Wired for melody

Neuroscientist and Carnatic vocalist Deepti Navaratna has began a new web series to better understand the deep connections between our cognitive abilities and music.

The first in the web series of neuro-scientist and Carnatic vocalist Dr Deepti Navaratna, ‘Raaga Lab-Think Jams-Neuro-aesthetics of Raaga’ has just taken off with an introduction to the upcoming monthly series covering the whole year. The web show will bring in musicians as guests who will participate in analysing raga and the brain. Deepti, a cognitive musicologist, will attempt to communicate the traditional wisdom documented in our musicological texts with a neuroscience twist.

“There is much of science and anecdotal information about the science of ragas. This series will try to separate both, bringing in neuro-aesthetics and neuro-anthropological perspectives,” says Deepti. What makes a raga happy or sad, how do chants work on the brain, what does the structure of a raga tell you about the brain, can a supposedly established sad scale still bring about an energetic fun and pace to a song, or the mind? “These are some of the topics that the web series will throw light on,” says Deepti, who studied in Boston and researched on acoustics, musical rhythm, and neuro-psycho-biological aspects of culture.

Deepti, who heads an interdisciplinary arts research institute, The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), Bengaluru, spoke on her engagement with both music and neuroscience, and her web series. Excerpts from an interview:

How did you develop an interest in both music and neuroscience?

I was born in Bengaluru, grew up straddling both passions — music and science. I left to the US in 2002 to get a PhD in Biomedical Sciences and Neuroscience, after which I worked for several years at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

I was all set to coast along as a neuroscientist at Harvard, although until then I had double-barrelled my life, head in science and my heart in the arts. The irony was that when my profession as a neuroscientist actually took off, I realised I could not see myself in it. I was rearing to connect my two great passions and decided to put my brain where my heart was! I resigned from my job at Harvard and enrolled in a rare world music programme at the New England Conservatory of Music. My laboratory was music, musicians and musical entrepreneurship. This journey was what brought me to IGNCA about four years ago on an exploration as a musician, neuroscientist and cultural entrepreneur.

Tell us about your new web series ‘Raaga Lab-Think Jams’.

Think-jams, organised through Raaga Lab, are informal yet curated discussion forums for people from various walks of life to think together and see their thoughts jam! Music is an interdisciplinary entity — when we experience music, both body and mind come together to concoct the experience; when we study it, musicology has to meet neuroscience to explain that experience; when we engage with music as a culture, the society comes into picture. Music is beautifully placed at these intersections, so I thought such deliberations can be catalysed. I also wanted it to be accessible to anyone who wanted to explore music deeper. These will be forums where a rasika meets a scholar and an anthropologist will talk music...all on an equal footing. Music is not the sole wealth of musicians or musicologists. Anyone who is capable of experiencing melody is qualified at his/her own level to be part of this discussion. People can register on this monthly web series (www.deeptinavaratna.net) and submit questions that will be considered for discussion.

Can you elaborate on the neuroscientific aspects present in traditional Indian texts?

The science of raga construction, its neuroscience and musicology is discussed and documented in the Indian textual and oral traditions. In the ‘Natyashastra Cognitive Mining project’, my recent book, I was mining the textual material in the Sanskrit treatise Natyashastra where Bharata Muni talks of the psychology of raga perception.

I do what is called in academic geekery, cognitive hermaneutics — studying older texts to understand what they assumed about the brain, mind, music and how experiences are created using ordered sound. Conversely, this knowledge also gives information on how our brain processes music. The impact certain swaras and srutis have on the mind have been carefully studied in our tradition and putting these together in a neat sequence of a raga scale has seen ages of dialectical discussion. From Natyashastra to Brihaddeshi to Chaturdandi Prakashika or the Swaramela Kalanidhi — it is an unbroken chain of musical knowledge that needs cognitive interpretation and contemporary analysis.

Some of these principles are valid even today. Take for example Bharata Muni’s observation that if the raga scale has the sadja-panchama bhava (or the Sa-Pa swara-samvaada), it throws up a tendency to be a happy raga. Ragas such as Hindola or Saramati, without a near-perfect sadja-panchama-bhava, offer scales that are more exploitable to suit many moods like karuna or compassion, pity and sadness. The sadja-panchama-bhava is like a dominant interval, which the mind perceives as happy. The karuna-pradana ragas are more likely to not have this interval. These are the things that Bharata Muni talks about in Natyashastra that I am interpreting for a contemporary audience.

Your study includes the assessment of morning and evening ragas... Is there a neuro-scientific basis for this?

Ragas have been associated with time, seasons, gender and even nakshatras, raashis and so on. At IGNCA’s Raaga laboratory, we conducted experiments where Carnatic and Hindustani musicians, painters and dancers heard a set of unknown ragas and were asked to identify morning and evening ragas. We also did a mismatch experiment where morning and evening ragas were interchanged, and asked to report if they could be connected to the time of the day and why. We found that there was no correlation between the time and the ragas heard, unless one was aware of a song or felt the tune was like a lullaby to be sung in the night! Most often, people only mapped an emotion to a raga, not the time. A sad raga was matched to evening//night, a bright raga meant morning and such. But, we did not find a strong neuroscientific reason behind this time classification.

In cognitive psychology, this is understood as individual variation, as we found that all ragas with Hariprasad Chaurasia’s magical flute were categorised as ‘meditative’ and ‘healing’; including Hamsadhvani, the chirpiest of them.

Your web series also includes outreach programmes featuring Bollywood melodies...

Old Bollywood melodies are strong proof that while a raga has some intrinsic potential to create a mood, there is greater power in poetry, orchestration and laya, which can either work with the raga-bhava or against it.

Some beautiful sad numbers are in the major scale Dheera Shankarabharana, like the vintage melody ‘Yun Hasraton Ke Daag’. ‘Saranga Teri Yaad Mein’ is couched in a supposedly shringara and dheera rasa Raga Kalyani! The more serious Todi is used for the fun-filled number ‘Yahoo, Chaahe Koi Mujhe Jangli Kahe.’ The Tamil song dripping in seduction ‘Kannum Kannum Kollaiadittal’ from the movie Thiruda Thiruda is based on the melancholic Shivaranjani. Master composers of the past have shown us the complexity of the raga to rasa connection. The web series will use such examples to illustrate this concept.