The World of the Raga : Indian Classical Music

The World of the Raga : Indian Classical Music

स्वरवर्णविशेषेण ध्वनिभेदेन वा पुनः ।

रज्यते येन यः कश्चित् स रागः सम्मतः सताम् ॥

The Raga is, as the wise declare,

the sequence of musical notes

and the play of sound

which delights the hearts of men.

 

The World of the Raga

Some scholars believe that the real name of our music is not ‘Sangeet’, which is a general label that includes dance, drama and music, but ‘Raga Vidya’, or the knowledge of Raga. The Raga is the costume of the Swara. From the notes of the scale, the Swara can be dressed and decorated with several thousand Ragas which are, technically speaking, permutations and combinations of the notes of the scale.

We are often asked how many Ragas are there in our music. There is no true answer to this question. The most simplistic answer is of course the mathematical one, which in fact is not an answer at all. From a single scale, it is possible to have 4840 Ragas. With the 72 scales, we can mathematically have 348480 Ragas.

To this, if we add Vakras, Meends, different Shrutis, Vadis and Samvadis we can have several million Ragas. This is of course absurd in the sense that such a number of Ragas cannot be sung. Ragas are finally a kind of experience and their number is limited only by our own capacity to experience different perceptions.

J. Ali Akbar Khan-Sarod-Raga Medhavi

 

 

“The Raga is dressed to look like a bride,” said Ustad Allaudin Khan. In one lifetime it is possible to learn several hundred Ragas but it is not possible to make more than a few our own, in such a way that these Ragas become true to our life. This is difficult.²

 

The Rules of Ragas

There are rules that govern Ragas and these have to be known. These rules are the conditions of construction and are really traditional and not universal. They are more like the rules of languages, strict in one sense within the broad limits of communication and coherence and also of meaning. But these are always in a state of flux being reborn again and again.

Some of these rules are as follows:

A minimum number of notes are necessary to make a Raga. Normally, no Raga is possible with less than five notes. The notes and their nature, whether natural (Shuddha), sharp (Tivra) or flat (Komal) are fixed for each Raga. There are definite rules of ascent and descent, meaning the succession of notes, in the scale of the Raga. There is always one particular note which is stressed and emphasised more than the others. This is a melodic centre, a point of confluence which is not merely structurally important to the Raga but also emotionally vital.

There is also a secondary note which is a point of contrast and reinforcement. There are also specific notes on which alone the musician can pause or rest in the rendering of the Raga. These conditions give rise to certain phrases which are used to give a Raga its identity like the features of a person. The Raga has also its own characteristic movement, pauses and gait.³

 

The Times of Ragas

Ragas also have times and seasons prescribed for them. For example, Yaman is a Raga of the evening and Darbari of the night, Todi of the morning and Brindabani Sarang of the noontime. These rules might seem esoteric to those who have no idea of how artists sing and perform. A good performance in our music is a highly creative art, original to the moment, instantaneous in spirit and perfect in form and content. It is believed that to make such a creative act possible the time-laws of Ragas help. They provide the psycho-physical ambience for the original creation.

But an ambience is not a bondage. For after all the musician is recapturing a psychological state of being and not depicting an outer event, a season or a particular point in time. Yet the tradition of playing a Raga, within a time frame, is so strong and prevalent, that every musician knows how difficult it is to sing a mistimed Raga with true quality. Perhaps it is the force of association, an association which has the sanction of the ages. Or may be time too has its occult impact on the minds of men and we tune ourselves with greater ease to a certain level of awareness at certain times.”

3.-4. Vilayat Khan Sitar-Raga Darbari Kanada

The Dhyana of a Raga

It said that each Raga has Dhyana, a meditative presence, associated with it. The realisation of Dhyana is a vital element of the experience of the Raga. This is why becomes impossible to invent Raga. A Raga can only be discovered. It said that Ragas sleep in the subconscious of the human race and surface various periods of history. Ragas that used constantly sung at beginning of the century, hardly ever heard now as times changed and the need each epoch brings forth the which express the truth of the time.

The Life in a Raga

It is not difficult to accept that Ragas have life in them. A singer may create a complex and technically proficient piece of music but that, despite complexity proficiency, maybe a dead thing. Whatever may be the nature of the Raga produced by the singer, life is its test.

There no doubt that the quality of what we have called life in a Raga would differ from person to person. Listen to Faiyaz Khan and listen Bade Ghulam Khan singing the same Raga. It is easy see the informing life is different in their Ragas although they apply same rules.

Tansen’s Swaras would have had kind of life, Baiju Bawara must had another and Swami Hari Das yet another. For example, when we hear Bade Ghulam Ali Khan singing Malkauns, the nature of Malkauns is determined by rules prescriptions of the Raga, which everyone singing it would uniformally apply, but the kind of life with which Khan Sahib kindles it.

One of the reasons why a Raga cannot be created by merely keeping its rules and constraints is because the Raga is the child of the moment. Like life itself, it is momentarily revealed. It cannot be framed and mounted without losing its life. This is a very important clue in the understanding of the Raga.

It is no use singing a Raga if it has no life in it. It must have the quickening within, and this cannot be administered. We learn a Raga always by imitation. We work step by step, note by note, following the teacher, trying to find how he enters into the heart of a Raga, how he fills it with his own life, till we too can do the same. The Guru Shishya Parampara makes it possible to mingle our Guru’s life with our own in the learning of a Raga.

Unlike a symphony or a concerto, a Raga is not predictable. The Raga is always unfinished. It is a living process and like all living beings its process is its truth. Just as a man’s tomor row is unknown, so is a Raga’s. It is eternally becoming, blossoming out into new and vivid forms. It has no trace of its past in it. Its past is nostalgia and reminiscence. The Raga exists not in the yesterdays and the tomorrows but in the nows of our life.

The River of Raga

The late Bade Ghulam Ali Khan compared the Raga to a river, broad and placid, flowing towards a distant sea. And the composition to a tiny boat crossing the river from one bank to the other. The composition partakes of a small surface of the infinite Raga, travelling over it at various speeds.

Vilambit or slow in the beginning, Madhya or medium midstream, and Drut or fast in the last lap. In any of these speeds, it can travel the river of Raga, for as long as it wants, but its destination is always the far bank where it eventually arrives at the end of the performance. But the Raga flows on uninterrupted to the sea, where the many manifestations of Ragas dissolve in the final Nada Brahman which, like the sound of a seashell in our ear, is the sound of silence.”

6. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan-Vocal-Raga Malkauns

7. Nikhil Banerjee Sitar- Raga Malkauns

Of Shapes and Forms

In a Hindustani musical concert, the first part of the presentation of a Raga is the Alap, the introductory slow movement in which the musician makes us aware of the characteristic mood, the range and depth of feeling involved in the Raga. The main notes, the characteristic progressions, the identifying phrases are lovingly and lingeringly dwelt upon and in the hands of a good musician, the Alap can become an experience, at once emotionally rich and musically intense.

As we can see, it is a graded delineation of a Raga with no rhythmic accompaniment. It makes no effort to set it within fixed measures of time intervals. It is free and unbounded. Therefore it is known as the Anibaddha, the unconfined. At first, the musician usually explores the lower notes of the scale, sometimes dwelling for long on single notes.

Gradually he takes a larger and larger number of notes within the ambit of his musical phrases. It is as if the boundless infinity of the Raga’s ground plan were being laid out, the values and profundities declared the glimmering shafts of insights that at once soothe and dazzle. Slowly the tempo increases. Numerous melodic patterns begin to build up, a basic and simple rhythmical structure is established. This is known as the Jod, especially in instrumental music.

When we say that the Alap has no fixed rhythm we do not mean that it has no pace and its movement is haphazard. It has a pacing and an order and a scheme but it is, as though open-ended. Neither has it got a prescribed length. It ceases spontaneously when the sense of the Raga has been estab lished.

Now follows the Nibaddha, or the bounded part. The set composition’s opening movements begin to unfold. The boundlessness and immensities of the Raga withdraw. The Raga somehow becomes mortal. It is brought down into time. A new complex rhythmical structure, a Tala is introduced. The Tabla, or Pakhawaj or Mridangam, accompanies with the Tala in which the composition is set. It is as if the spirit of the Raga were now endowed with a living body.

The first part of the composition is known as the Sthayee and is fixed and permanent. This is a melodic statement that establishes the theme. Its elaboration is usually limited to notes that build up musical tension. Next follows the Antara or the second movement, which takes the Raga forward into the remaining notes and produces a temporal resolution.

The composition usually starts at a slow pace, the Vilambit. Its concept of time is like that of a child, long, endless without sharp boundaries.

Then the pace increases, sharper and sharper enclosures of time appear in the Madhyalaya, or the medium tempo.

Finally comes the Drut or fast pace. A crescendo is developed as the intricacies of Tala become fully manifest. The performance usually ends with breathtakingly fast patterns-a Jhala in instrumental music or a Tarana in vocal music.

When the song or the musical piece comes to an end, the Tanpura continues its drone. Gradually it fades out as if reminding us of the ephemerality of created things. However formed and definite a creation might seem to us, it is after all only the name and shape-Namarupa, of the Formless. And nothing really dies; it merely withdraws into the silence of the unmanifest in order to be reborn age after age.

8. Vilayat Khan – Sitar-Raga Yaman

9. Amjad Ali Khan Sarod-Raga Puriya Kalyan

 

The World of the Raga : Indian Classical Music
The World of the Raga: Indian Classical Music

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