Hindustani Music

Raga Introduction


Raga is a word which means something which is associated with Emotion. It came from the Sanskrit word Ranj means pleasing.
The raga is the set of the particular notes to create the certain melodic effect, i.e., mood. It is not only the mode like in the western music, but rather then we can say that it is the melodic mode.It is not important to put emphasize into the scale or notes rather then we should explore it based on the mood. Same scale of the notes can produce the different effects based on the playing type.
Let us define some terms like ascending-descending of the raga. The set of the notes that is used in the raga arranged in the ascending manner is known as ascending of the raga, similarly if the notes are arranged in the descending manner is known as descending of the raga. The ascending is known as Aroh and descending is known as Avroh in the terms of the classical music language.
Let us take some example to understand this, Raga Bhupali has five notes. Its Aroh is Sa,Re,Ga,Pa,Dha,Sa’ and avroh is Sa’,Dha,Pa,Ga,Re,Sa. The same notes are used in the rag Deshkar but its effect is different. Raga bhupali has very clam effect whereas Raga Deskar is very Playful.

Every raga has its Vadi swar ( main note on which the most emphasis given) and the Samvadi Swar ( second main note on which the emphasis given). Here in raga Bhupali’s vadi swar is Ga and Samvadi swar is Dha, whereas raga Deskar’s vadi swar is Dha and Samvadi swar is Ga. To understan this better we can say the vadi swar and samvadi swar are the notes which talks with each other.
Any raga has its Pakad by which it is identified mostly. Pakad is a smallest set of the notes which can produce the same effect.
All the ragas are derived from its parent scale known as “Thaat”. Thaat contains all the seven notes with its pure or flatter form (not together). we can say that thaat is nearly matches the mode theory of the western music. There are total 10 thaats in the hindustani classical music.
There are some rules for the raga
1. It should have at least five notes.
2. It must have Sa as one note.
3. It should have Pa or Ma, we cannot omit this two notes together
4. Any raga should not contain notes with its flatter version. For example raga should not have      Re with Komal Re. There are some exception like raga Lalit, Kedar etc.

Raga has its jati. The exact meaning of the jati in English is difficult for this, but we can say that every raga has its family by which it is categorize. The basis for this categorization are the number of the notes that contained in the raga. The there main jati of the raga are
1. Audav
2. Shadav
3.Sampoorna
We know that a raga should have at least five notes, so its first jati will be the one which contain at least five notes which is Audav ( a snakrit word meaning five). Second jati will be Shadav which contains six notes (Shadav in sankrit means six). Third jati is sampoorna (meaning all,total,entire) which contains the seven notes.
By the combination of the above three jatis we can get total 9 jatis like audav-audav means five notes in ascending and five notes descending, audav-shadav, audav- sampoorna etc.
Every raga has its singing time, in old ancient texts has defined its time, but nowadays artists plays or sings raga not following the time theory.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.