Melakarta ragas of Carnatic music. While ragas in Hindustani music are divided into thaats, ragas in Carnatic music are divided into melakartas.

A raga[a][b] (/ˈrɑːɡə/ RAH-gə; IAST: rāga, Sanskrit: [ɾäːɡɐ]; lit. 'colouring', 'tingeing' or 'dyeing')[1][2] is a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music akin to a melodic mode.[3] It is central to classical Indian music.[4] Each raga consists of an array of melodic structures with musical motifs; and, from the perspective of the Indian tradition, the resulting music has the ability to "colour the mind" as it engages the emotions of the audience.[1][2][4]

Each raga provides the musician with a musical framework within which to improvise.[3][5][6] Improvisation by the musician involves creating sequences of notes allowed by the raga in keeping with rules specific to the raga. Ragas range from small ragas like Bahar and Sahana that are not much more than songs to big ragas like Malkauns, Darbari and Yaman, which have great scope for improvisation and for which performances can last over an hour. Ragas may change over time, with an example being Marwa, the primary development of which has been going down into the lower octave, in contrast with the traditional middle octave.[7] Each raga traditionally has an emotional significance and symbolic associations such as with season, time and mood.[3] Ragas are considered a means in the Indian musical tradition for evoking specific feelings in listeners. Hundreds of ragas are recognized in the classical tradition, of which about 30 are common,[3][6] and each raga has its "own unique melodic personality".[8]

There are two main classical music traditions, Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian), and the concept of raga is shared by both.[5] Raga is also found in Sikh traditions such as in Guru Granth Sahib, the primary scripture of Sikhism.[9] Similarly, it is a part of the qawwali tradition in Sufi Islamic communities of South Asia.[10] Some popular Indian film songs and ghazals use ragas in their composition.[11]

Every raga has a svara (a note or named pitch) called shadja, or adhara sadja, whose pitch may be chosen arbitrarily by the performer. This is taken to mark the beginning and end of the saptak (loosely, octave). The raga also contains an adhista, which is either the svara Ma or the svara Pa. The adhista divides the octave into two parts or anga – the purvanga, which contains lower notes, and the uttaranga, which contains higher notes. Every raga has a vadi and a samvadi. The vadi is the most prominent svara, which means that an improvising musician emphasizes or pays more attention to the vadi than to other notes. The samvadi is consonant with the vadi (always from the anga that does not contain the vadi) and is the second most prominent svara in the raga.[clarification needed]

Terminology

The Sanskrit word rāga (Sanskrit: राग) has Indian roots, as the Indo-European root *reg- connotes 'to dye'. Cognates are found in Greek, Persian, Khwarezmian, Kurdish. The words "red" and "rado" are also related.[12] According to Monier Monier-Williams, the term comes from a Sanskrit word for "the act of colouring or dyeing", or simply a "colour, hue, tint, dye".[13] The term also connotes an emotional state referring to a "feeling, affection, desire, interest, joy or delight", particularly related to passion, love, or sympathy for a subject or something.[14] In the context of ancient Indian music, the term refers to a harmonious note, melody, formula, building block of music available to a musician to construct a state of experience in the audience.[13]

The word appears in the ancient Principal Upanishads of Hinduism, as well as the Bhagavad Gita.[15] For example, verse 3.5 of the Maitri Upanishad and verse 2.2.9 of the Mundaka Upanishad contain the word rāga. The Mundaka Upanishad uses it in its discussion of soul (Atman-Brahman) and matter (Prakriti), with the sense that the soul does not "colour, dye, stain, tint" the matter.[16] The Maitri Upanishad uses the term in the sense of "passion, inner quality, psychological state".[15][17] The term rāga is also found in ancient texts of Buddhism where it connotes "passion, sensuality, lust, desire" for pleasurable experiences as one of three impurities of a character.[18][19] Alternatively, rāga is used in Buddhist texts in the sense of "color, dye, hue".[18][19][20]

The term rāga in the modern connotation of a melodic format occurs in the Brihaddeshi by Mataṅga Muni dated c. 8th century,[23] or possibly 9th century.[24] The Brihaddeshi describes rāga as "a combination of tones which, with beautiful illuminating graces, pleases the people in general".[25]

According to Emmie te Nijenhuis, a professor in Indian musicology, the Dattilam section of Brihaddeshi has survived into the modern times, but the details of ancient music scholars mentioned in the extant text suggest a more established tradition by the time this text was composed.[23] The same essential idea and prototypical framework is found in ancient Hindu texts, such as the Naradiyasiksa and the classic Sanskrit work Natya Shastra by Bharata Muni, whose chronology has been estimated to sometime between 500 BCE and 500 CE,[26] probably between 200 BCE and 200 CE.[27]

Bharata describes a series of empirical experiments he did with the Veena, then compared what he heard, noting the relationship of fifth intervals as a function of intentionally induced change to the instrument's tuning. Bharata states that certain combinations of notes are pleasant, and certain others are not so. His methods of experimenting with the instrument triggered further work by ancient Indian scholars, leading to the development of successive permutations, as well as theories of musical note inter-relationships, interlocking scales and how this makes the listener feel.[24] Bharata discusses Bhairava, Kaushika, Hindola, Dipaka, SrI-rāga, and Megha. Bharata states that these can to trigger a certain affection and the ability to "color the emotional state" in the audience.[13][24] His encyclopedic Natya Shastra links his studies on music to the performance arts, and it has been influential in Indian performance arts tradition.[28][29]

The other ancient text, Naradiyasiksa dated to be from the 1st century BCE, discusses secular and religious music, compares the respective musical notes.[30] This is earliest known text that reverentially names each musical note to be a deity, describing it in terms of varna ('colours') and other motifs such as parts of fingers, an approach that is conceptually similar to the 12th century Guidonian hand in European music.[30] The study that mathematically arranges rhythms and modes (rāga) has been called prastāra ('matrix').(Khan 1996, p. 89, Quote: "… the Sanskrit word prastāra, … means mathematical arrangement of rhythms and modes. In the Indian system of music there are about the 500 modes and 300 different rhythms which are used in everyday music. The modes are called Ragas.")[31]

In the ancient texts of Hinduism, the term for the technical mode part of rāga was jati. Later, jati evolved to mean quantitative class of scales, while rāga evolved to become a more sophisticated concept that included the experience of the audience.[32] A figurative sense of the word as 'passion, love, desire, delight' is also found in the Mahabharata. The specialized sense of 'loveliness, beauty', especially of voice or song, emerges in classical Sanskrit, used by Kalidasa and in the Panchatantra.[33]