ABSTRACT
The Sanskrit word tāḷa covers the whole subject of musical meter in Indian music. A tala is a metrical framework, or structure of beats, within which pieces of music are composed and performed. In South India, as in the northern area, modern talas are cyclic; that is, a piece of music has the same repeating metrical structure from beginning to end. In this way, South Indian talas are analogous to meters in Western music. There are important differences between talas and meters, however. Talas may be much longer. One Karnatak tala is twenty-nine beats long, and in performance each cycle takes up to forty-five seconds, much longer than any Western meter. Another difference concerns accentual structure. In Western 3/4 time, every measure of this meter has the same downbeat accent: one-two-three—a strong beat followed by two weak beats. South Indian talas have no inherently strong or weak beats; instead, accents are the result of the shape of phrases.
