WOODWINDS
Dr. Daniel Schnee is a multi-instrumentalist who has performed worldwide with 21 different Juno and
Grammy Award-winning musicians. He has been internationally recognized as a graphic score composer
and is a former student of Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz musician Ornette Coleman.
By Dan Schnee
T
A Guide to the North
Indian Raga
hough there have been numer-
ous introductory articles written
about North Indian classical music
for beginners or musicians from
outside the tradition, a good many
of them focus on each note set (raga) like
they are simply scales to be ascended and
descended like jazz rudiments; like reading
Hamlet out loud somehow makes one a
skilled Shakespearean actor!
Unfortunately this approach has led to a
great many misunderstandings and poorly
wrought hybrids.
The most profound and successful expres-
sions of North Indian music, though, have
occurred when cultural context and termi-
nology has been explored, and all involved
are connecting on a mutually understood
conceptual level. This conceptual understand-
ing is not only absolutely essential; it is also
very interesting and deeply inspiring.
For example, the word used to describe a
“flat” note is komal, meaning “soft.” So to play a
flatted note, you are softening a natural note,
making it tender. Even this one definition
alone gives us a better sense of how one’s
mental conception of musical terms can
change one’s creative approach completely.
Another great example is the word raga itself,
derived from ranj, which means to be dyed or
coloured, something to take delight in. Know-
ing this, one ceases to view ragas as merely
“scales” and comes to see their true power as
an expression of feeling in a greater system of
painting, poetry, sound, and time.
To do this, we will explore three key areas
that will help you get started: mood, orna-
mentation, and pitch.
Mood
Like so many other types of traditional music
from Asia and the Middle East, the creation
of an evocative mood or “flavour” (rasa) is
paramount. It is why saxophonists so often fail
to make ragas sound like anything other than
W W W. C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N . CO M
scale exercises, as they are not aware of the
significant and unique relationship every raga
has with emotional evocation. This relation-
ship not only includes the various techniques
for each instrument, but even what time of
the day it is – whether it is diurnal or noctur-
nal music.
For example, the ragas named Manj
khamaj and Jog are most profoundly felt
between midnight and 3 a.m., while Jogiya is
performed at daybreak, alluding to the dawn
meditations of monks and ascetics. The raga
Miyan ki malhar, on the other hand, can be
performed at any time during the rainy sea-
son, or at midnight during the other seasons.
Another key aspect of understanding
ragas is comprehension of the emotional
implications of a raga through the study of
its related ragamala: a painted image that
visually captures the spirit and mood of a
raga. Each ragamala also includes an ac-
companying contemplative poem known as
a dhyana, which captures the anthropomor-
phic character of a raga in terms of its noble
masculine and feminine traits. So to actually
study a raga, one also studies and meditates
upon various relationships between poems,
images, sounds, time, and season – a process
much deeper than just playing the notes up
and down. This will then properly prepare you
to study each raga’s pakad: a unique musical
phrase that defines its flavour and proper
expression.
Ornamentation
Of course, this means that in order to create a
mood, one needs to master certain tech-
niques to give their instrument or voice the
maximum effect. This is where the knowledge
of essential types of North Indian ornamen-
tation is vital: the key without which a raga
sounds no different from a generic set of
notes. There are five ornamental techniques
one must study: the kan, miind (pronounced
mee-nd), andolan, murki, and gamak.
Each note can be given a slow and
delicate oscillation (andolan) – not a vibrato
like in western styles of music, but rather
what one might describe as a beautiful waver.
The note can also be augmented by a kan,
a subtle grace note played from below or
above to highlight a tone. This is usually the
first ornament one studies, as it helps one get
used to more elaborate murkis: two or more
grace notes played before landing on a pitch.
A good example is the three-note murki:
rapidly playing the notes E, D, and C as a de-
scending triplet before landing on D again.
Pitch
The one technique that really brings a raga
alive is the miind, a continuous “slide” from
one note to another. In fact, the miind
could be called the most significant part of
traditional North Indian music, as its proper
execution is the source of much beauty and
emotion. Creating a fast, “shaking” miind be-
tween a kan and a note is known as a gamak,
which gives the ornament a beautiful “vroom”
sound.
And, as North Indian classical music also
contains microtones (shruti), the possibilities
for artistic expression are very great. Each
microtone can vary five to 20 acoustic “cents”
from standard tunings, and apart from the
natural fourth, fifth, and octave of a raga, all
other notes can be microtones, considered
ati komal (“very soft”) or tivratar (“very crisp/
sharp”), in the case of an augmented fourth.
These ideas and techniques occur in both vo-
cal and instrumental music, but studying and
imitating the great akars – vocal improvisa-
tions using a long vowel “ahh…” in particular
– by the masters is an extremely efficient way
to hear the ideal moods and ornaments that
will make your ragas laden with rasa.
North Indian classical music is a global
treasure, so I encourage you to explore its
subtlety and beauty.
C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N • 29