Zayn Malik’s new album Konnakol reimagines Carnatic rhythm

The first time you register what Zayn Malik is doing on Konnakol, it almost slips past you. He strips rhythm back to its most human origin — breath, syllable, repetition — and rebuilds his sound from there. A beat seems to form, dissolve and then return in a different shape. It sounds familiar, but it really isn’t. And that’s when you realise this isn’t percussion at all. What you are hearing is a voice set into rhythmic motion.

Konnakol,  the art of performing percussion syllables vocally in Carnatic music, takes its premise seriously. Traditionally, Konnakol is the spoken language of rhythm, a way of reciting complex percussive patterns using syllables that correspond to instruments such as the mridangam. The word itself draws from Telugu and Tamil roots, loosely translating to ‘reciting rhythmic syllables’, but the experience of it is far more intricate. It is counting, memory, breath control and improvisation, all at once. It is also crucially learned before the instrument is ever played.