Devotional Music in Raga
Hindustani raga cannot be summed up in just a few words. Raga touches all areas of music. Theatre, dance, song, devotional services, story-telling, poetry, and any and all combinations of the aforementioned areas are also examples of raga. In defining the function of raga, we must first question "what is a raga?" "In the broadest sense, the word refers to the colors and more specifically, the emotion or mood produced by a particular combination or sequence of pitches. In a technical sense, raga can be described as lying on the continuum between a scale and a mode, encompassing both straight, emotionally neutral lines of ascent and descent and a fixed song or melody full of meaning." (Alison, Arnold pg.64) The timing and performance of raga was also crucial. "a raga performance may be a huge structure, permitting large-scale expansions in time and melodic variation; or it may be quite small and confining, with no more than a short exposition of its delicate miniturism." (Alison, Arnold, pg.64)Despite the intense emotion and feeling of raga, along with its many moods, there are great restrictions. " The art of this Indian music has been called guided improvisation, meaning that at all times the musician must be
It is impossible to casually describe raga. "theoretically, thousands of ragas may exist. In Indian books there are occasional lists of up to 1000 raga actually named or described. In either Hindustani or Karnatic practices today, however, some 50 raga tend to appear most frequently, although individual performers may know a great many more." (Malm, William P. 119) due to these many possibilities, I have chosen to narrow down my area of interest to devotional song/poetry in raga. " Devotional singing (bhajan) is the process of singing that originates in the heart, not from the lips or the tongue. It is the expression of the joyous thrill that wells up from the heart when the Glory of God is remembered...devotional singing (bhajan) is one of the processes by which you can train the mind to expand into eternal values. (internet) there is a strong resemblance between the Indian raga devotional song and Christian hymnology. Singers in the Catholic faith (Cantors) sing responses and hymns based on the bible and the saints. "In the Kannada-speaking areas of South India another type of devotional composition is popular. Songs of god (devaranama) are compositions by the 14th century poet-saint Purandara dasa...." The composer originally meant them to be a means to popularize devotion, and of reaching t
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Approximate Word count = 888
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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