From what we know, dhrupad originated as devotional singing in Hindu temples. Under the Islamic Mughal ("Mogul") rule, it was appropriated as court music.
Dhrupad, as we know it today, has a repertoire of short songs (two to sixteen lines) which are performed by a solo singer, or a small number of singers in unison, to the beat of a double-headed barrel drum, the pakhawaj. The songs are mostly in praise of Hindu deities, but in recent centuries, Islamic or simply regalist lyrics have been written and added to the repertoire. The song itself, which is known as the dhrupad, is preceded in performance by a wholly improvised section, the alap, without accompaniment of the drum. The alap in dhrupad is sung without words, using instead a set of syllables (most commonly om, num, re, ri, na, ta, tom) popularly thought to be derived from a sacred mantra.
Today, alap comprises the greater part of most dhrupad performance. It can easily last an hour, with a slow tempo and gradual, controlled development of melody. The last part of the alap is called the nomtom; here, the syllables are sung at a very rapid pace, sometimes incorporating very special-sounding ornamentation techniques (gamaka), and the nomtom has become one of the most popular parts of dhrupad concerts.
Dhrupad is primarily a vocal music, performed by men. (In recent years, a few women have sung dhrupad.) Traditionally, the only instrument that played dhrupad was the been, which is technically a fretted stick zither with strings set along a bamboo or wooden neck with a large gourd mounted at each end. The word "been" is a Bengali form of the Sanskrit "veena", the generic word used for plucked-string instruments all over India. To differentiate the been from the different south Indian veena, the latter is often called Saraswati Veena and the former Rudra Veena.
Some players have used other instruments for dhrupad. Preferably, such instruments should have a deep bass register and long sustain. As in all Indian classical playing, the instruments must support bending of the note.
The 18th Century saw the beginning of a great decline of dhrupad singing. A new genre, khyal, gained popularity at dhrupad's expense. It placed fewer constraints on the singers and allowed for displays of virtuosity that were rare in dhrupad. In addition, the basically Hindu dhrupad was somewhat out of context in a Muslim setting; here, khyal offered something less devotional and more entertaining. Also, new instruments were being developed - the sitar and the sarod - that were not suited to the slow tempo and low register favoured by dhrupad, so that dhrupad instrumental also began to lose ground.
As a consequence, in the first half of the 20th Century khyal was all-pervasive, along with the new instrumental style of classical music, and dhrupad was becoming all but extinct. Only a few families carried on the tradition.
Almost single-handedly, one of these families, the Dagars, brought about the dhrupad revival. Dagar singers toured widely and were beginning to be recorded. Soon, this was to co-incide with the growing foreign interest in Indian music. Starting in the 1960s, dhrupad was to become almost more popular outside India than at home. Perhaps it is the stylistically easier style on the Western ear, but, as it is the older style, it was also seen as the most "genuine" and traditional. The Dagar revival also helped breathe new life into a few other families of dhrupad singers.
Today, dhrupad enjoys a place as a well-known, respected but not very popular genre on the north Indian classical scene. It is no longer on the brink of extinction.Recent History