Morsing
मोर्सिंग
The small metal jaw harp that follows the mridangam in Carnatic concerts
The morsing is a small metal jaw harp in Carnatic percussion. The player presses it to the front teeth, plucks its tongue and uses the mouth as a resonator while following the mridangam.
Know the instrument
Explore its sound, construction and care in the instrument guide.
History & Evolution
Jaw harps are played across most of Eurasia and South and South-East Asia. The Grinnell College collection reports etymological evidence that the instrument reached the subcontinent from the north-west. Citing Curt Sachs, it places India at the boundary between West Asian and East Asian types of jaw harp, and it links the morsing's form and musical context to West Asian traditions. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds iron jaw harps in its Indian collections: one catalogued as from Avadh, and a mochanga presented in 1890 by Sourindro Mohun Tagore. None carries a date of making.
Sruti magazine traces one lineage in detail. L. Bhimachar (1931 to 2024), of Bangalore, honed his morsing by listening to the All India Radio (AIR) artists Madras R. V. Pakkirisamy and Pudukkottai Mahadevan. He developed his own bani, a style or school of playing, that stresses the percussion syllables suited to the morsing, where most players voiced the mridangam syllables with force. His children B. Rajashekar and Bhagyalakshmi M. Krishna are senior morsing artists, and in 2009 Rajashekar became the first morsing player from Karnataka given an A grade by AIR.
- About 4,000 years ago
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Early bone jaw harps in China
The jaw harp family is at least 4,000 years old. In 2018 archaeologists announced more than 20 bone jaw harps of that age from Shimao in Shaanxi, which Xinhua reported as the earliest string instruments found in China.
- Early 1900s (possible)
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Enters Carnatic concerts
Sruti magazine gives the early 1900s as a possible date for the morsing's entry into Carnatic concerts. There it came to keep the tala, the rhythmic cycle, alongside the mridangam and the other percussion. - 1940s to 1979
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L. Bhimachar and All India Radio
L. Bhimachar of Bangalore takes up the morsing in the early 1940s, after studying vocal music and mridangam. In 1979 AIR Bangalore opens a post for a morsing artist and appoints him as its first. - 2006 to 2024
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Morching Tarang and national award
The Bhimachar family takes its Morching Tarang to a jaw harp festival in Amsterdam in 2006. A.S. Krishnan, a top-grade AIR Chennai artist, receives the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2024 for Carnatic instrumental music on the morsing.
Technical Aspects
Mouth and Breath
The player's mouth and breath decide which parts of the morsing's sound are heard. The plucked tongue gives one fundamental pitch plus a series of harmonics, higher tones above it. Shaped as if forming different vowels, the mouth becomes a resonator that reinforces one harmonic at a time. Breathing out while playing, Grinnell notes, adds a wind-instrument quality.
Tongue and Tuning
The morsing has a horseshoe-shaped frame with two straight arms. A metal tongue, or lamella, is fixed to the rounded end and runs between the arms. Its free end bends up to form the trigger that the player strikes. Players choose a morsing matching the soloist's sruti, the reference pitch; Sruti magazine notes that the instrument can be tuned to slightly different pitches.
Pitch and Melody
A single morsing keeps a fixed fundamental pitch, according to Grinnell; mouth and tongue change its overtones and timbre. To use the morsing as a melodic instrument, L. Bhimachar's children created the Morching Tarang, a piece for several morsings, each tuned to a different note of one raga (melodic framework). They played it for 30 minutes at the Fifth International Jew's Harp Festival in Amsterdam in July 2006.
Journey to Mastery
Follow this structured journey to master this discipline
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Grip and Plucking
The student starts with the grip and the stroke. Grinnell describes the player seated cross-legged, the left hand pressing the frame against the front teeth and the right thumb flexing the metal tongue and releasing it, so that nothing touches it as it vibrates. The lips help keep the frame in contact with the teeth.
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Breath and mouth shaping
The student plucks once and moves through several mouth shapes on the one stroke, as if forming different vowels, then repeats the sequence while breathing out, which adds a wind quality to the sound. Each change of colour should be made on purpose and be repeatable on the next stroke.
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Mridangam syllables and tala
The student learns the mridangam's syllables and the patterns they form within a tala, the rhythmic cycle, because the morsing's part is built from that vocabulary: players articulate the jati with the mouth as they play. L. Bhimachar, Sruti reports, studied vocal music and the mridangam before he took up the morsing in the early 1940s.
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Shadowing the Mridangam
The student learns to accompany, keeping the tala alongside the mridangam and the other drums through a whole piece. Grinnell describes the morsing in this role as a surrogate drum that imitates the timbre and rhythmic complexity of Carnatic drumming. Sruti adds that the South Indian morsing can be tuned to slightly different pitches, so the player picks one that matches the soloist's tonic.
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Tani Avartanam
The final stage is the tani avartanam, the percussion solo played within a main item, in its tala and tempo. The mridangam leads it, and the other percussion, the morsing among them, may join. The student prepares patterns of their own in that tala, learns to answer another player's phrase, and rehearses the closing passage with the group.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can a beginner, a child or a returning player start learning the morsing, the Carnatic jaw harp?
KalaSudha teaches the morsing online and in workshops, and every beginner starts at Foundation level. You learn to hold the frame against your front teeth, firmly but lightly, and to pluck the bent tip for an even sound. Children learn with us as well as adults: ask us about a starting age and about a size for a younger learner.
Players back after a long break start again where they left off. Our courses run in levels, so your teacher first hears where you stand.
Have more questions? Contact our support team and we'll be happy to help!