Mystical systems
Raga
Direct answer
Raga: A raga is a melodic framework in Indian classical music: a chosen set of notes with rules of movement, characteristic phrases and a mood, within which a musician improvises.
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At a glance
- Also called
- raag
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Nada yoga, Kirtan, Bhajan, Mantra
A raga is a melodic framework in Indian classical music: a chosen set of notes with rules of movement, characteristic phrases and a mood, within which a musician improvises.
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What is a raga in simple terms?
A raga is more than a scale and less than a tune. It fixes which notes may be used, at least five, the order in which they rise and fall, which notes are dwelt on, and certain turns of phrase that identify it at once to a listener who knows it. Inside those limits the performer improvises, beginning with a slow unmetred exploration and building to fast passages with the drum. A drone instrument holds the keynote throughout.
The word comes from a Sanskrit root meaning to colour, and each raga is said to colour the mind with a particular feeling: longing, calm, heroism, devotion. In the north Indian tradition most ragas are also assigned to a time of day or a season, so that one is heard at dawn and another in the rains. Stories of ragas that lit lamps or brought rain are told of the sixteenth century singer Tansen and are legend.
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What sets Raga apart
A raga is identified by behaviour, not by its list of notes. Two ragas can share every note and still be distinct, because one climbs straight and the other turns back, or because each rests on a different degree. Indian theory names the stressed note the vadi, the king, and its partner the samvadi, the minister. The idea has also been painted: from the sixteenth century, sets of miniatures called ragamala pictured each raga as a person in a scene, a lover waiting at night or an ascetic at dawn.
- Word: Sanskrit raga, colour or passion, from a root meaning to dye
- Minimum: five notes, in ascent and in descent
- First defined: Brihaddeshi of Matanga, sixth to ninth century
- Two systems: Hindustani in the north, Carnatic in the south
- Southern scheme: seventy-two melakarta parent scales, Venkatamakhin, seventeenth century
- Northern scheme: ten thaats, set out by V. N. Bhatkhande, who died in 1936
Often mistaken for something else: A scale is only a ladder of notes; a raga adds the order of ascent and descent, the notes to stress, set phrases and a mood, so that many ragas can be built on one scale.
The story behind Raga
The Natya Shastra, an early treatise on drama and music, describes scales and melodic types and the emotional flavours called rasa. The term raga is first defined in the Brihaddeshi of Matanga, written some time between the sixth and ninth centuries. From about the thirteenth century the music of the north and the south grew apart into the Hindustani and Carnatic systems. In the seventeenth century Venkatamakhin arranged southern ragas under seventy-two parent scales, and in the early twentieth V. N. Bhatkhande grouped northern ones under ten.
Why Raga matters
The raga is the Indian answer to how sound carries feeling, and the musical ground on which kirtan, bhajan and nada yoga all stand.
How to read Raga
Musicians train for years to perform ragas; devotional singers set hymns in them; listeners choose them by mood or by the hour.
Raga in practice: an example
A sitar recital at sunset might open with raga Yaman, and a listener who knows it recognises it within the first few phrases.
Where readings of Raga go wrong
The hours and moods are conventions of an art, and claims that a given raga heals a given illness are not established.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- ragas, raag, raga meaning, raga music, indian raga, ragam
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is a raga in simple terms?
It is a recipe for melody: a set of notes, rules for moving between them and signature phrases, with a mood attached. A musician improvises within it, so no two performances are the same.
How many ragas are there?
There is no fixed number. Several hundred are known in each of the northern and southern traditions, a much smaller number are commonly performed, and new ones are still composed.
Why are ragas linked to times of day?
In Hindustani music convention assigns most ragas to a watch of the day or night, or to a season, on the view that their mood suits it. The Carnatic tradition of the south observes this far less strictly.
