Mela

What it means

Mela designates, in South Indian Carnatic music, a basic scale from which ragas are derived. The common melakarta system orders these basic scales systematically: each comprises seven degrees in a fixed sequence ascending and descending, and the totality of possible combinations yields a fully numbered order by which the scales are named and classified.

Since presenting Indian music theory in European terminology easily leads astray, caution is called for with every such transfer.

Musical use

Such a basic scale and a raga are to be distinguished. The mela merely supplies the stock of notes; the raga is far more — it comprises characteristic turns of phrase, emphasized notes, kinds of ornamentation, directions of movement, and a particular expressive character. Several ragas can have the same stock of notes and yet sound fundamentally different, because they are treated differently. Equating raga with scale therefore falls short.

Equally to be noted is that the pitches do not match those of the European tempered system and that the tuning is related to a freely chosen tonic, which sounds continuously as a drone. The syllabic naming of the degrees recalls European solmization but is a tradition of its own.

In Carnatic music there are 72 melakarta ragas, ordered in a systematic scheme. Every mela contains all seven degrees in ascending and descending sequence; the variants of the individual degrees determine their position in the scheme. From the melas, many further ragas are derived that omit notes, change the order, or add characteristic turns. The system goes back to theorists of the seventeenth century and was later expanded.

Performance practice

If you approach this music, work with recordings and, if possible, with instruction from someone within the tradition; the decisive features — ornamentation, tonal movement, weighting — stand in no scale table. Listen first to the drone and to how the melody relates to it. And transfer European concepts only with caution.