A few Ragas

Obviously no one missed me!!!But that's OK. You , the reader should know that all our existences are infact insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
There, I said it. That is my revenge.

I am back not to rant eloquent again about state of the nation, world, or the climate. I will leave those things for now for better people in the know. I just want to share some renditions of miscellaneous Ragas that are available on Youtube.

From what little I understand of what a Raag means, I can may be proffer a heuristic explanation of the term. It is if I understand correctly, a certain combination (not just a permutation) of notes that have been discovered to produce a pronounced effect of a certain kind on the mood of the audience. A Raag can be mood uplifting, melancholy etc. Depending on the mood of the raag they usually come with a concomitant idea of the best time of the day to be sung at.So there are morning ragas and sometimes if you close your eyes while listening to them you can almost feel sunrise. Evening ragas give you a feeling of the day coming to a close. One can choose to render a song (by which a I mean the lyrics) in various suitable Raags depending on the feelings one wants to convey. Usually these songs that are usually of a few generic types: Thumri: usually upbeat lines, Khayal: A very few lines that can be repeated as many times as one wants to demonstrate one's mastery over the Raag in as many scales or tempos. Think of a Raag as an abstract structure that usually is learnt as certain combinations of the seven basic notes of Indian classical Music: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa. But once that is done one can flesh out the vocal structure with lyrics that do justice to the mood of the Raag.
Having once again tried to pretend to be recondite about what I barely know let me stop here and enlist a few of the Raags I know of.

One Raag that a very knowledgeable friend of mine calls an all time Raag is "Bhairavi" sometimes described as the chant of the dawn and also the Sada Suhagan Raag.

This rendition of Bhairavi is sung by Pandit. Bhimsen Joshi:



Here's another rendition by Pandit Ajoy Chakravarty(must watch for Birju Maharaj doing some "Bhaavs"(nuances of dance, while seated!!!)):




"Hansadhwani": Sound of the Swans:




Raag Yaman Kalyan (Early evening) by Pt. Bhimsen Joshi:


I hope to keep adding more videos as I catch them .
Enjoy!!!