Part of Carnatic Classical
Carnatic music, the classical tradition of South India, builds on raga and tala and centres on the voice and the kriti. Students begin with exercises in raga Mayamalavagowla.
Historical Timeline
Sanskrit padams appear as early as Jayadeva's Gitagovinda in the 12th century. In South India the form took its standard shape with Annamacharya (Annamayya, 1424 to 1503), who composed over fourteen thousand Telugu padams to Venkatesvara at Tirupati. Copperplates in the temple kept them until their rediscovery in the second decade of the 20th century. Between the 15th and 18th centuries the Telugu padam reached its expressive peak in southern Andhra and the Tamil region.
The best-known padams carry the signature (mudra) Muvva Gopala, Krishna as the cowherd of Muvva, and tradition credits them to Kshetrayya. Scholars debate whether one poet stands behind that name. The scholar Harshita Mruthinti Kamath argues for a persona built over three centuries and suggests that courtesans composed some of the songs; a published rejoinder cites earlier written testimony to the poet. Tradition places his birth at Muvva, near Kuchipudi, a link the translators of his songs call far from certain. In the early 18th century Sarangapani wrote padams signed Venugopala at Karvetinagaram, and about two hundred of them survive in print.
Kshetrayya Era
One of his own padams says Kshetrayya sang for Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai, Vijayaraghava Nayaka of Tanjavur and the Padshah of Golconda, which dates him to the mid-17th century. Fewer than four hundred of his padams survive.
Court and devadasi repertoire
Padams belong to devadasis, hereditary women dancers and singers serving temples and courts, and to their nattuvanar musicians. The Maratha kings of Tanjavur patronise a large padam literature, and dance masters such as Nellayappa Pillai hold stores of padams and javalis.
Concert stage and dance revival
As the devadasi tradition ends, padams move to the concert stage. Reformers question their erotic content, and new editors recast Kshetrayya's songs as spiritual allegory. The family of Veena Dhanammal, including her granddaughter T. Balasaraswati, carries the repertoire forward.
Contemporary Practice
In 1975 Balasaraswati rejects calls to purge sringara, the mood of love, from Bharatanatyam. By 1994 scholars describe padams as a major part of both vocal and dance repertoire in South India.
Playing Techniques
Love and Devotion
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.
Structure and Sound
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.
The Padam in Dance
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.
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