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#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Bhairavi

Apr 28, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Bhairavi

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Raga Bhairavi enjoys a very significant place in Indian culture. The most important significance in Hindustani Classical Music is that it is used to mark the ending of a concert. If you see a singer or instrumentalist begin the raga Bhairavi, you can presume that he or she is going to end the concert after that presentation. There could be many reasons for this but the one that we think fits well is that Bhairavi is normally sung in the mornin

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#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Todi

Apr 26, 2022
3 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Todi

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Todi is a Thaat, a Ragaanga and also a Raga. Such a raga is always profound, as it is used as an example in all three methods of classification. Before going to the phrases of raga Todi, let’s see the scale , the aroha, the avroha and the Saptak of Todi. The ‘Sa, komal Re, komal ‘Ga’, teevra ‘Ma’ which comes after this is the teevra madhyam, then the ‘Pa’ followed by komal ‘Dha’ and then shuddha nishad and then the ‘Sa’. But these are only th

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#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Malkauns

Apr 25, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Malkauns

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Raga Malkauns is the center point of the Kauns Ang. Advanced listeners of Hindustani Classical Music need to pay special attention to the komal gandhar in between ‘Sa - Ma’, and the meend from ‘Ga’ to ‘Sa’ that is very typical of Kauns Ang. You dwell on the ‘Ga’ for sometime before actually getting on to the ‘Sa’, that is very typical of the Malkauns and all the Kauns Ang. The next note after the ‘Ma’, is the ‘Dha’. An interesting point is tha

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#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Kirwani

Apr 23, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Kirwani

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata How many of you recognize this song Ka karu sajani aaye na baalam…? This song that has a beautiful ability to invoke a sense of yearning, is based on raga Kirwani. There are a lot of songs that flirt with raga Kirwani. See if you can remember the tunes of “Yaad na jaye, bite dino ki…”, “Yeh raat bheegi bheegi, yeh mas fizayen…”, “Yeh raaten yeh mausam nadee ka kinara…”, “O neend na mujko aaye…”, “Mera dil yeh pukare aaja…”, “Kahe jhoom jhoom r

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#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Charukeshi

Apr 22, 2022
3 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Charukeshi

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Raga Charukeshi is a very sweet raga and a relatively recent addition to Hindustani Classical Music. In this entry, let us begin with some popular hindi film songs. Kalyanji – Anandji used raga Charukeshi for a couple of their songs. The first one is from the film “Himalay ki göd mein”, and the song is “Ek tu na mila, sari duniya mili…” and another one is the title song from the film “Mere humsafar”. Also there is a song by the composer duo Sh

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#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Basant Mukhari

Apr 18, 2022
3 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Basant Mukhari

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Combining ragas has been a prevalent exercise in Hindustani Classical Music for centuries. A memorable example is - Raga Nata-Bhairav. It is a mixture of two ragas – Nata and Bhairav where you will notice raga Nata in the first half - the poorvang followed by raga Bhairav in the uttarang. The raga which we are going to discuss today is another variant of Bhairav – the beautiful raga Basant Mukhari. Basant Mukhari is also a mixture of two ragas

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#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Madhuvanti

Apr 16, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Madhuvanti

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata: Madhuvanti is a very beautiful raga and is considered to be one of the late afternoon or pre- evening ragas. It is safe to say that raga Madhuvanti finds its origins in raga Multani. Madhuvanti is a very recent addition to the Hindustani ragas and it is none other than Ustad Vilayat Khan – the sitar maestro, who played it first in the 1940s. So Madhuvanti emerges from raga Multani when you change the Rishabh and the Dhaivat from their komal v

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Apr 14, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Patadeep

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Mangeshkar The chalan of Patadeep is -‘ni sa ga ma pa ni sa, sa ni dha pa ma ga re sa’. Advancing listeners will notice that Bheempalas focuses on shuddha madhyam and in case of Patadeep, that focus shifts from shuddha madhyam to the pancham. What is used is the pancham - komal gandhaar sangati which is a very rare combination. We know that we always use the shadja - madhyam, shadja - pancham combinations to make pairing of notes to expand the

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Apr 13, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Janasamohini

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Mangeshkar We are going to take a look at raga Janasamohini / Jansammohini today and we begin with a composition by music director Chitragupta, it is a duet song by Lata Mangeshkar and Mahendra Kapur “Aaja re mere pyaar ke raahi….”. Next is Naushad’s composition made specially for Dilipkumar on screen and sung by Muhhamad Rafi “Koi sagar dil ko behlata nahin….”. The next one is one of my favorite “Hai re woh din kyun na aaye…” composed by none

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Apr 12, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Yaman Kalyan

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Mangeshkar Yaman and its two very close variants – the Kalyan and the Yaman Kalyan have very small differences between them and for this reason, they have been used probably the most by the hindi film songs. Yaman is the purest form of Yaman, Kalyan is obtained by making some variation in that and Yaman Kalyan is further obtained by adding another note to it. Yaman is ‘Ni Re Ga Ma Dha, Ni Sa’, it omits the shadja and pancham completely in the

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Apr 10, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Bageshree

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Mangeshkar In raga Bageshree / Bageshri, the entire focus is on the madhyam. Bageshri is very well defined - the opening statement is ‘Ni Dha Sa’, then we jump to the madhyam’s prominence, then the ‘Ma – Ga’ connection with the beautiful meend and then the prominent ‘Re’. ‘Dha Ni Sa Ma Ma, Ma Ga Ga, Re Re Re Ni Sa’- this is the first phrase in the song “na bole na bole na bole re….”. (The song “na bole na bole na bole re” is based on raga Bage

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Apr 9, 2022
3 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Shuddha Kalyan

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Mangeshkar Within the Kalyan variants, we can talk about two different categories. One category is of those ragas that are derived by fusing another raga with the Yaman or the Kalyan. The ragas that are part of this category start with Shuddha Kayan which is also Bhoop Kalyan, Pooriya Kalyan, Saraswati or Saraswati Kalyan which beautifully fuses Kalyan with Jhinjhoti, then there are fusions with Shivaranjani called Shiv Kalyan, fusion with Han

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Apr 7, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Gaud Sarang

21 Song Salute to the Great Lata Mangeshkar As we continue with the Kalyan family ragas, we move on to a very melodious raga called Gaud Sarang. We started with a melodious song based on Gaud Sarang “Allah tero naam, Ishwar tero naam….” – the song is composed by Jaidevji for the film Hum Dono. The mukhda of the song is exactly Gaud Sarang without any variation. But, as the song progresses towards the antara, notice that Gaud Sarang is not present at all. What did Jaidevji do

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Apr 6, 2022
2 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Nand

21 song salute to the Great Lata Mangeshkar Advancing listeners of Hindustani Classical Music are intimately familiar with a few Kalyan ragas such as Pooriya Kalyan, Shuddha Kalyan and Yaman Kalyan. Now we will start with Kalyan Raga ‘Ang’ ragas such as Hameer, Kedar, Kamod, Nand, Gaud Sarang and we will begin with raga Nand. Raga Nand, also known as Anandi Kalyan, is a very sweet melody. The song most associated with Nand is “Tu jahan jahan chalega, mera saaya saath hoga…”,

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Apr 5, 2022
3 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga pahadi

21 song salute to the great Lata Mangeshkar Pahadi - as the name suggests, is a raga of the mountains. It is right up on the top when you think of folk tunes of India and it is no wonder that the Santoor and the Bansuri find the raga pahadi so fitting. Music composers in India have widely used pahadi in film songs that have gained extreme popularity over the years. As an advancing listener of Hindustani classical music, when you look at raga pahadi from close quarters, you wi

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Apr 4, 2022
1 min

#Musings with Nitin Amin: Raga Khamaj

This is a Live session where Nitin Amin shares his expertise and explains in great detail Raga Khamaj. An interesting thing about ragas like Kaafi, Khamaj, Pahadi is that they have been termed as kshudhra or “Inferior” ragas. This is a sad fact which is so because khayals and dhrupads are not normally sung in these ragas. These are generally seen as ragas for “Light” or popular music. However, we tend to forget that these are the folk melodies that have actually sown the seed

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Apr 3, 2022
1 min

#Musings with Nitin amin: Raga Pilu

21 song salute to the great Lata Mangeshkar A very nice melody comes out of Raga Kafi which is equally popular and that is Raga Pilu. Rather than looking at Pilu as a raga, you can think of it more as a dhun or a song by itself. It uses all the possible swaras but at the same time, it is very defined and very disciplined. Pilu focuses more on the shuddha Nishad and the komal Gandhaar that holds a very specific position straight from the Sa. It is lovely how it flows from this

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