Feeling the Raga

The Raga cannot be absorbed exclusively through the music, nerve and skin. The intellect and the emotions have to be acutely alert to be ...

The Raga cannot be absorbed exclusively through the music, nerve and skin. The intellect and the emotions have to be acutely alert to be of use to raga. Indeed it would be right to say that it is not possible to respond to raga music passively without some participation, at least to a limited degree. The effect of a physical kind that a raga has upon a living organism, like those experiments that are being conducted on the growth of plants in an ambience of Todi or Bilawal are biological responses of vibrations, if any, on living tissues and not the musicality or quality of the musical phrases involved.

Whether Karaharpriya is being apprehended by an egg plant as raga is a moot point, while it may still soothe a plant and nourish it mysteriously. There is little doubt that the greater the complexity of the listening mind, the greater is the value of raga. And if music is to be felt rather than heard to be effective it were better for the music to be Western rather than a meaningless collection of notes from the scale of a raga.

So raga needs listening, conscious, expert listening, a carefully nurtured effort of attention. Since raga needs such a focus of faculties, it can never merely please and entertain a listener. It informs him. The delight and the enchantment of raga is not the first call on Indian music. These are incidental by-products of luminuous meaning and understanding. This is one of the reasons why Indian music is such a poor accompaniment to food and has very little value as background sound to other activity. It demands from its listeners far too much of their attention and intelligence merely to entertain or amuse. And this gift of listening is very rarely inherited in its entirely. It has to be developed and as you learn to do this better, you can listen and hear more and more with every year you add to your life.

There are always few ragas that touch you strangely, some at least that transport you and some that fill you with an inexpressible sadness. There are some that you will readily admit give you a feeling of festivity, like hearing raga Bahar on the shahnai, or listening to the wail of Yaman at dusk when the lamp is yet to light, on the sarangi when expert fingers coax the strings to speak of the gentle hour of godhuli dusk. There are some that might give you a feeling of April, of Holi or Baisakhi or ragas that recall to your mind at Divali of your childhood or blazing June day of a fearful stillness. There are some ragas that make you recall the beginning of monsoon, or spring. Any or all of these feelings and many more, that I do not know of and have not described, are possible at the touch of a raga.

All or any of these feelings and many more are perfectly natural and legitimate for you to have. Depending upon the depth and the richness of your emotional life these responses can be powerful in their intensity. As you begin to be familiar with ragas and know more about music, it is important not to let these feelings be substituted by with technical information and facile judgement.

Somewhat in the same way as raga gives you feelings of certain kinds, tala also gives you feelings 8211; other kind of feelings. Things like sensations of order and passage, feeling of hypnotic elegance and symmetry, a sense of impendingness, a delicious feeling of inevitability and tranquility or perhaps an assurance of beginning, a middle and an end. You realise that the same talas can be played in different ways depending on the song and composition, so that one kind of feeling about a tala changes when you hear the same tala with another song or composition. And if you learn to identify a particular category of feelings with a particular tala or group of talas.

There are tight prim little talas, long gangling ones. There are some that have suspense in them and some so regular that you hardly hear them or notice them much. The same ones sometimes trot and prance and canter like a young playful horse. Some make you think of a train swaying and thundering over its rails. All these feelings and other about talas are also perfectly natural for you to have and anything more that you may learn about music should not be at the expense of these feelings. You must learn to fight hard to keep every one of these feeling alive, only add more to them with each year of your life. So both raga and tala have to be known first through feelings.