Music of India

Lore & Background

Vedic texts (c.

Reader's Guide

The two main traditions of Indian classical music are Carnatic music (practised in southern regions) and Hindustani music (found in northern, eastern, and central regions). Both are built on seven notes (sapta svara): Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni, with variations including komal and tivra svaras. The tonal system divides the octave into 22 shrutis. Key historical figures include Sanskrit poet Jayadeva, who shaped Odra-Magadhi style; Śārṅgadeva, composer of Sangita-Ratnakara; and Purandara Dasa, considered the father of Carnatic music. In the medieval era, the Dhupad school was established in Gwalior, and Tansen popularized Hindustani classical music. In the 20th century, Indian instruments like the sitar were adopted by jazz and rock musicians, and later fusions produced the Asian Underground and Bollywood-influenced hip-hop.

Did You Know?

• In the early 1960s, John Coltrane and George Harrison collaborated with Indian instrumentalists.

The Architecture of Raga and Tala

Indian classical music rests on two interlocking pillars: raga and tala. The raga, constructed from a diverse palette of swara—notes that include microtones—serves as the melodic foundation from which an artist weaves intricate, deeply layered structures. It is less a fixed scale than a creative canvas, offering the performer a vast sonic vocabulary to shape melody. The tala, by contrast, governs the temporal dimension, establishing a cyclical framework within which rhythmic improvisation unfolds. Together, these two elements create a musical language that operates on principles fundamentally different from Western classical tradition. Where Western music relies heavily on harmony, counterpoint, chords, and modulation, Indian classical music deliberately moves away from these concepts. Instead, it privileges the silences and transitions between notes, treating the space itself as a meaningful musical element. This emphasis on melodic exploration within a rhythmic cycle gives the tradition its distinctive character, one that rewards both the listener's patience and the performer's deep internalized knowledge.

Vedic Roots and the Samaveda

The musical heritage of the Indian subcontinent stretches back to the Vedic literature of Hinduism, where the earliest thought wove together three artistic streams: syllabic recital, melodic song, and dance. Its structure is organized in two ways—by musical meter and by ritual purpose—and it employs an embedded coding system in which swaras are placed above or within the text, or verses are arranged into parvans. This code functions like a skeletal framework for the song, specifying which notes should be sung high or low. The lyrical component, called sahityam, layers words over this melodic skeleton. Even the Gayatri mantra in the Rigveda reveals a sophisticated metric sense, with three lines of exactly eight syllables carrying an embedded ternary rhythm.

Two Traditions, One Heritage

Indian classical music is commonly understood through two great traditions: Hindustani music of the north and Carnatic music of the south, both falling under the broader umbrella of Shastriya Sangeet or Marg Sangeet. Their approaches diverge in notable ways. Hindustani performance places a premium on improvisation, inviting the artist to explore every facet of a raga in real time. Carnatic performance, by contrast, tends to be more composition-driven, with shorter, structured pieces forming the backbone of the concert. Yet despite these differences, the two systems share far more in common than they do in distinction, drawing from the same foundational vocabulary of raga and tala. A third, often overlooked tradition—Odissi music from eastern India—has been evolving for nearly two thousand years, adding another dimension to the subcontinent's classical landscape. Together, these traditions represent a rich, living continuum of melodic and rhythmic thought that continues to evolve while remaining anchored in ancient principles.

Theoretical Texts and Scholarly Legacy

Several foundational texts have shaped the intellectual architecture of Indian classical music. The Natyashastra, attributed to Bharata Muni, stands as a cornerstone for both music and dance traditions across the subcontinent. It classifies instruments into four categories based on acoustic principle rather than material: stringed, hollow, solid, and covered. Notably, Bharata's chapter on idiophones—particularly small bronze cymbals used for tala—reads as a full theoretical treatise on rhythmic cycles, treating time-keeping as distinct from percussion. Centuries later, the 13th-century Sangeeta-Ratnakara, composed by Sarangadeva under the patronage of King Sighana of the Yadava dynasty in Maharashtra, offered a comprehensive methodology for raga and tala, identifying seven tala families and subdividing them into rhythmic ratios. Both the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions regard this work as definitive. The centrality of music in ancient India is further reflected in temple carvings, from the fifth-century Pavaya temple near Gwalior to the Ellora Caves, where musicians with cymbals are immortalized in stone.