Ṭhumrī

Ṭhumrī [Hindustani, ṭhumaknā, "to walk with a jerky, mincing, or wanton gait"; possibly an onomatopoeic imitation of the sound of a stamp of a dancer's foot against the floor (ṭhumuk)] is a vocal (or sometimes instrumental) genre featuring so-called "light-classical" rāgs and (in the case of vocal music) romantic texts. History. The origins of the ṭhumrī are generally ascribed to the court of Wajid Ali Shah (left), the mid-19th century ruler of Oudh. Today three geographical regions are associated with styles of ṭhumrī: Lucknow, Varanasi, and the Panjab. Roughly parallel to the padam of bharata nāṭyam, ṭhumrī is usually a sung genre, although instrumental renditions are also common.

Ṭhumrī shares a history of performance with the classical dance of northern India: kathak. Kathak programs commonly feature miming to ṭhumrī. The subject matter of ṭhumrī often describes the legends of Krishna, particularly his amorous relationships with the milkmaids from the perspective of the milkmaids (gopis). They lovingly describe the beloved, lament the beloved's absence, and anticipate the arrival of the beloved, although some texts take indirectly erotic themes. The gender of the voice of the text is usually feminine, although ṭhumrī can be rendered by both men and women. The dominant rasas (sentiments) of ṭhumrī are sriṅgāra (the erotic) and karūna (the pathetic).

Musical Characteristics. Musicians apply a select repertoire of rāgs and tāls in ṭhumrī. One characteristic of ṭhumrī rāgs comes in the appearance of "accidentals," which in other contexts often would be described as destroying the rasa of the rāg. Ṭhumrī singers also often temporarily introduce other rāgas in their renditions.

As with most north Indian musical genres, the melody is divided into two musical parts. The sthā'ī and antarā are set in contrasting registers, each having two lines of poetry with the sthā'ī returning often as the refrain.

Musical ornaments in ṭhumrī are generally quicker and lighter than those used in khayāl. The principal type of elaboration in ṭhumrī is the boltān, an improvised melodic rendering of the words of the song. These melismatic improvisations are commonly employed as "word-painting."

Ṭhumrī often begins with little or no ālāp. Singers repeat text lines as often as they like, each time with new elaborations. At the conclusion, the singer returns to the first line and repeats it while the drummer briefly solos in a sped up section described as laggi. A laggi is often in a fast binary meter such as kaherava (8 mātrās) or tīntāl even though the ṭhumrī itself is in another tāl (such as the 14-mātrā dīpcandi or the 6-mātrā dādrā. At the end of the solo the drummer returns to the original tāl. In kathak performances, musicians may repeat and alternate between these fast sections and the slower sthā'ī melody.

Instrumentalists often perform ṭhumrīs towards the end of their program in which context performers choose rāgs and tāls typical of the genre. The mood of such performances is decidely lighter than the more elaborate approach taken in ālāp and gat-toḍā, although devices such as sawāl-jawāb may still be part of the performance.

References Cited

Bhatkhande, Visnu Narayan. 1969-1970. Kramik Pustak-Mālika, ed. Laksminarayan Garg. Hathras, U.P. (India): Sangit Karyalay.

Jairazbhoy, Nazir. 1980. India: Ṭhumrī and Ghazal. In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 9:141b-143a.

Selected Performances

Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, "Prem ke mār katār . . . " (rāga Sohni)

Shobha Gurtu, "Āṅgan Main Mat Sove..." (rāga Jaijaivanti)

Birju Maharaj, Kathak Ṭhumrī (video)

Vilayat Khan and Bismillah Khan, "Bhairavī Ṭhumrī"

Khayāl	Outline	Dhun
	24 April, 2018