What A Raga Is, And What It Is Not

“I should say that a raga is not a tune. It’s not a note, not a scale, not a composition — although the raga is sung in the framework of a composition. But you can identify the raga from a particular arrangement of notes that have to do with the way they’re ascending and descending; a particular pattern in the ascent and a particular pattern in the descent identifies the raga.” Amit Chaudhuri — an award-winning novelist and nonfiction author and a trained Ind