Raags

The raag clock

Hindustani music divides the day and the night into eight prahars, three hours each, and gives each raag the prahar that suits it: Bhairav at dawn, the Sarangs at midday, Yaman as the lamps are lit, Malkauns and Darbari deep in the night. The custom is old and its reasons are partly musical: Pandit Bhatkhande observed that raags whose most important swara lies in the lower half of the saptak, from Sa to Pa, tend to belong between noon and midnight, and those whose vadi lies in the upper half, from Pa to taar Sa, between midnight and noon. The raags of twilight, at dawn and at dusk, are the sandhi prakash raags, most of them with a komal Re.

Some raags belong to a season instead: Malhar and its kin to the rains, Basant and Bahar to spring. And a raag sung out of its hour is not wrong, only out of place, as a song of morning would be at midnight.

Every raag, by its hour