Niraval is a form of virtuosic improvisation in Carnatic music whereby a line within a lyric song is repeated in various melodic and rhythmic manifestations within the ragam (melodic framework) and talam (beat cycle). For a Carnatic singer, niraval makes different aesthetic demands than other forms of non-textual improvisation within the tradition. To convey artful, sincere renditions of the same lyrical text, the singer-musician must imaginatively devise musically interesting repetitions while attending to poetic features such as vowel length/shape, word order, and stress. Combining melodic and rhythmic skill and verbal artistry in a range of South Indian languages, Carnatic singers display extraordinary communicative competence and captivate their audiences as illustrated by analyses of niraval performances in Sydney’s Carnatic music community. Increased investigation of singing from the perspective of verbal art blurs the boundaries between anthropological linguistics and ethnomusicology, in a vocal anthropology (Feld, Fox, Porcello and Samuels 2004), which benefits from linguistic insight and contributes to our understanding of the poetic function of language.