It is widely believed that there are only two great classical music traditions in the world – the western and the Indian. Both have been refined over centuries and both demand incredibly high levels of proficiency from composers and musicians – who are often one and the same.
When Mozart was writing his symphonies, the great Saint Tyagaraja of southern India, was shaping a quite different classical music tradition, composing & performing raags or ragas that remain popular to this very day across India and amongst the Indian diaspora. Indeed Indian classical music can be traced back three and a half millennia to when the vedas were first formulated…
A virtuoso of Indian music can spend a lifetime mastering their art, yet every performance is improvised, albeit within the bounds of a complex rhythmic and melodic structure – the raag or raga.
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