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Preface

The present article attempts to provide an easy key for the listener to distinguish between ragas. There are books with descriptions of ragas, both in Hindi and in English, but you often have to browse quite a lot to find out what you are listening to. The determination key is remarkably simple, much more simple than the hocus-pocus that surrounds Indian raga-music would make us surmise. Of course, the key provided here discloses only 64 principal ragas, but it would not change in essence to extend it to a much larger number of lesser known ragas.

Distinguishing between ragas is the listener's side of looking at raga characteristics, as opposed to the performer's side. The performer (usually) knows which raga he is trying to portray, the listener still has to guess. Revealing the identity of the raga is one of the major objectives of a performer, appreciating its clarity and beauty one of the joys of listening. The researcher will like to know about both ends. Failure to separate the performer's and the listener's perspectives has given rise to much confusion. The simple key presented here therefore works like a crowbar that opens a true Pandora's box of raga characteristics.

Chapters Introduction Example of raga determination A short piece of music in raga Todi Description of the raga Picture of the raga Test the determination Raga determination table Survey table Relevance of classification Conclusions References About the author

Wim van der Meer [email: meer#uva.nl, #->@] (1949) studied anthropology and ethnomusicology at the Universities of Amsterdam and New Delhi. At the same time he studied dhrupad, khayal and thumri under the scholar-musician Dilip Chandra Vedi (1901-1992), who himself had learned with stalwarts like Bhaskar Buwa Bakhle, Faiyaz Khan and Alladiya Khan. In 1977 Wim van der Meer received his doctor's title in Oriental studies from the University of Utrecht. His thesis, published as Hindustani Music in the Twentieth Century (The Hague and Delhi 1978) has become a classic on North Indian vocal music. From 1983 onward the author developed tools for doing computer assisted research on Indian music, opening completely new perspectives in automatic transcription, pitch analysis and testing models for the automated generating of music. He has performed extensively in India and taught dhrupad, khayal and thumri as well as the theory of Hindustani music at the Istar School for Indian Music and Dance in Amsterdam and the Rotterdam conservatory. Presently he teaches world music studies (with a special emphasis on Indian musicology) at the University of Amsterdam, department of musicology.

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