Talks By The Firelight 2.11: Brihas, Bhava and Beyond

Shyamala Vinod, Musicologist and Voice Therapist

“Voices are fascinating. Every voice is distinctly alluring and different in its own way”. Dr. Shyamala Vinod is an accomplished musicologist, vocalist, and a proficient voice therapist. She offers voice culture training to some of the top-ranking vocalists of India. Among the many people who have benefited from her expertise are Smt. Sudha Raghunathan, Shri. P. Unnikrishnan, Amrutha Murali and many others from the Carnatic music industry.

Read on as she shares her thoughts and experiences in the field of music.

So you are a musicologist by profession. What inclined you towards this field? Also, who was your inspiration as you came into this industry?

I’ve been singing since my childhood. When I was about 10, my father encouraged me to pursue music as a career. As I grew up, I also had the great fortune of meeting Mrs. Vani Jayaram when I was about 14 or 15 years old. She judged a competition that I won back then and took me in as her disciple. She taught me semi-classical and Hindustani music. After that came Musicology, which I took interest in once I started pursuing B.A Music.

I also completed my B.A, M.A, M.Phil, and Ph.D. in music following which I completed a 4-year course on voxology. Talking about my inspirations, as a vocalist I would quote Vani Amma. She was my first guru and has always been a person I look up to. With regard to musicology, I would call my guru, Dr. N. Ramanathan, one of India’s most prominent music theoreticians as my inspiration.

What are some styles of music that you are proficient in?

For my Ph.D. I had to learn Arabic Classical music since my thesis was a comparative study of Arabic Maqamat and South Indian Classical Ragas. Analyzing maqams (equivalents of ragas in Arabic music) required a proper study of their style of music, which I did. Other than that, I am also exposed to the basic theory of western classical music and a little bit of Chinese classical as well. And of course, I am also proficient in South Indian Classical music, with it being the first music style I was taught and exposed to.

Talking about voices, not everybody can understand and diagnose people’s voices. In that respect, do you think that you have an ability of sorts, that lets you recognize the special characteristics in a person’s voice?

During the time when I had just begun to sing on stage, I was a part of the All India Radio Junior Youth Choir. When I used to go for recordings, I used to observe how the music producers divided the singers into groups based on the pitch. Right from then, I started getting interested in voices. It used to intrigue me, as to why a person can sing only a suitable pitch and cannot reach beyond that. Also, the unique characteristics of each voice was a topic of constant thought to me.

By the time I was 14 or so, I could recognize the voices of most of the leading singers in India. Just 2–3 lines of the song would lead me to identify the singer, without even having to listen to the entire song. I would recognize the singer even if he/she was mimicking a voice, like how popular playback singer Kishore Kumar did. With God’s grace, that ability still lies with me and thankfully enough, fate landed me at a course that dealt with voices.

As a part of your coaching, you train your students in voice culture and voice therapy. Could you tell us more about the approach that you follow and the science behind it?

I am a voice therapist and not a voice culture specialist. There’s a lot of mixed opinions about both of them. Voice culture, in general, is about making your voice better, which is something everyone does and should do. But getting your voice cultured through a professional who has had a lot of experience in the field is something that cannot be generalized.

Each voice is unique and the needs demanded by each voice is different. What suits one person may not suit the other. Voxology, the course I’ve been taught is a nonclinical therapy of the voice. The moment I mention the word therapy, the entire process becomes prescriptive and individualized. That is the difference between voice therapy and voice culture, with the former being something that can be generalized.

Talking about my approach, I begin with an initial assessment of the voice, either in person or through calls or recordings for foreign clients. Once the voice assessment is done, I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the voice and then start the rectification process. Also, it is not just singers who come to me. People such as lawyers, teachers, and pastors too request for voice therapy. I enquire about the difficulties that a person is facing with his/her voice and based on that, I conclude the rectification process. This is the second stage. The therapy is concluded with the next two stages, stage 3 being the voice rehabilitation process and stage 4 involving the enhancement of the voice.

Is there something that you’d define as an ideal voice? If yes, have you come across people who have come close to having such a voice?

There is no ideal voice as per my guru Dr. Mohammed’s school of thought. I hold the same opinion too. Each voice has its strengths and weaknesses. The process of strengthening the strengths and managing the weaknesses is what voxology is all about. A successful person should know how to project the strengths and overcome the weaknesses. But of course, the degree of strengths and weaknesses vary from person to person. There have been voices that project very little of their weaknesses to the listener’s ears. Going by those terms, I have always been overwhelmed by the voice of Hindustani Classical Singer, Parveen Sultana, playback singer Dr. K. J. Yesudas. I’ve also been fascinated by the voice of late south Indian classical singer Dr. K. V. Narayanaswamy and Latha Mangeshkar Ji. These are some voices that left me overawed as I studied them.

Brihas or Bhava. What should an upcoming playback singer ideally tune his voice for?

Ideally both. Brihas can be developed over time but a lot of ability for brihas should happen naturally in the voice. If one pushes the voice to emulate someone else, it loses its elasticity. There have been people who’ve asked me on how to make the flow of their brihas smoother. But they fail to understand that this is a natural tendency of the voice. Yes, one has to develop the briha tendency to some extent to do justice to the demand of the style but bhava is something that is required, come-what-may, in any song or voice. Even when you have a good briha shareera (the ability to produce musical ornamentations with ease), bhava is something one shouldn’t lack. So, I consider both of them important but I would definitely place bhava on a higher platform.

Do you think that a collaboration between voice specialists and doctors, say ENT consultants is possible to make this therapy accessible to more of the public?

Yes of course. It is possible and it is happening already. I have a clinical counterpart, Dr. Krishna Kumar from Apollo Hospitals. Both of us work together on voices. When people with voice problems go to him, he begins with a clinical consultation. Depending on whether they need voice therapy or not, he sends them to me. In the same way, when people come to me for voice therapy, there are times when I have to get a clearer picture as to whether the problem has something to do with the person’s vocal cords. In such cases, I send them to him and he has a look at the vocal cords through special medical equipment. So yes, such a collaboration is already happening and we hope that it reaches more people.

What are your plans for the future as a musicologist?

A. As a musicologist, I’m keen on expanding my awareness of other styles of music by reading more about them and also by exploring areas of music that haven’t been researched upon. In terms of voice therapy, I intend to do a lot. I’m trying to change some of the glaring mistakes in vocal production in South indian classical music. I’m taking the courage and confidence to talk about this so openly because I feel that I’m destined to do this. I can say, with the experience I’ve had by training some of India’s top ranking voices, that there is something gravely wrong in the voice production techniques in our style of singing. I’m trying to rectify that through my techniques in voice therapy. Also by recording the entire process of error rectification, I would like to document them so that the next generation will learn from the errors and trials of the current generation.

This article was written in collaboration with Abhishek Ramachandran, Antony Terence and Festember’s Guest Lectures team.