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Quotes, tales, musings: How do performers of the past and present relate to raga? How do they balance their sonic passions with the rest of life? Sourced from archives, interviews, and my own conversations with artists.

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राग उद्धरण

• Raga Index: Home •

—Quotes by Artist—

Kishori Amonkar (khayal) | Nikhil Banerjee (sitar) | Debashish Bhattacharya (guitar) | Debasmita Bhattacharya (sarod) | John Coltrane (sax) | Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande (khayal) | Bahauddin Dagar (rudra veena) | Zakir Hussain (tabla) | Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy (scholar) | Ali Akbar Khan (sarod) | Shahid Parvez Khan (sitar) | Vilayat Khan (sitar) | Rupak Kulkarni (bansuri) | John McLaughlin (guitar) | Shubha Mudgal (khayal) | Meeta Pandit (khayal) | Herbert Arthur Popley (scholar) | Aneesh Pradhan (tabla) | Sanju Sahai (tabla) | Deepak Raja (scholar) | Ravi Shankar (sitar) | Shivkumar Sharma (santoor) | Parveen Sultana (khayal) | Rajeev Taranath (sarod) | More

• Kishori Amonkar •

Jaipur-Atrauli khayal [1932-2017]

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• Creative essence: “What is art? I have tried to explore what art is. Art is about science, discipline, sublimation, manifestation…It is truth, beautifully manifested through the language of notes. It seems that people don’t want peace, because they haven’t experienced even a small nuance of this. If they did, they won’t go away from it…Truth never dies. I’d have liked to see more of it around…but things will come around.” (2011)

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• Generational respect: “I saw this shoddy treatment of a legend like my mother [Mogubai Kurdikar]. It hurt me deeply. But she had three children to bring up, so she continued…We lived in a one-room chawl. She needed every penny to educate me and my siblings…I decided that when I become a musician, I would never allow any of this. And I don’t.” (from my Ragatip blog)

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• Reverential focus: “People say that I am arrogant and temperamental. I just don’t understand why. Have you ever seen me laugh at a concert, talk to my audience? I want to get involved and focus on the abstract. I have to forget my body then. For that I need my audience’s help, not their interruptions. People have to understand that music isn’t entertainment…” (2016)

—Jaunpuri (2000)—

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“[Amonkar] was once about to perform at the Gulmarg Golf Club in Kashmir, where the audience included then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. Someone began passing a platter of pears around. Amonkar refused to sing further. When an industrialist’s wife once ordered a paan during her performance, Amonkar screamed, ‘Am I a kothewali to you?’ Editors, politicians, industrialists, and famous artists; many have faced Amonkar’s wrath…” (Suanshu Khurana)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Nikhil Banerjee •

Maihar sitar [1931-1986]

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• Pan-cultural assimilation: “The cultural history of our motherland is perhaps the most wonderful story of a long and sublime integration. [Our] civilisation has had to face the currents issuing from different foreign sources as a sequel to numberless invasions…But none of those forces could annihilate the inherent vitality of our culture: which assimilated them, enriched its own treasure, and enlarged its own dimension.” (1975)

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• Amir Khan’s vocalism: “In Khan, I found a rebirth of that saint-musician, who, with a philosophy of music lost through decades…successfully practised all the 5,040 patterns…enabling him to have full control over the raag blooming forth…A few days before he died, he said to me: ‘Music is wrung out of your heart, which alone it is given to enchant’. Even to this day, I often feel haunted by those words. Music is the spontaneous outflow of the purest feelings of the soul, and it must come as ‘leaves to a tree’…Conceive the raga image as the mother conceives the child…” (1975)

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• Global borrowing: “My guru Allauddin Khan [was] a very conservative musician, but he always used to say, “Collect anything…from anywhere in the world!’…Every night from 9 to 11 o’clock, AIR used to broadcast Western classical…he used to say, ‘Just listen to this music, how much they have perfected a note…so much in tune!’ In that respect, he used to always say that you should collect…from anybody, from anywhere.” (1985)

—Pancham se Gara (1986)—

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“Purbayan Chatterjee, whose father Parthim Chatterjee learnt from Banerjee, said, “My father told me often of how Nikhil used to say, ‘It’s like I was in a ‘box’ – with the first wall being Vilayat Khan…the second wall Ravi Shankar, the third Ali Akbar Khan, and the fourth Amir Khan: how am I to get out of these powerful influences, and escape from the box?”…One could not compromise, he had said. There could be no shortcuts…first practice technique, then forget it. Only then can you break the fence around you…” (The Hindu, 2017)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Debashish Bhattacharya •

Self-designed slide guitars [1963-]

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• Interconnection: “Art will always claim surrendered lovers to itself. Leading a scholar’s life is not enough, as there are no boundaries like this in nature. We segregate and draw lines for particular purposes, but everything connects, including the sixth element: sound…Expansion inward is more important than outward. Stay close to the music, however you can. My gurus taught me that: I’m still trying to be close enough.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Hidden harmonies: “We don’t think about harmony the same way, as our music is modal. A raga may be made of notes, but the melody and extended phrases give harmonic shape to it. Chords are already there…Amir Khan used tanpuras with three notes [Sa–Pa–Ni], and Vilayat Khan tuned his chikari to a major triad [Sa-Ga-Pa].” (our 2018 interview)

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• Cyclic legacy: “Imperfection is your walk in the path of perfection. This is a lifelong journey, which will eventually end with you and start with someone else…I’m a student: my drive is to learn, and refine my actions. That’s the best way to live…I’m just the adventurous raga-guitar wala!” (our 2018 interview)

—Shuddha Sarang (2013)—

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“Growing up, Bhattacharya faced critics who saw no place for the guitar in ‘true’ Hindustani music. He had to develop a healthy confidence, but acknowledges that the journey of a disciplined perfectionist is not easy…I get the sense that he’s always aimed to expand his own understanding rather than rebel against anything in particular: after all, anyone who designs their own instruments has to rebuild from first principles…” (our 2018 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

 • Debasmita Bhattacharya •

Senia-Shahjahanpur sarod [1990-]

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• Universal musicality: “You can even have rhythm without sound: a deaf and blind man can experience the regular patterns in things, and feel what deviates from them. And books will have their own rhythms as you turn through the pages…In the end you must surrender: surrendering yourself for what you love is the most beautiful thing in the whole world. Once you’re in the ocean and start feeling how deep it is, you think, ‘Oh my god, one life is not enough!'” (our 2018 interview)

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• Vertical inversions: “At ITC I played in a student competition that Shivkumar-ji was judging…he told me: ‘As you move upwards – higher in the scale – then tilt your head down.’ Let me explain – the Sharma family are from the mountains in Kashmir. Shiv-ji’s father taught him that as you move higher up a mountain, there is more and more to look at beneath you. And once you’re at the top, you can only look downwards. You must balance yourself – or else you will fall too quick!” (our 2018 interview)

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• Ragas as illusions: “Ragas may be associated with beauty, romance, heroism, fury, drama, etc. But these sentiments are always ‘illusive’: I cannot think of what is beautiful, romantic, or dramatic in an isolated fashion. They need a situation in which to make sense. So the musician’s role is to give shape to these illusory things. It must be part of me too. I must give soul to the raga, then the friendship can happen. Just like a marriage…Half of what emerges is the sentiments of the raga itself, and half is the influence of my own experiences and feelings…And, while a raga is always more than the sum of these two halves, it cannot exist independently of them. In this way, raga is an illusion.” (our 2018 interview)

—Kaunsi Kanada (2017)—

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“Her instrument, a 23-stringed fretless lute, has a rounded, resonant tone, somewhat weightier and more introspective than the sitar. The main playing strings are plucked with a coconut-shell plectrum, and pushed against a mirror-like metal fretboard by the fingernails of the left hand. The sarod is thought to derive from the Afghan rabaab, an instrument brought to India by Islamic horsemen in the 18th century. Sarodiyas glide their way through a melody, blurring its boundaries in a ‘singing style’. The Bhattacharya family hail from the Senia-Shahjahanpur gharana, a tradition kept alive largely through the efforts of Radhika Mohan Maitra…” (from my Darbar interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• John Coltrane •

Transglobal saxophone [1926-1967]

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• Raga impressions: “In India…particular sounds and scales are intended to produce specific emotional meanings…I like Ravi Shankar very much. When I hear his music, I want to copy it – not note-for-note of course, but in his spirit…I’d heard some Indian records, and liked the effect of the water drum, and I thought another [double] bass would add that certain rhythmic sound…like a drum, but melodious.” (1962: n.b. the ‘water drum’ is almost certainly the bayan bass tabla, which, while absent of water, certainly sounds like it could be holding some! Also see the ghatam: the Carnatic water-pot drum)

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• Eternal discovery: “There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings…And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds, so that we can really see what we’ve discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror…” (1966)

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• Supernatural sounds: “The true powers of music are still unknown. To be able to control them must be, I believe, the goal of every musician. I’m passionate about understanding these forces. I would like to provoke reactions in the listeners to my music, to create a real atmosphere. It’s in that direction that I want to commit myself, and to go as far as possible…I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I’d like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he’d be broke, I’d bring out a different song and immediately he’d receive all the money he needed. But what are these pieces, and what is the road to travel to attain a knowledge of them? That I do not know…” (1963)

—‘India’ (1961)—

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“What a blessed musician he was, John Coltrane! He gave so much – like a magic pot being filled with his golden music, spilling over and feeding his ecstatic admirers…He asked me many questions about the basis of our music: the way we learnt from the beginning, how much was written down, how much was memorized, how much was fixed, how and when we started improvising, etc…He said he had been experimenting with the drone…” (Ravi Shankar)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

 • Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande •

Jaipur-Atrauli khayal [1960-]

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• Sonic friendships: “Ragas have individual character. The personality doesn’t depend on the musician so much as the raga itself. They have their own likes, dislikes, and angularities, and so do the artists who play them. We have to find ragas which suit our personalities. But, like with friendships, it’s about two wavelengths resonating rather than direct similarity…I want the raga to befriend me. If I’m interested in a raga, I want it to be interested in me as well.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Her Biochemistry PhD: “Science and music complement each other: they are both deeply ingrained, and influence my approach to everything. They build my personality. In any case, the scientific should not be separated from the aesthetic: I feel they are two sides of the same coin.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Rhythmic non-exclusivity: “My guru said, ‘No bandish will ever tell you the tala‘: for me it is not as important as the raga. He used to convert bandishes in rupak to tintal, and vilambit to drut – you can find their core characters through testing them in different settings.” (our 2018 interview)

—Jansammohini (2018)—

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“Refinement does not indicate a lack of fire, energy, or volume. Instead, it describes a near-scientific process of purification, where unwanted elements are carefully removed to leave a finely-tuned whole. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande draws on her PhD in biochemistry as well as the traditions of her illustrious musical family. She brought her richly refined vocals to London’s Southbank for Darbar Festival 2018 [above]. I spoke with her the following morning, discussing ancient musical forms over the phones of a hotel reception and roars of passing traffic…” (our 2018 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Bahauddin Dagar •

Dagarvani rudra veena [1970-]

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• Total patience: “For every instrument there is a pace of life – sitar, sarod, veena, etc. A beenkar must never be in a hurry. But in the West it is very hard to be relaxed, and not get bothered about things. You have to change your entire outlook.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Cultural cycles: “Like one point on a great bicycle wheel: sometimes [Dhrupad] will be down, other times up. We went down after Independence, as stable employment in the princely courts was removed…but in the 1960s, [we] found new audiences in the West. There was a decline in the 1990s, as many great musicians died, but with the internet we are moving up again…” (our 2018 interview)

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• Sonic self-essence: “Who you are is what you’re playing. Your identity comes through what you create, and I want to retain the identity of my tradition. I believe in its strength – if we can gather musicians who are sensitive and work hard, then the music will look after itself.” (our 2018 interview)

—Vardhini (2017)—

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“Even the Ustad’s faster passages felt unclustered – his technique, though formidable, never clouds his aesthetic sensibilities. He has been known to quote the words of a fellow beenkar: ‘We cannot compromise with the instrument’s rituals, even if we die of hunger’. The word ‘dhrupad‘, after all, translates from Sanskrit as ‘permanent verse’ or ‘immovable pillar’…” (our 2018 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Zakir Hussain •

Punjab/global tabla [1951-2024]

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• Pre-teen hustle: “[Aged 12] I was answering letters that came for my father about concerts, and suddenly a light went on! I started writing, ‘Ustad Alla Rakha the great maestro is not here, he’s gone on tour with Pandit Ravi Shankar in America – but his son is available, in case you’re interested!’ – without checking my mother if I was allowed to go at all. They replied back, ‘Send his son, please’, not knowing what the situation was; so, my friends and I collected enough money for me to get a ticket. I took my tabla to school, and from there to the station (not telling my teachers). Got on the train, and took a two-day journey to a remote part of India called Patna. After a day and a half, police had been called in Mumbai, and they’re looking for me everywhere; I arrive in Patna…and there’s no one to pick me up. After a while, this guy at the tea stall walks up to me and says, ‘Did you see a musician get off the train, someone called Zakir Hussain?’ and I said, ‘That’s me’. That was the organizer: he booked a trunk call to Mumbai, and also sent a telegram to my home telling them not to worry, that they would look after me then send me back…I played with sitarist Halim Jaffer Khan, then one concert with Bismillah Khan – to 10-12,000 thousand people…” (2016)

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• Psychedelic immersions: “I was not ready for Mickey Hart and the Grateful Dead…it was a whole different world. Here I am, on the floor, and I look up, and there’s Jerry Garcia…totally oblivious to this body lying down there, and David Crosby humming…over in the corner there’s Grace Slick screaming away, Carlos Santana would show up…and just jam!” (more in my Ragatip blog: How a teenage Zakir ended up living on the Grateful Dead’s ranch)

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• Lifelong bonds: “From the age of 2 or 3, I’ve been with my best friend: my tabla. My buddy, my best toy in the playpen. With that connection, I did not feel a void of any sort. For me, the tabla was the whole universe, the Milky Way, begging to be explored. If you’ve been doing something for 30, 40 years, you might feel bored. That moment has not arrived yet for me. I cannot imagine that we will ever tire of each other…The spirit in the instrument has accepted me as a friend, and I am eternally grateful for that privilege. But that hasn’t stopped me from absorbing and assimilating information of all sorts, from all over the planet. In that way, I have grown as a tabla player and, hopefully, made my instrument a bit more universal.” (2018)

—Tintal Solo (1987)—

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“Aged 17, Zakir went on a 40-day self-imposed retreat known as a ‘chilla’: where a musician practices in isolation, until a state is reached in which music and musician become one. The removal of everyday distractions, combined with single-minded concentration on the practice, allows the musician to attain a state of samdhi [meditative absorption], where one enters into a deeper relationship with…the source of music itself. Visions and hallucinations are not uncommon, where one’s musical ancestors may appear and offer encouragement or criticism…Zakir recalls his first such chilla: ‘I saw things in the music that I had never seen before, new combinations, new patterns’…” (Peter Lavezzoli)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy •

Raga musicologist [1927-2009]

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• Modern adaptation: “This century has seen fundamental changes…The traditional system of patronage has been gradually disappearing, and musicians now earn their livelihood mainly by public recitals, radio broadcasts, gramophone records, and teaching in schools and music colleges – and only incidentally by private recitals and individual tuition. New devices have already been evolved to cope with the formal atmosphere in the concert hall, where rapport with the listener is not so easily achieved. Many musicians have been experimenting with microphone techniques and, as a result…there has been greater emphasis on tone production. This is once again a period of exploration and change…However, there is no reason to believe that the basic fundamentals of Indian music are in any danger of distortion in the foreseeable future…” (1971: p.25)

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• Multivariate vibrations: “The ‘induced dynamic function’ of notes is undoubtedly influenced by factors other than the symmetry manifest in a raga. The associations often expressed…of predominantly ‘rising’ melodies with tension and energy, and of ‘falling’ melodies with the relaxation of this tension; of melodies moving in consecutive steps (‘conjunct motion’) with emotion and expressiveness, and melodies with wide steps (‘disjunct motion’) with stability and reservation…suggest[ing] that ascent, descent, transilience, oblique movement, and use of accidentals may all influence the dynamic functions. Similarly, time measure (tala) and the rhythm of each individual phrase will also be significant…The precise influence of these factors has not yet been investigated…” (1971: p.173)

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• Shifting swaras: “There are many ragas which do not appear to have changed in scale, at least since Locana’s Ragatarangini [~15th century]. Does this mean that certain ragas are less subject to evolutionary forces than others? This is not necessarily so. It is probable that they have also evolved, but…the new forms here have not replaced the old, but have been granted independent status. The names of such ragas often give an indication of their origin (thus, Alhaiya Bilawal, Shukla Bilawal and Devgiri Bilawal all [point to] Bilawal). Sometimes they are differentiated from the parent raga in notes of emphasis, or in ascending and descending lines…The evolutionary process has, in some instances, progressed so far that the derivatives can no longer be classified in the same scale…” (1971: p.107)

—’Conch Shell Suite’ (1965)—

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“I rang the doorbell, and Amy ushered me past the kaleidoscopic rush of Indian artifacts that informed the living room into the elongated and cozy kitchen where sat the aristocratically contemplative great man…Nazir wore a colorful Indian headdress decorated with seashells…Part of his inscrutable aura was his smoking of Indian cigarettes [beedies], with their exotically sweet aroma. He once hinted to me that he would enjoy smoking some pot, wrongfully guessing that I might have any access…” (Michael Robinson)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Ali Akbar Khan •

Maihar sarod [1922-2009]

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• Sonic inexhaustibility: “No matter how rich you are, you can only feed so many people, you can only give so much money away. Music is one thing that you can give and give, to everybody who wants it, and never feel the loss. And you don’t even have to learn it: just listening to good music lifts a person’s soul, he hungers for peace and tranquility.” (1996)

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• Decadal progress: “If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself. After twenty years, you may become a performer and please the audience – and after thirty years you may please even your guru. But you must practice for many, more years before you finally become a true artist. Then, you may please even God…” (1997)

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• Familial primates: “A monkey fell down from a tree, and broke a leg…my father [Allauddin Khan] was standing there asking people, ‘Can you please help this monkey?, ‘No. He’ll bite me, he’ll bite me.” So he waits for an hour; nobody helps. Then he carried the monkey himself into the house, put him nicely on the bed, went to the hospital, and said, “I want to bring a doctor. But the doctor said, “I don’t need to go. You take this medicine to the]monkey, and give him nice food.” But the monkey wants to bite him. He said, ‘I’ll also bite you’ – and then they became friends…He used to sit on my father’s chair…But the monkey didn’t like my mother so much…” (2006)

—Mishra Kafi (1967)—

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“Ali Akbar Khan did not choose music. It was chosen for him at the age of 3 by his father and teacher, Ustad Allauddin Khan, a renowned court musician in Maihar…As a boy, under his father’s demanding watch, he practiced for [8, sometimes 12] hours a day. If he didn’t measure up, there was a beating; if he talked too much, there was a beating. His father considered talking a waste of energy, he said. There was a brief rebellion…By his 20s, Mr. Khan was performing across India, sometimes playing 35 concerts in 30 days. But, he recalled, he didn’t really love the music. He just played. It was work. He was 50 by the time the love came. It was then, he said, that he finally grasped the full range of human emotions contained in each note of a raga…” (Somini Sengupta: New York Times)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Shahid Parvez Khan •

Imdadkhani sitar [1954-]

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• Oceanic progression: “New ideas can be added to any art…This does not make them ‘impure’. I always explore within certain boundaries, but find that these boundaries are vast. It is like a great ocean: you can spend a lifetime exploring, and will not run out of space…I am always moving forward…but the direction is never pre-planned. It is about the green light. I don’t have to wait for it to flash – I have reached a level where it is always on. There are no shortcuts to this place: but it must be the goal.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Unlimited improvisation: “I believe that what you play spontaneously should be perfect. Whatever comes into your mind, you should be able to play it on the sitar. It is now a ‘complete’ instrument – by which I mean you can replicate any aspect of vocal music on it. If this cannot be done, then it is the limitation of the artist rather than the instrument…” (our 2018 interview)

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• Paternal challenges: “My father was very strict, demanding, and impatient. He was an artist, and not a teacher. He’d say, ‘I don’t care if you don’t have talent. I want you to play like this, and I will make you play like this’…I decided to teach a lot of students, and to learn patience, and understand that not everyone is at the same level. Even today, my father has never told me what he thinks of my playing, or that he is proud of me. One day I asked him, ‘You’ve worked so hard on me, and I’ve worked so hard on myself, and even if after so many years I haven’t been able to please you enough for you to say even once: ‘Son, you played well’. So, what do you get out of it?’…” (2004)

—Charukeshi (2012)—

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“[His father] never became a performing sitarist, opting instead to compose film music under the stage name ‘Aziz Hindi’. This abdication to popular culture greatly displeased Ustad-ji’s grandfather [Wahid Khan]…At the prospect of failing to find an heir to his music, the old patriarch let his displeasure be known, and threatened to never forgive Ustad-ji’s father unless his grandson, Shahid, were properly instructed in the classical tradition. Haunted by this threat, Ustad-ji’s father abandoned popular music forever and dedicated the rest of his life to training his only son…He actually moved to a small village in order to avoid the many distractions of the city while teaching his gifted progeny…often, his wife would bring in food, and he would forget about the food and go on teaching, oblivious of the fact that his son would also be hungry.” (Adwait Gadgil)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Vilayat Khan •

Imdadkhani sitar [1928*-2004]

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• Vocalistic roots: “I could do things with my voice that could never be done on the sitar. [But] my mother stabbed me to the core: she said I must give up singing. I obeyed unquestioningly. Years later, she disclosed the reason: ‘I come from a clan of vocalists. If you become a singer, I would have been condemned as disloyal to the family of instrumentalists into which I married. How could I face your father and grandfather in the next world?'” (1996)

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• Rit/riwaj/rasm/rasa/rang: “By ‘rit‘, I mean the rules that everyone accepts. If you don’t respect them, the raga cannot make sense…By ‘riwaj‘, I mean the conventions that might not be strictly ‘legal’, but are largely acceptable to the community. The ‘rasm‘ is a ritual or minority practice – even an eccentricity – which makes your rendition distinctive and memorable…if a certain fringe element becomes popular, it becomes part of the ‘riwaj’. The ‘rasa‘…the raga gives you a choice, several shades of meaning…For the last feature – ‘rang‘ – there is no definition. It is beyond your control, and beyond everything you can say. If God is smiling on you that day, you will drench the audience in rang [‘colours’]…” (2002 interview with Deepak Raja)

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• Childhood precision: “Music was taught through the intellect. While playing, the precision of one single note could hint at another dimension of the raga; if one is not able to get this while learning in close proximity to a master, then what indeed has one learnt?” (from Komal Gandhar)

—Bhairavi (1944)—

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“Khan’s facade of simple contentment hides a volatile temperament, artist’s ego, creative frenzy, eccentricity, and an astonishing range of interests: from carpets and shawls to Mughal miniature paintings. Visitors are stunned by his collection of guns and pipes from England, China, and Japan, crockery from the Czar’s and the Kaiser’s tables, iridescent glass from Venice, Turkey, and Bohemia, and chandeliers painstakingly assembled by the Ustad himself. In his younger days Khansaheb had been an accomplished billiards player, horseman, swimmer, and ballroom dancer…Once at a recital, he called out a senior critic by name to say, ‘Now let’s see what’s stronger: your pen, or my plectrum’…” (Gowri Ramnarayan)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Rupak Kulkarni •

Maihar bansuri [1968-]

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• Flute basics: “The bansuri is just a simple piece of bamboo. But it brings many benefits, not only for your ears, but for your entire body and soul. Pranayama [breathing meditation] happens automatically, so to play is to soothe the mind. The flute needs no maintenance – all you need is to be in tune internally.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Imperfection: “Raga music is 99% improvised, so it cannot be perfect. You may be able to perfect some phrases through rigorous riyaz, but not an entire performance. The audience may not notice the glitches, but the musician certainly does. I’m never satisfied with my concerts.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Somatic routines: “A concert is like our body clock. We get up slowly – like alap – and gradually our speed will increase. Then we ‘come home’ – like finishing a raga, and afterwards we relax – perhaps like playing a thumri or dhun. So the music can help us be ‘within’ ourselves…Therapeutic music is a need of its hour…I believe our mind and body are influenced by the planetary situations too. Each planet has its own mantras and colours, and every colour has its own associated swara…” (our 2018 interview)

—Jog (2018)—

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“The bansuri is tantalisingly simple. Little more than a stick of bamboo with holes bored through, it cannot be retuned, and has no moving parts. Similar creations turn up across human history – in fact, the modern bansuri differs little from the oldest musical instruments ever discovered: 40,000 year-old bone flutes found in a Danube cave. Consequently, flutes appear throughout global mythology, associated with gods, spirits, and animals…” (our 2018 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• John McLaughlin •

Cross-cultural guitar [1942-]

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• Early immersions: “Zakir and I go back to 1969, when we both arrived in the US. We had a mutual friend who had a music store and I asked this guy, ‘Listen, if you get an Indian musician walk in and he wants to give a lesson, call me.’ It happened to be Zakir, and he [the store owner] called me. I said, ‘What does he play?’ He said, ‘He plays tabla‘. I said, ‘Well, I don’t study tabla, can he give me a vocal lesson?’. I went down right away and I don’t sing well at all. Zakir really doesn’t sing much better than me, but gave me a vocal lesson – we had a good laugh afterwards and we became friends. By 1972 I’d studied North Indian music…[then] South Indian, so I was getting the best of both worlds. By 1973 I’d met L. Shankar…and I took the percussion player of my guru Ramanathan, and that was the first Shakti group…” (2017)

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• Subcontinental home: “I feel at home in India. I am certain I lived [here] in another life, and Zakir is also convinced about this. I felt that long before I arrived here. But when I did come to India in Dec 1975, I could have kissed the ground. My love for India, its culture, music, and people continues to this day…Indian classical music integrates every aspect of a human being, from the most capricious to the most sublime. We jazz musicians of the West have much to learn from our Eastern brothers and sisters…” (2015)

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• Manual longevity: “Having experienced the reality that arthritis could end a career very quickly, I realised that one cannot fight ageing – and so back then, I accepted it. I felt that I’d had such a fantastic ‘innings’, and been so lucky in my life to have played with the greatest musicians from the East and West – who could ask for more? But, in fact, this wasn’t to be the end: I discovered the art of self-healing in meditation. Once you realise that the mind can make you sick, then it’s also possible for the mind to make you healthy. Today, while I don’t have the strength of a 20-year-old…I have absolutely no problems playing the guitar. I am truly blessed.” (our 2020 interview)

—‘Joy’ (1976)—

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“Personally, I have a lot to thank McLaughlin for: I took up the guitar aged 14 after listening to my dad’s Hendrix & Shakti records – and five years later, was studying at a sitar academy in Varanasi. Five years on, I published my first music article – an analysis of Shakti’s curious ‘remainder bar‘ rhythms – and, to my surprise, McLaughlin gave my musings his stamp of approval, urging me to write more. Back then, music was just a side fascination from the grey drudgery of office work. After one particularly dull training course in mid-2016, I skipped out early to see Zakir Hussain’s Peshkar tabla concerto at the Southbank Centre, and was lucky enough to meet McLaughlin afterwards. I got the chance to recite some sloppy konnakol, and thank him for helping to illuminate my own path. Again, his advice was simple: ‘keep on striving’…” (our 2020 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Shubha Mudgal •

Multi-gharana khayal [1959-]

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• Artistic impulses: “Challenges come at every opportunity. The moment you feel you can sing anything, you are proved wrong. Music is a hard taskmaster, and the first lesson it teaches you is to never take yourself too seriously. I am constantly challenged…especially some of the compositions Aneesh has asked me to sing…I think it is very important for artists to feel that they can follow whatever their artistic urgings tell them to do.” (2014)

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• Disparate borrowings: “I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to engage with different genres of music – even though this is by no means anything new, or out of the ordinary. Indian musicians in the past have always been ready and willing to adapt to changing formats of music-making, and there is ample historical evidence of this. In each generation, artists have adapted and re-adjusted to new formats, spaces, and styles…” (2023)

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• Classical patriarchy: “It would be naive on my part to imagine that there are no #MeToo stories in the field of Indian classical music. And yes, I have heard rumours and whispers of several incidents…should the movement open a can of worms…skeletons will tumble out of cupboards, and those might not be only of gurus. Worse, I fear that the survivors who choose to call out the men who assaulted them will be made to feel guilty, and almost as if they have let down a mighty tradition. Indian society is by and large patriarchal, so how can the field of Indian classical music be otherwise? And yet, women musicians have made their mark in this field, rising to earn great acclaim and respect, by sheer dint of their skill and mastery…” (2018)

—Bhimpalasi (2016)—

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“Born in Allahabad to two Professors of English Literature, Mudgal is renowned for her strong commitment to social causes, as a prominent advocate for improving the status of women and low-caste artists in Indian classical music. Her versatile vocal style is the result of study with a wide range of gurus – notably Ramashreya Jha ‘Ramrang’, Vinaya Chandra Maudgalya, Vasant Thakar, Jitendra Abhisheki, Kumar Gandharva, and Naina Devi: ‘Each of my gurus shared an almost fanatical appetite to learn, collate, compile and enrich their understanding of music from various sources…it is not surprising that their many students, like me, also inherited this highly eclectic approach.” (Darbar profile)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Meeta Pandit •

Gwalior khayal [1974-]

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• Paternal multi-tasking: “My father [Laxman Krishnarao Pandit]’s basic method was very interesting. He would hold a tanpura in one hand, play tabla with the other, and sing to teach us the ragas: all at once! Sometimes he’d ask me to take over the tanpura. I was small, and after a while my legs would start to go, and my hands would ache. But it was always so interesting to be so close to the sounds.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Generational change: “My grandfather never allowed any student to copy him. When it came to performance, he never allowed it to be exactly the same. Instead, he said we should all find our own gayaki. There is this whole myth of copying. If you have taken good talim, then the fundamentals of the style come automatically…These do not change, but the musician can combine them in new ways.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Individuation: “Any artist must be themselves. To ask someone why they don’t totally copy their family style is like saying, ‘Why isn’t your nose more like your father’s?’. How ridiculous that would be! You are you, I am me – we come out in the ways we do, and so does the music. The same DNA is there, but each person will be different.” (our 2018 interview)

—Multani (2016)—

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“Gwalior has long been a place of cultural pilgrimage. Classical raga has flourished there since the time of the Tomars: musically inclined warrior-kings who ruled the region in the 15th and 16th centuries. Raja Man Singh Tomar was a dedicated student throughout his 30-year reign, learning dhrupad in depth and opening an academy at Gwalior Fort. The area has retained a distinctive sonic identity while absorbing ideas from successive waves of conquest, including the Hindu Scindias, Islamic Mughals, and British Empire. For centuries, musicians would travel there to fine-tune their craft…it is said that even the rickshaw drivers would sit together discussing ragas…” (our 2018 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Herbert Arthur Popley •

Missionary & musicologist [1878-1960]

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• Mythic respects: “Among the early legends of India there are many concerning music. The following is from the Adbhuta Ramayana: “Once upon a time the great sage Narada thought within himself that he had mastered the whole art and science of music. To curb his pride, the all-knowing Vishnu took him to visit the abode of the gods. They entered a spacious building, in which were numerous men and women weeping over their broken limbs. Vishnu stopped and enquired of them the reason for their lamentation. They answered that they were the ragas and the raginis, created by Mahadeva; but that as a sage of the name of Narada, ignorant of the true knowledge of music and unskilled in performance, had sung them recklessly, their features were distorted and their limbs broken – and that, unless Mahadeva or some other skilful person would sing them properly, there was no hope…” (1921: p.8)

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• Ornamental freedoms: “The Indian musician is always trying to ornament his notes…European singers and violinists [also] aim at microtonal differences under special circumstances…but, unfortunately for them, [harmony] has so limited their scope for grace notes that their exuberance can find no better means than the tremolo: whereas, with no harmony to hamper his music, the Indian can reveal it in as many graces as he desires.” (1921: p.38)

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• Scalar imprecisions: “By the cooperation of voice and instrument, the scale is worked out; and in one sense the instrument may be called the ‘originator of the scale’…It must, however, be remembered that [music] is a living thing and does not submit to mathematical precision. Putting rasa into music means that a particular note may be taken rather sharper at one time than at another…Nobody can sing like a machine, any more than a man can walk in a perfectly straight line, or breathe as the clock ticks…” (1921: p.29)

—The ‘Scales of India‘ (1921)—

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“Before long, I had traced all six of Coltrane’s mystery scales to Popley’s book. The notes, words, and formats all matched up exactly: this, without question, was his long-lost source for the ‘Scales of India’ – and perhaps for plenty more besides. But what is this curious work? Why hadn’t I come across it before? And who was ‘H.A. Popley’?..” (from my forthcoming project: Trane’s Raga Mystery: Solving the puzzle of his ‘Scales of India’ sketches)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Aneesh Pradhan •

Tabla scholar [1965-]

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• Scholastic vacuums: “The historiography of Hindustani music [has] largely been restricted to hagiographies…almost regarded as an occurrence in a vacuum, without any reference to the socio-cultural, political and economic contexts within which the music was being made. However, this idea of history has changed greatly, and we have to thank non-Indian scholars – and Dr. Ashok Da Ranade – for bringing to the subject critical writing and path-breaking analysis. Today, Hindustani music is being written about not just by ethnomusicologists, but also by anthropologists and historians. While this has increased critical inquiry into the subject, and has thrown up several important questions, I must hasten to add that there is often a lack of dialogue between the scholarly work and the oral tradition…[which can] restrict the scholarly work from adopting a multi-layered approach. Likewise, performers are often not informed about recent research…” (2014)

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• Oppression & transition: “Colonialism may not have displaced the raga-tala paradigm that is so integral to Hindustani music, but it did have an impact on several aspects of music-making…The classification of musical genres, pedagogy, literature on music, performance contexts, and many more areas experienced major transformations. Naturally, this transformation in turn affected the music and changed the response of listeners to it. One of the ways in which the colonial impact manifested itself was the manner in which concerts moved out of royal courts and aristocratic homes, to spaces that were accessible…by purchasing tickets…” (2019)

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• Global tala: “Indian rhythm – and percussive instruments – have attracted musicians and music-lovers across cultures and continents. Indian drums are now heard and seen in virtually every situation: in traditional music, cross-cultural projects, or even in Hollywood soundtracks. Not only does this indicate the capacity of these instruments to adapt to diverse musical situations, but it also speaks volumes about the artistry of the percussionists. The attention that Indian percussion instruments have received in the past few decades has been most heartening, as they have otherwise largely enjoyed secondary status when accompanying…traditional Indian music…” (2011: p.4)

—Tabla Overview (2022)—

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“A disciple of tabla maestro Nikhil Ghosh, Pradhan’s work is enriched by the influence of Delhi, Ajrada, Lucknow, Farukhabad, and Punjab gharanas. As a student of music and as a performer, teacher and researcher, Pradhan immerses himself fully in all things. His work, research, teaching, music and voice are integral to the discourse surrounding Hindustani music. With his discerning and astute observations and social commentary, as well as his lucid tabla, he helps the entire industry pause, reflect, and stay on course…” (Darbar profile)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Deepak Raja •

Imdadkhani sitarist-scholar [1948-]

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• Cultural creation: “The phenomenon of raga reflects the special genius of Indian society for balancing continuity with change, conformity with individuality, and discipline within creativity. When manifested in a specific artistic expression…this genius ensures that the aesthetic experience enjoys the benefits of familiarity along with novelty. But [this] is an open-ended historical process, with no predetermined destination, so the tradition accepts that, in time, everything changes…” (2016: p.6)

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• Compositional centrality: “The elusiveness of raga places scholars in an awkward position with respect to raga grammar. The ‘formless form’ of a raga is inaccessible. The object of their study – the ‘consensual form’ – is changing all the time. And, what they observe in any particular performance is only a partial manifestation of the totality. Raga grammar, as traditionally documented, exhibits imprecision and an absence of unanimity…The only element of reasonable stability is the bandish…” (2016: p.80)

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• Alap primacy: “The alap is neither about raga grammar, nor about the ‘four-stage protocol’ [sthayi–antara–sanchari–abhog] – though both are conducive to the consummation of the endeavour. The alap is the ‘form and feeling’ department of Hindustani music…the deepest journey a musician can give you into the soul of a raga, and, indeed, into their own musical mind. Once the alap is over, the music enters the region of entertainment. The latter may further a musician’s professional interests – but the former validates his existence.” (2016: p.137)

—Lalit (2015)—

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“What is a raga? To find fresh scholarly thinking on such matters is very welcome…Shri Deepak trained under stalwart gurus in both vocal music as well as the sitar and surbahar. Combining his training with rare intelligence and analytical power, Deepak-bhai is eminently competent to handle a subtle and yet complex topic like this…” (Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Sanju Sahai •

Benares tabla [1968-]

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• Playful pedagogy: “I want to teach in such a way that my students will get in trouble because they won’t stop playing! The core is to get the range of basic strokes down, and to teach how to play rather than exactly what to play. A student who truly cares can find their own path. As children we’re taught to walk, but not to run. We work that out for ourselves…” (our 2018 interview)

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• Total focus: “You have to practice: you have to go crazy really. I played 12 hours a day, renting a room away from the city to focus on my riyaz. I wanted to escape distraction. 200 years ago my ancestor Pandit Ram Sahai retreated to the Uttar Pradesh jungle for two years with his tabla, surrounding himself with nature. This is part of how the Benares style was formed.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Fame vs. dedication: “Success comes from within. I’ve played for the Queen four times, but it’s just another performance. Why should it change you?…Once I was asked to perform with the Sugababes. The manager wanted me to sit on stage and mime. I said, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy: I practise this music 12 hours a day…this way does not allow me to respect it.” (our 2018 interview)

—Tintal Solo (2018)—

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“Precise, powerful, and intricately funky, Pandit Sanju ‘Vishnu’ Sahai embodies the Benares gharana. As the sixth generation of his family’s illustrious lineage, he was born into music. His talent was quickly recognised – at age 9 he was playing major festivals, and he completed his music degree at 13 – and has since spent decades immersed into Indian rhythm. While mindful of diluting classical tabla, Sahai has still taken it into a breathtaking array of new contexts. Alongside accompanying top Hindustani musicians, his collaborations span jazz and flamenco to opera and Gregorian chant…” (our 2018 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Ravi Shankar •

Maihar sitar [1920-2012]

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• Innovative orthodoxy: “In India, I have been called a ‘destroyer’…But that is only because they mixed my identity as a performer and as a composer. As a composer, I’ve tried everything, even electronic music and the avant-garde. But, as a performer, I am getting more classical, and more orthodox – jealously protecting the heritage I have learned.” (1981)

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• Extended performance: “Once I played for ten-and-a-half hours continuously, with only one intermission…Very tiring, but so inspiring: the audience was so good, and I came to such a mood that it just happened. And I’ve played for seven or eight hours many times, mostly for musical circles…at somebody’s house, or some school building.” (1968)

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• Active longevity: “God has been very kind to me, and given me so much! I have been performing from the age of 10, and at 87 still am very busy. I was very, very sick recently with double pneumonia, and was in intensive care for 25 days. For a further few months I was in a wheelchair with oxygen, and recouped slowly. But by some miracle and the love and care of my very dear and near ones, I performed seven concerts and am looking forward to the fall tour. I just composed a piece of music for the brilliant violinist Joshua Bell and Anoushka, which will be premiered at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. I am also writing another piece for Phillip Glass…[and] another concerto for an orchestra in New York…” (2013)

—Pancham se Gara (1967)—

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“As a teacher, I know of no better. His total commitment to his art goes far beyond pure music-making. For Ravi, all human activity – eating, dancing, doing exercise – is imbued with a symbolic value, and therefore it is all, in its own way, like some divine offering. I have learnt from him something which I always instinctively felt that music is beyond human essence. When we are working together, we always burn incense as an offering…” (Yehudi Menuhin)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Shivkumar Sharma •

‘Shivkumari’ santoor [1938-2022]

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• Perfect silence: “Spiritual bliss is the essence of this art form. It was my dream to…make listeners forget to clap: which will make them silent. Once, this dream came true…While the listeners were immersed deep into meditation, I experienced a state of thoughtlessness. This silence was so nourishing, so fulfilling, there was no need to play anything else…” (2013)

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• Hidden divinity: “I firmly believe in ‘nada brahma‘ [‘universe as vibration’], because I have experienced it personally…As a child in Jammu, there was a Shiva temple next to the Tawi River. You had to crawl through a cave to reach the swayambhu Shiva..[it] was there by nature, no one had made it. I used to crawl through with my santoor when no one was there…Shiva was my guru, my audience, and my guide. While playing for him, I discovered so many new techniques that weren’t taught to me. I could visualise more.” (2002)

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• Immortal souls: “This body is perishable, but the self is immortal…Like how I’m wearing this kurta. I can change to another outfit…but this body remains the same. Same way, the self, which is ‘wearing’ this body, can change it, but stay the same. And this is the first question: ‘Who am I?…‘Shivkumar Sharma’ is this body, not the self. I’m trying to know from where this self comes…” (2003)

—Malkauns (1990s)—

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“With the adoption of ‘kaleidoscopic’ patterns…Sharma has substantially accelerated the process commenced by Ali Akbar Khan: of freeing instrumental music from the traditional reference point in vocal music…” (Deepak Raja)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Parveen Sultana •

Patiala khayal [1950-]

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• Shared spiritualities: My husband is a [Muslim] Ustad, and I have been bestowed with the title Begum. But my first guru was a [Hindu] Pandit, and I sing songs to Hindu goddesses such as Shakti. My music must always directly connect the individual self with the divine: and the divine does not, I believe, recognise such boundaries as these.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Ragas as mirrors: “There is confusion around defining ragas when they share an ascending or descending scale…This is the fault of those gurus who do not teach the ragas properly. A good guru will always say, ‘Let’s see, this raga…It is similar to this other raga – so you must be careful to separate them’. And they will show you how. So to learn one raga, you must know another five along with it, to really know the differences. It’s not just ‘Sa–Re–Ga’, and so forth. It’s like a game of hide-and-seek. In this way, you can say each raga is a mirror of all Hindustani music.” (our 2018 interview)

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• Vocal embodiment: “When you’re singing through your soul, that is what we call pure music…[but] you must think very hard when in your riyaz – of all the movements, how much mouth to open, and so forth. Be aware of the flex of your vocal cords for different volumes. You have to measure it even, saying, ‘this is the volume, this is the movement’. Try to sing in all octaves. Many students do not, just because nobody told them to do that riyaz. You should sing low too! I always sing full-throated, never in falsetto. But remember, the vocal cords are very delicate.” (our 2018 interview)

—Ambika Sarang (2007)—

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“Sultana’s voice is famed for its range, clarity, and versatility. Equally at home with khayal, bhajan, and thumri, she can swoop from patient meditations to divine evocations in an instant...Born into an Assamese family of Afghan heritage, her learning began in early childhood. Aged five, her mother noticed her talent for humming along to her father’s practice, and he began instructing her in the Patiala style…Later she studied under scholar-musician Chinmoy Lahiri, famous for fusing the ideas of nine gharanas…” (our 2018 interview)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Rajeev Taranath •

Senia-Maihar sarod [1932-2024]

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• Revelatory gurus: “The most vivid moment in music I remember is the first experience of hearing Ali Akbar Khan…That was my moment of epiphany, a moment of total grace. As I was listening, my life changed. Music moved to the centre of the universe, I was hooked, and never looked back…Well, you know, it’s like falling in love. How can you explain it?…Vocalism, for [Khan], is an abstract, silent, but immediate storehouse for the movements of the raga. It’s what makes a raga more than a scale…He might not be the fastest, but that’s because he had no need to be the fastest.” (2016)

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• Eternal flux: “Has Hindustani music changed over the years? I think it’s helpful to compare music to both language and physics. If you compare the English of Shakespeare’s time to modern English…there are noticeable differences, but we can still understand Shakespeare. The physics of Shakespeare’s time, however, has been completely replaced by modern science. Throughout the history of Hindustani music, there’s been the same kind of growth and change that you can see in a language. But you don’t have the new completely replacing the old, as [with] scientific progress.” (2016)

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• Transferrable relish: “It is in the movement between notes that our culture operates. Mimesis is the basis of our music-teaching. Our music fills up with meends, gamaks, and bols, and these cannot be written down. We clutch the guru’s imagination, his mind that is so private. A guru gives good active seeds… but can one teach creativity? The artist…lives at a conscious point where past and future are gathered. He has all the richness of the past, waiting to pass it on to the future, for his students to gather it all. So I try to teach, but a problem which I have repeatedly faced is this: how to transfer the sense of relish – this is important in the kind of music we play and teach, because the ‘given’ is so tenuous…For teaching, there is a trio: a teacher, a learner, and an instrument.” (2016)

—Chandranandan (2016)—

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“Taranath recites T.S. Eliot with the same ease with which he plays the sarod. A linguist…and also a PhD in English Literature…who once fooled a diverse array of people from different States of India by speaking their own dialect flawlessly, he is also a highly accomplished singer who was invited to become Bollywood’s golden voice. But then, Ali Akbar Khan happened to him, and Taranath was hopelessly hooked on sarod…“ (Kavita Chhibber)

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[All Raga Index mentions]

• Miscellaneous •

Musings from various sources…

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• Musical donkeys: “One beautiful spring evening, a donkey broke into a farmer’s vegetable garden with his friend, the jackal. The beauty of the moon and stars, the friendship of his companion, and the abundance of the garden went to the donkey’s head: ‘Ah, on a night like this I feel like bursting into song’, he said. ‘No, no’, said the jackal, knowing well what a donkey’s voice sounds like: ‘You’ll wake the farmer. And besides, what do you know about music?’ ‘What do I know about music? I’ll show you!” At that, the donkey recited the names of the foundational scales, the names of all the important ragas, and their relatives, and derivatives, and so on. And, to cap it off, he began singing. The braying aroused the farmer, and he came out waving his hands, and chased both the donkey and the jackal out of the garden. The moral of the story is: No matter how much you know about music, it doesn’t make you a musician.” (from the Panchatantra fables, via Ruckert)

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• Fascist insomnia: “[During] a visit to Rome in 1933, Omkarnath Thakur received an invitation to dine with Mussolini; Il Duce had caught wind of Thakur’s theories and experiments regarding the inducement of emotional states by rāga performances, and wanted a demonstration. After a specially prepared vegetarian dinner, Thakur began with Hindolam, which depicts valour. “When I was soaring in the high notes of the rāga,” he later recalled, “Mussolini suddenly said ‘Stop!’ I opened my eyes and found that he was sweating heavily. His face was pink and his eyes looked like burning coals. A few minutes later his visage gained normalcy and he said ‘A good experiment’. After Thakur brought him to tears with Chayanat, which is meant to depict pathos, Mussolini said, after taking some time to recover, “Very valuable and enlightening demonstration about the power of Indian music…The next day, two letters from Mussolini arrived: one thanking him, and one appointing him as director of a newly formed university department to study the effect of music on the mind (an appointment that he was unable to accept)…” (Bibliolore via B.K.V. Sastry: n.b. it is also said that the murderous despot was lulled to sleep by Thakur’s rendition of Puriya – also refer to other musically-inclined politicians in my Doublesiding article)

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• Practice > theory: “Once, Ustad Faiyyaz Khan was singing in a Mehfil when a scholar interrupted him and said ‘Khansaheb, you are not singing correctly: this raga is described differently in the shastras’. Khansaheb asked the Pundit to show him the shastra. When the Pundit produced it, Khan put the book to his ear and said ‘I can hear nothing – it is silent’. The Pundit asked Khansaheb to read it. Khansaheb’s reply was that ‘I don’t care what is written in the shastras – whatever you are singing just sing it.” Indian classical music cannot be explained by just writing: it has to be sung, and the listener has to discern the swaras…” (RICMP)

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• Fragrant ragas: “Sometimes while practising at night, I suddenly have a sensation that I am surrounded by the fragrance of flowers. Baba [Allauddin Khan] used to say that this is one of the ways in which Sharda Maa [the Goddess Saraswati] makes her presence felt. He also said that whenever that happens, don’t think you’re great or anything. Instead, such experiences should make one feel more humble in the presence of the divine…” (Annapurna Devi, 2000)

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• Tihai challenges: “[Benares tabla maestro Sharda Sahai] challenged his audience to indicate at random when in the tala he should start a tihai. His repertory of formulas was so extensive, and his command of them so proficient, that no matter when he was signaled, he was able to play a tihai that ended on sam…Each tihai was a natural outgrowth of the patterns he was working with at the moment it began.” (Thom Pipiczky, 1985)

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• Dynamic classicism: “To me there are two ways of creating – you can push the walls of a room from within, or pull from the outside. I’ve always been on the outside, drawing from all styles that catch my eye. The artists I’ve selected are classicists, pushing from the inside of their rooms. Classicism isn’t about stasis – it’s about adherence to particular boundaries, and creating using ideas within them. They all show that traditional forms like kathak can evolve without losing their core…” (Akram Khan, our 2018 interview)

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• Global expansion: “Brooklyn Raga Massive is an artist’s collective of musicians who are inspired by and dedicated to the Indian classical tradition. There is something magical happening right now…a new generation of musicians who are disciples of some of the greatest living Indian classical musicians, but who also speak the languages of jazz, funk, reggae, etc – not as outsiders, but as insiders of both traditions. At our weekly jam sessions we have new styles emerging: there are ‘Africa+India’ nights, chamber raga groups, and much more. People in India are paying attention to what’s happening in Brooklyn…the term ‘raga renaissance’ has floated around the press there…” (BRM’s David Ellenbogen, 2015)

—Rare Instruments (1944)—

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“Raga: The melodic groundings of Indian classical music, central to both the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions. To oversimplify, ragas function like ‘melodic mood recipes’: each presenting their own ‘ingredients’, such as catchphrases, note hierarchies, ascending & descending lines, and ornamentation patterns – as well as accompanying rules and guidelines for how to blend them for emotional affect. Despite this detail, ragas are much more about aesthetics than technique or theory, aimed first and foremost at summoning their own unique set of sentiments and colours. The word derives from the Sanskrit for ‘that which colours the mind’… (from my Raga Glossary)

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