பதம்

Every padam speaks in a character's voice. The heroine (nayika), her confidante (Tamil tozhi) or the hero (nayaka) talks of longing, separation or union. Telugu padams often take Krishna as the hero, and Tamil padams often take Murugan.

The poems allow two readings. Heard one way, they describe human love in concrete settings: many of Kshetrayya's heroines are courtesans, mistresses or wives addressing the god as a lover. Heard through bhakti, or devotion, the hero stands for God, the heroine for the human soul and the confidante for the guru.

Sanskrit poetics sorted heroines into types, among them eight by their attitude to the lover, such as the woman waiting dressed for her lover or the woman angered by his betrayal. An anonymous late 18th-century Telugu work applied such a scheme to Kshetrayya's songs. His translators A. K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman argue that his heroines are too individual to fit any ready-made type.

A padam has three kinds of section. The pallavi, its opening line, works as a refrain. The anupallavi, a second line, often joins it, and the pair returns after each charanam, or verse; most padams have three. Some padams start from the anupallavi instead.

All the sections share one melodic pattern. A padam carries few sangatis, the set variations a singer adds to a repeated line, and keeps its phrases simple while still showing the character of the raga. The kriti, by comparison, gives the singer broad scope for improvised neraval, variations on a line of text, and kalpana swaras, improvised passages in sol-fa syllables.

Balasaraswati recalled the singing of the Mylapore dancer Gowri Amma as full of curves, glides and gamakas, the oscillations of a note, and of bhava, or feeling.

In the Bharatanatyam recital Kapila Vatsyayan describes, padams come straight after the varnam, a central piece that can last about an hour, and give a period of ease before the closing tillana. A dancer may also add a kirtana, svarajati or javali.

The padam gives the dancer uninterrupted scope for abhinaya, conveying the text through hands, eyes and face more than footwork. One dancer may play heroine, hero, confidante and the other woman in turn, with no change of costume. Balasaraswati recalled two ways of singing for the dance: Gowri Amma sang Tamil padams herself while miming them, and Balasaraswati's mother Jayammal and aunt Lakshmiratnam sang padams during Gowri Amma's performances.

Kuchipudi dancers also perform Kshetrayya's padams. The pada varnam is a different item, mixing swara passages for footwork with text for abhinaya. In Kathakali, padam names the sung verses of the play, a separate usage.