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There is a raga that may only be sung at dawn, and another that belongs to the hour before rain. There is one Hindustani musicians handle with care, because it is said to carry grief the way a glass carries water.
Thousands of ragas exist with everyone built from the same 12 notes. Two musicologists, 250 years apart, sat down to count how many scales were even possible.
The south arrived at 72 and published everyone. The north arrived at 32 and kept 10. This instalment of Science of Sound follows both sums.
There is a raga that may only be sung at dawn, and another that belongs to the hour before rain. There is one Hindustani musicians handle with care, because it is said to carry grief the way a glass carries water.
Thousands of them exist. Each has a personality so particular that a trained listener can name it within seconds of hearing it. And every last one of them is built from the same 12 notes, the way every book in a library is built from the same 26 letters.
Because two men did, working 250 years apart, in two halves of the country. Each sat down and calculated how many scales were even possible. One arrived at 72 and published every single one. The other arrived at 32 and kept 10. In this instalment of Science of Sound, we follow both sums, and end at the place where they stop working.
*Radifah Kabir/IndiaToday
