Understanding Bharatanatyam Music: Talas, Sollukattu and Nattuvangam

Ask a Bharatanatyam student what tala their Varnam is set in and you will get one of two answers: an immediate, confident one, or a long pause. The students who can answer are almost always the better dancers — not coincidentally.

Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music are not two art forms that happen to share a stage. They are one system. A dancer who does not understand the rhythmic architecture they are moving inside is, in a real sense, dancing to something they cannot hear properly.

This guide is an introduction for students and parents who want to close that gap.

Nritta, Nritya, Natya: What the Music Serves

A brief orientation first, because it explains why the music works the way it does.

Classical theory divides dance into three modes. Nritta is pure movement — rhythm and form with no narrative meaning, where the dancer's body functions as a percussion instrument. Nritya is expressive dance, where movement carries meaning and interprets a text. Natya adds full dramatic and theatrical dimension.

Nritta passages need rhythmic precision above all; nritya passages need melodic and lyrical sensitivity. A Bharatanatyam *margam* — the traditional sequence of items in a full recital — deliberately alternates between them, which is why the musical demands shift so much from one item to the next.

Tala: The Architecture of Time

Tala is the rhythmic cycle. It is the single most important musical concept for a dancer.

A tala is a fixed number of beats, grouped in a repeating pattern. Crucially, in the Carnatic system a tala is not merely counted mentally — it is marked physically, with a defined sequence of hand movements: a clap (*laghu*, followed by finger counts), a clap-and-wave (*drutam*), and so on. Every Carnatic musician and Bharatanatyam dancer learns to keep tala with their hands, and students are taught to do it from the beginning.

The first beat of the cycle is the sama — the reference point everything hangs from. Landing precisely on the sama at the end of a rhythmic phrase is one of the most satisfying moments in Bharatanatyam, for dancer and audience alike, and one of the hardest to get consistently right.

Adi tala is the one you will meet most. It is an eight-beat cycle, grouped as four plus two plus two — formally *Chaturashra jati Triputa tala*. A large proportion of the Bharatanatyam repertoire, including most Alarippus, Jatiswarams, and many Varnams, is set in it. Rupaka tala (six beats, sometimes counted as three) and Misra Chapu (seven beats) also appear frequently.

The full Carnatic system organises talas into seven families (the *suladi sapta talas* — Dhruva, Matya, Rupaka, Jhampa, Triputa, Ata, and Eka), each of which can be realised in five jatis or subdivisions, producing thirty-five talas in theory. Students do not need to memorise all of them. Understanding that the system is combinatorial — a small number of structural principles generating many cycles — is enough, and it is genuinely useful.

Laya: The Three Speeds

*Laya* is tempo. Bharatanatyam works in three:

Vilamba laya — slow. Madhyama laya — medium, usually double the slow. Drita laya — fast, usually double again.

Adavus and rhythmic passages are systematically practised at all three, which is why students count "first speed, second speed, third speed" in class. The test of a dancer is whether form holds at drita laya, and the test of a *teacher* is whether they insist on cleanliness at vilamba laya before permitting speed. Our guide to the adavus covers how this is drilled in practice.

Sollukattu: Rhythm Made Speakable

The syllables recited in class — "tai ya tai hi," "ta tai tai tat," "dhit dhit tai" — are sollukattu (also called *vaaythari*). They are drum-language: spoken vocables that represent rhythmic patterns, closely related to the mridangam strokes they imitate.

They carry no lexical meaning. Their function is to make rhythm sayable, and therefore learnable and transmissible. A teacher can recite a complex rhythmic phrase in two seconds and a student can reproduce it — an efficiency that written notation never matched.

For students, sollukattu do something else valuable: they externalise the rhythm. A student who recites while dancing cannot drift off the beat without noticing. This is why teachers insist on counting aloud even when the student "knows" the piece.

Longer composed rhythmic passages are called jathis or *korvais*, and a concluding rhythmic cadence — the phrase that resolves emphatically onto the sama — is a teermanam.

Nattuvangam: Conducting the Performance

The person who leads a Bharatanatyam performance is the nattuvanar, and what they do is nattuvangam.

In class you will see this as a teacher striking a wooden block (*tattukazhi*) with a stick while reciting sollukattu. On stage, it is done with a small pair of hand cymbals (*talam*), the nattuvanar reciting the syllables and keeping the cycle.

The nattuvanar is not an accompanist. They are the conductor — cueing the dancer, signalling the orchestra, controlling tempo, and holding the whole performance together. Historically the nattuvanars were the hereditary masters of Bharatanatyam: they taught it, composed for it, and conducted it, and the transmission of the art ran through them for generations. The Thanjavur Quartet, four brothers of the nineteenth century, were nattuvanars, and it is largely their work that gave the modern margam its structure.

The Orchestra

A full Bharatanatyam ensemble typically includes:

The nattuvanar with cymbals, leading. A vocalist, carrying the melodic line and the lyrics. The mridangam — the principal double-headed drum of Carnatic music — providing percussion and engaging in rhythmic dialogue with the dancer's feet. A violin or flute for melodic support, and often a veena. Some ensembles include a tambura or drone.

And, not to be overlooked: the dancer's own salangai, the ankle bells, which make the footwork a percussion voice within the ensemble. That is one reason bells are given only when footwork is ready — the dancer is joining the orchestra. Our guide to the salangai pooja explains that milestone.

Raga, Briefly

*Raga* is the melodic framework — a defined set of notes with characteristic phrases, ascent and descent patterns, and an associated emotional colour.

For a dancer, raga matters most in *abhinaya* passages. A Varnam in a raga with a plaintive character asks for different expressive shading than one in a bright, festive raga, even where the choreography is identical. Dancers who develop some ear for raga interpret with more nuance, because they are responding to what the music is actually doing rather than to the words alone. Our guide to the navarasa covers the emotional vocabulary this feeds into.

The Items and Their Musical Demands

The traditional margam is arranged, in part, as a progression of musical difficulty.

Pushpanjali and Alarippu open a recital and are almost pure nritta — set to rhythmic syllables with minimal melody. The demand is rhythmic accuracy. Jatiswaram adds melody but still has no lyrics; it is pure nritta set to *swaras* (musical notes), and it is where rhythmic and melodic coordination is built. Shabdam introduces lyrics and therefore expression, mixing nritta with nritya.

The Varnam is the centrepiece — the longest and most demanding item, combining intricate rhythmic passages with sustained interpretive work on a text, often lasting half an hour or more. Padam and Javali are predominantly expressive, slow, and lyric-driven, where musical sensitivity matters far more than technical footwork. Thillana closes the recital: fast, joyful, rhythmically brilliant, set largely to rhythmic syllables again. A concluding Mangalam offers the final blessing.

A student's musical education, in effect, tracks their progress through these items. Our curriculum timeline guide sets out how long each stage tends to take.

Should Students Study Music Separately?

Not necessarily — but they should not remain ignorant of it either.

Formal Carnatic vocal training is a genuine asset for a dancer and worth considering if a student has the time and appetite. Short of that, a student should aim to know: the tala of every item they dance, how to keep that tala with their hands, the meaning of the lyrics they are interpreting, and how to recite the sollukattu of their own choreography.

That is a modest list, and a surprising number of students who have danced for years cannot tick all four. Those who can are visibly more secure on stage.

At Nrithyakshetra we teach rhythmic theory and sollukattu recitation as part of the curriculum rather than as an optional extra, and our Sanskrit shlokas programme means students develop comfort with the devotional texts and the language of the compositions they will later dance. Students who understand what they are singing about tend to express it far more convincingly.

Learning With Us

Our class programmes at our HSR Layout studio in Bangalore cover technique, rhythm, and expression together, for children from age five, beginners, and adults. Live online classes are available for students elsewhere in India and abroad.

If you would like to know more about how we teach the musical side of Bharatanatyam, come and watch a class — the easiest way to understand nattuvangam is to hear it.