Letter #4: Indian Ragas, Maestro A.R.Rahman and the Indian Classical Music [13.11.2022]
The only truth is music....
Dear Friend,
Tell me, If this happened to you that there’s one song you have listened to a thousand times, but one day someone explains the meaning of the song, and it completely blows your mind.
Something similar happened when I discovered a few songs with such a deep meaning, but the composition of those songs completely changed how we listen to them. I found this art of music composition so beautiful that I went inside the rabbit hole of music composition.
I revisited every song by the musical maestro A.R. Rahman and found every piece of music by him pure magic. Even the commercial songs have some kind of classical touch. I have this habit to backtrack when we are inside the rabbit hole to reach the origin. I am not sure if this is a common habit, I guess most of us get into a loop. After I visited almost all of the songs, I reached the world of Ragas.
Ragas of Indian Classical Music
“The world by day is like European music; a flowing concourse of vast harmony, composed of concord and discord and many disconnected fragments. And the night world is our Indian music; one pure, deep and tender raga.”
― Rabindranath Tagore
A raga is a melodic framework used in Indian classical music to build melodious music. While reading about different ragas, I came across a raga, Raga Behag. This raga is special because I love reading about the history of the Indian subcontinent. Whenever I pick a book in this genre, I play Raga Behag. When discussing Ragas, it would be a crime if we don’t talk about Raga Bhairavi. When I was young, I remember listening to Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Raga Bhairavi in the morning. All the ragas and music of pandit Bhimsen Joshi capture the whole universe.
I’ll end my letter here, my friend.
Yours,
Bohemian Dialogue