A raga (Sanskrit rāga राग,રાગ, রাগ, literally "colour, hue" but also "beauty, melody"; also spelled raag, rag, ragam) is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.
It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made. However, it is important to remember that the way the notes are rendered in musical phrases and the mood they convey are even more important in defining a raga than the notes themselves. In the Indian musical tradition, rāgas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons. Indian classical music is always set in a rāga. Non-classical music such as popular Indian film songs and ghazals sometimes use rāgas in their compositions.
Joep Bor of the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music defined Raga as "tonal framework for composition and improvisation." Nazir Jairazbhoy, chairman of UCLA's department of ethnomusicology, characterized ragas as separated by scale, line of ascent and descent, transilience, emphasized notes and register, and intonation and ornaments.
Terminology
It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made. However, it is important to remember that the way the notes are rendered in musical phrases and the mood they convey are even more important in defining a raga than the notes themselves. In the Indian musical tradition, rāgas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons. Indian classical music is always set in a rāga. Non-classical music such as popular Indian film songs and ghazals sometimes use rāgas in their compositions.
Joep Bor of the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music defined Raga as "tonal framework for composition and improvisation." Nazir Jairazbhoy, chairman of UCLA's department of ethnomusicology, characterized ragas as separated by scale, line of ascent and descent, transilience, emphasized notes and register, and intonation and ornaments.
The Sanskrit noun rāga is derived from the verbal root rañj "to colour, to dye". It is used in the literal sense of "the act of dyeing", and also "colour, hue, tint", especially "red colour" in the Sanskrit epics. A figurative sense "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.
The term first occurs in a technical context in the Brihaddeshi (dated ca. 5th to 8th century), where it is described as "a combination of tones which, with beautiful illuminating graces, pleases the people in general".
Rāginī (Devanagari: रागिनी) is a term for the "feminine" counterpart or "wife" to a rāga. The rāga-rāgini scheme from about the 14th century aligned 6 'male' rāgas with 6 'wives'.
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