks]

• Cue. A melody improvised on a raga, a rhythm played as a tala (on the tabla), and a continuous drone (from the tambura).

Q2. What is the dhol, and which style is it associated with? [2 marks]

• Cue. A large double-headed drum that plays loud, energetic rhythms; it is associated with bhangra, the Punjabi dance style.

Q3. Explain what raga and tala mean and how they are used. [5 marks]

• What the marker wants. Raga as the melodic framework (a scale with characteristic phrases and moods, improvised on) and tala as the rhythmic cycle (a repeating pattern of beats on the tabla), with improvisation and the move from a free alap into metred music.