In Hindustani music (North Indian classical music), a gharānā is a system of social organisation in the Indian subcontinent, linking musicians or dancers by lineage or apprenticeship, and more importantly by adherence to a particular musical style.
The word gharana comes from the Hindi word 'ghar' which means 'house'. It typically refers to the place where the musical ideology originated; for example, some of the gharanas well known for singing khyals are: Gwalior, Delhi, Agra, Indore, Kashmiri, Atrauli-Jaipur, Kirana and Patiala. Four famous kathak gharanas are: Lucknow, Atrauli-Jaipur, Benares and Raigarh.
Background
thumb | right | Kadambari playing sitar by [[Raja Raja Varma]]
Gharana is a lineage which is biological (often patrilineal, father-son, etc.) initially and grows into a disciple chain (referred to by some traditions as "silsila". The chain of disciples and their disciples spreads over generations and is referred to as guru-shishya parampara. The concept is based on the prevalence of performance arts being family traditions in South Asia. Nowadays, the term connotes what Ashok Ranade describes as the "comprehensive musico-aesthetic ideology changing from gharana to gharana."
Etymology
Scholars claim the term gharana" comes from the Hindustani word "ghara," rooted from the Sanskrit word "griha," meaning family, dynasty, or home. Performing musicians and their families immigrated from Delhi to other nearby courts seeking patronage. As a result, these musicians came to be associated with princely states such as Gwalior, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Patiala, and Rampur.
Prominent gharanas
Vocal traditions
Khyal gharanas
The gharanas have distinct styles of presenting the khyal — how much to emphasize and how to enunciate the words of the composition, when to sing the sthayi and antara, whether to sing an unmetered alap in the beginning, what kinds of improvisations to use, how much importance to give to the rhythmic aspect, and so on. However, an individual performer from a gharana may choose to borrow appealing stylistic aspects of another gharana in his or her gayaki (singing style). There are ten prominent khyal gharanas, and they are:
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! class="unsortable"|Gharana !! Founding Artists !! Approximate founding date !! Famous Exponents !! Features
|-
|----------
| Qawwal Bacchon ka Gharana
| Hazrat Amir Khusrau and his 12 disciples
| 13th Century
| Precursor of Mewati gharana, Lucknow gharana, Dilli Gharana, and Patiala gharana
| Oldest Khayal gharana. Embraces wide range of taans, bol baant, bol taan, fast taan pattern, gamak taan, emphasis on melody and laykari, structured badhat of raga. Members of this gharana approach raagdari with more freedom than the dhrupad-informed gharanas, like Gwalior, Jaipur, and Agra. Emphasis on bhav and exposition are the hallmarks of this style.In addition to extensive khayal compositions, the gharana is known for its qawwals.
|----------
| Lucknow gharana
| Miyan Samti
| 17th Century
| Bade Mohammed Khan, Bade Mubarak Ali Khan, Shori Miyan, Miyan Achpal, Yusuf Ali Khan.
| Precursor of Gwalior gharana.
|----------
| Dilli gharana
| Tanras Khan
| 19th Century
| Chand Khan, Nasir Ahmed Khan, Munshi Raziuddin, Naseeruddin Saami, Iqbal Ahmed Khan, Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad
| Stream of Qawwal Bacchon ka Gharana.
|----------
|Gwalior gharana
| Nathan Pir Baksh, Hassu Khan, Haddu Khan, Nathu Khan
| Mid 16th Century
| Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, Omkarnath Thakur, D. V. Paluskar, Kumar Gandharva, Malini Rajurkar, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, N. Rajam, Meeta Pandit, Venkatesh Kumar
| The most noticeable trait of this gharana is strong emphasis on gamaks in taans, as well as use of Bol-baant, bol-taan, no use of sargam, wide range in taans, alankarik taans, descending sapaat taans, roughly similar emphasis on melody and rhythm, preference for simple (as opposed to compound) ragas, repertoire of bandishes, variety of taans.
|----------
|Agra gharana
| Ghagge Khuda Baksh
| Mid-19th century
| Faiyaz Khan, Vilayat Hussain Khan, Sharafat Hussain Khan, C. R. Vyas, Lalith J. Rao, Waseem Ahmed Khan
| Closer to dhrupad with nom-tom type alap and other elements, rhythmic play, frequent use of tisra jati in teentaal, emphasis on voice culture to achieve wide range and powerful throw of voice, bol-baant, bol-taan, rare use of sargam, slower taans, use of jabda taan, repertoire of traditional and self-composed bandishes.
|----------
|Kirana gharana
| Bande Ali Khan, Abdul Karim Khan, Abdul Wahid Khan
| Late-19th century
| Sawai Gandharva, Hirabai Barodekar, Bhimsen Joshi, Gangubai Hangal, Prabha Atre, Anand Bhate
| Kirana is often considered to be the flag-bearer of Hindustani Classical vocal music.
Foremost intention of this gharana is perfect intonation of notes and emphasis on melody, Also, Slow-tempo raga development, long and sustained pitches, usually traditional ragas, use of sargam, very little bol-baant, clarity of text pronunciation, use of some Carnatic ragas and raga features, emphasis on vocal as opposed to instrumental form. Highly decorative and complex taans.
|----------
| Bhendibazaar gharana
| Chhajju Khan, Nazeer Khan, Khadim Hussain Khan
| Late-19th century
| Aman Ali Khan, Anjanibai Malpekar, Amir Khan, Shivkumar Shukla, T. D. Janorikar
| Emphasis on breath control to be able to sing long passages in a single breath, use of merukhand for extended alaps, use of gamak taan and sargam, use of some Carnatic ragas.
|----------
| Jaipur-Atrauli gharana
| Alladiya Khan
| Late-19th century
| Kesarbai Kerkar, Mogubai Kurdikar, Mallikarjun Mansur, Kishori Amonkar, Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande
| Repertoire of rare and complex ragas, based on Agra gharana, use of aakaar for badhat, heavy use of teentaal, rupak, jhaptaal and ada-chautaal, rhythmic play, use of bol-baant and bol-taan, rippling taans, heavy emphasis on taans.
|----------
| Patiala gharana
| Fateh Ali Khan "Karnail", Ali Baksh Khan "Jarnail"
| Late-19th century
| Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Fateh Ali-Amanat Ali Khan, Vasantrao Deshpande, Jagdish Prasad, Ajoy Chakrabarty, Kaushiki Chakraborty
| Patiala is often considered to be the amalgamate of few pre-existing gharanas and has claimed to combine the musical traditions of Delhi gharana, Gwalior gharana and Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana and is known for borrowing elements from other gharanas.
This Gharana is also known for its versatility, not only known for its Khayal singing but also for venturing into other forms of classical music and placing a strong foothold there as well. Emphasis on voice development, roughly similar emphasis on melody and rhythm, bol-baant-like sargam with occasional tonic transpositions, occasional use of bol-taan, variety of taans, fast sargam and taan patterns, may or may not include antara, influence of tappa style.
|----------
| Rampur-Sahaswan gharana
| Inayat Hussain Khan
| Mid 19th century
| Mushtaq Hussain Khan, Shanno Khurana, Rashid Khan (musician), Nissar Hussain Khan, Ghulam Mustafa Khan (singer), Ghulam Sadiq Khan, Ghulam Abbas Khan
| Emphasis on melody, bol-taans, sargam taans, highly varied aakar taans and good hold over laykari, along with strong command over Tarana.
|----------
| Indore gharana
| Amir Khan
| Mid-20th century
| Pandit Amarnath, Kankana Banerjee, Singh Bandhu
| Slow-tempo and leisurely raga development, improvisation mostly in lower and middle octaves, tendency towards serious and expansive ragas, emphasis on melody, judicious use of pause between improvisations, bol alap and sargam using merukhand patterns, sparing application of murki, use of kan swaras in all parts of performance, controlled use of embellishments to preserve introspective quality, rare use of tihai, careful enunciation of text, may or may not include antara, multiple laya jatis in a single taan, mixture of taan types in a single taan, known for ruba'idar tarana (considered similar to chhota khyal).
|----------
| Mewati gharana
| Ghagge Nazir Khan
| Mid-19th Century
| Pandit Maniram, Ghulam Qadir Khan, Jasraj, Sanjeev Abhyankar, Kala Ramnath
| Emphasizes balance between melody and bhava, kana gayaki, merukhand alaps and taans, and sargam. Strong spiritual and contemplative repertoire marked by qawwals and bhajans. Also an instrumental gharana.
|----------
|Sham Chaurasi gharana
| Miyan Chand Khan, Miyan Suraj Khan
| Late-16th Century
| Salamat Ali and Nazakat Ali Khan
| Emphasis on layakari using bol-taan and tihai, fast sargam and taan patterns
|-
|Kunwar Shyam gharana
|Goswami Lalji Maharaj ("Kunwar Shyam")
|Late 19th century
|Laxman Prasad Jaipurwale, Govind Prasad Jaipurwale, Bhavdeep Jaipurwale, Amit Chaudhuri
|Meend-based alap, intracate taan patterns and laykari
|----------
|Panchakshara gharana
|Panchakshara Gawai, Puttaraj Gawai
|Late 19th century
|Panchakshara Gawai, Puttaraj Gawai, Basavaraj Rajguru, Arjun Sa Nakod, Chandrashekhar Puranik Math, Sheshadri Gawai, Siddaram Korwar, Panchakshari Swamimati Katti, Venkatesh Kumar, many more
|Puttaraj Gawai conducted a spiritual and artistic study of the Panchakshara Swara Lipi and musicology, and composed new kritis and bandishas based on it.
In the books they authored—Hindustani Gaanasudha Part 1 and Hindustani Gaanasudha Part 2—they hand-wrote notations for 66 ragas in Braille script.
The gharana has one of the longest lineages of disciples, following traditional guru–shishya parampara.
|}
Dhrupad traditions
The dhrupad tradition includes four original styles:
- Dagarbani ("sadharani geeti")
- Gauharbani gharana|Gauharbani
- Khandarbani gharana
- Nauharbani gharana
Today's surviving dhrupad traditions are descendants of the aforementioned four styles.
- Dagar gharana, founded by the Dagar family
- Bishnupur gharana, founded by Kirtankars in West Bengal (13th century)
- Darbhanga gharana, founded in Darbhanga, Bihar
- Dumraon Gharana, Buxar, Bihar founded by Dumraon Maharaj, and musician Pandit Ghanarang Dubey
- Bettiah gharana, founded in Bettiah, Bihar
- Talwandi gharana
- Mewati gharana, founded by Wahid Khan (Beenkar) and Ghagge Nazir Khan. Descended from Khandarbani gharana.
- Kalpi gharana
Thumri traditions
In the Benares gharana, the words in the text of a song are musically embellished to bring out their meaning, while the Lucknow gharana presents intricately embellished and delicate thumris that are explicit in their eroticism. The principal feature of the thumri of the Patiala gharana is its incorporation of the tappa from the Punjab region. It is with this tappa element that the Patiala gharana makes its impact, departing from the khyal-dominated Benares thumris and the dance-oriented Lucknow thumris. The Benares gharana was founded by Kirtankars in the 13th century and revived by Siddheshwari Devi, Rasoolan Bai, Badi Moti Bai, Mahadev Mishra, Girija Devi (mid-20th century) and Savita Devi.
Instrumental traditions
Tabla traditions
The following are the six widely accepted gharanas (ordered based on chronology of founding):