Hindustani Raga

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 feeling. In their abstract form, most ragas lie somewhere between these two extremes: in terms of the scale, the performer is permitted to move freely between the raga notes without the rigors of following tune patterns; in fixed compositions, however, the performer must keep...