Abstract

Any Musical form, constitutes of three fundamental aspects: Raga, Tala/Laya and Bhava. Moreover, Vocal Music has an additional aspect, i.e. the lyrical or poetic aspect. Dhrupad, as described by several practitioners, musicologists and scholars of the field, is a fine blend of these three fundamental aspects. Khayal, which probably broke out of Dhrupad in order to explore novel aesthetic avenues, amalgamates these aspects while also reflecting the inherited elements from its parent genre, Dhrupad, and still maintains uniqueness in its approach towards these fundamental aspects. Laya or the rhythmic aspect is very crucial to these genres in terms of both, the differences and similarities that Dhrupad and Khayal have between them and thus, the following research paper aims to comparatively analyse this aspect in order to get a better understanding of the approach towards the laya aspect in these two genres.