Raag Todi is one of the deepest, most complex and profound ragas in the entire Hindustani system. I've been studying this raga for ten years as a vocal student of the Gundecha Brothers and Pelva Naik, and the harmonic possibilities inherent in the raga make it a natural choice for marimba. I've also recorded this raga as a vocalist. I anticipate that I'll continue and performing and recording this raga for the rest of my life. I've only scratched the surface; there is still much to learn and discover.

Marimba may not seem like a natural instrument for Indian classical music because the pitches are fixed. Two of the pillars of Raga music are swara and shruti. The swara are the stable notes, and the shruti are the moving notes, the “notes between the notes.” The shruti in particular are one of the most essential elements of Indian classical music. There is a whole universe in the realm of shruti, and as a dedicated Dhrupad vocalist, I have quite literally spent tens of thousands of hours diving deep into that universe, exploring extremely fine gradations of pitch, and smooth, connective motions between pitches (meend).

Without shruti, how could someone play Raga on a fixed pitch instrument like the marimba?

Fortunately, some brave souls have gone before me and blazed a path, including Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, who has shown for 40 years that Raga can work quite well on a fixed pitch instrument like the Santoor. On piano we have Utsav Lal and Michael Harrison, both of whom are concertizing and recording regularly, playing ragas on piano. I also remember attending several recitals of ragas on piano by Robert Morris, composer and professor at the Eastman School of Music, and along with Chitraveena Ravikiran, one of the architects of the Melharmony system.

To make it work, we have to find alternate methods of expression to account for the loss of shruti. This includes extensive ornamentation, and a shift of emphasis from a purely melodic exposition of the Raga to one that includes a deeper exploration of texture, timbre, rhythm, and harmony. It’s the last parameter—harmony—that I want to focus on for this essay.

Typically, harmony is thought to be anathema to the raga system, but that is only true if we conceive of harmony in a traditional, Eurocentric-notion of functional harmony, that is, music in which harmony is one of the primary mechanisms for moving the music forward, for conveying a sense of teleology. But harmony can also be employed in a supportive, non-directional, role to create more color with the melodic phrases, to add more depth and richness to the melodies, much like the use of shruti.

The harmonizations I’ve used on this recording are all created with notes that are in the raga itself. I’ve used a variety of open fifth/fourth dyads, triadic harmonies, and clusters of notes, but all of them are in the raga itself, and if used sensitively they enhance the melodic development of the raga.

But what about the issue of tuning? The marimba is an equal-tempered instrument, which runs counter to the justly-tuned intervals that singers and other melodic instrumentalists typically employ in most performances of classical raga music.

Indeed, this was the primary reason I waited for so many years to explore playing this music on marimba. I had a block in my mind against equal temperament, such that I thought it couldn't work with raga. But now I feel equal temperament is equally acceptable, and in some ways—at least for marimba—better suited to harmonic explorations within the raga system. Let's go into some detail with this particular raag to understand why.

On this recording I've chosen A as the pitch center. Thus, the swara of the arohana of Todi are A, Bb, C, D#, F G#, A'. The avarohana is A', G#, F, E, D#, C, Bb, A

One of my strategies to provide more color in a way that can rival the use of shruti is to explore the triadic harmonies present in the raag. For example, the sixth scale degree (F), or komal dhaivad, can often be harmonized with an A and C, creating a an "F major" chord. Of course, this isn't really a chord in the sense of Western functional harmony, it is really a trichord, one might even conceive of it in the post-tonal sense, and it really has no hierarchical value over, say, the dissonant trichord made up of G#, A, and Bb. I'm using the chords to provide shades of color shifts against the drone, in the same way that when I'm singing I use subtle shifts in the shruti to create color changes with and against the drone. (My Guru Ramakant Gundecha once told me this: "Every note you sing much absorb into the tanpura or bounce off of it in a very specific way." I'm using dyads, triads, and four-note chords with the same strategy with marimba.)

But what about the fact that marimba is in equal temperament? If I retuned the notes of the marimba to more accurately reflect how I sing this raga, I would quickly run into problems. My Gurus taught me that the third of Todi is sung high. Even though it's a minor third (komal gandar), it is on the higher side. Yet, the flat sixth (komal dhaivad) is sung low. If I retuned the notes so that they were melodically correct, then the fourth of C to F would be unusable because it would be extremely out of tune and would draw attention to itself in a way that would destroy the mood of the raga.

This is but one example of how equal temperament actually helps one explore raga on a fixed pitch instrument. Of course, none of the equal tempered intervals resonate in our bodies quite as beautifully as justly tuned intervals, but we have the advantage of being able to utilize any combination of notes without the appearance of strident wolf tones. Not only do we have access to all the sonorous fifth and fourth dyads as well as triatic harmonies, but we can also begin to explore post-tonal music by utilizing creative combinations of trichords, tetrachords, etc. All of this gives us a rich palette of sonic colors we can use to deepen the melodic experience, and I believe if an artist takes full advantage of these colors, then the richness and depth of a given raag may be maintained, in equal temperament and without true shruti. Paradoxically, it is through the modal music of India that I have found a new appreciation for equal temperament!

This isn't an argument against just intonation. Just intonation can be an effective modality for exploring raga, but so can equal temperament. And besides, retuning marimba (or vibraphone) bars is a major undertaking as it requires using machines to sand off parts of each bar, certainly not something that can be done just before a concert, or with any regularity!

Finally, it’s important to remember that every instrument has its strengths and weaknesses. The marimba may not have the pitch flexibility of the voice, but the ability to play multiple notes at the same time, the figuration possibilities, the extensive range, and the dark, earthy, organic sound of the marimba are all beautiful properties that are unique to it and should be celebrated. No instrument is complete or perfect, even the voice. My Gurujis always told me to maintain the ethics of Dhrupad, but to find my own voice. They didn’t just mean that literally in terms of my vocal instrument, but as a broader metaphor for building a life as a creative musician. The marimba is my home base as a Western percussionist, and I’m honored to expand its reach into raga music. I’m uniquely qualified to do it, and excited to be on the forefront of a new development in Indian classical music.