These four CDs tucked into a meaty, comprehensive book portray and explain the different histories, tonalities, and rhythms of 74 of Hindu's most common ragas. The raga, a musical form of ancient Hindustani prayer and poet... more »ry, has been the cornerstone of Indian music for centuries, evolving into a complex set of expressions inviting improvisation and varying according to purpose, mood, story, and ritual. Stately in their sounds, ragas are most often created with sitar, sarod, tabla, tamboura (or drone), and voice with each note functioning as an evocation of the world's sanctity. The Raga Guide offers five hours and 15 minutes of stunningly beautiful music, played by masters of the instrument and accompanied by informative description, music transcriptions, and (where applicable) texts with English translations. Lovingly recorded, carefully authored, simply laid out, this wonderful package is the essence of perfection, topped off by exquisite color plates of ragamalas, or paintings depicting the stories of the ragas. A sublime tribute to Indian classical music. --Karen Karleski« less
These four CDs tucked into a meaty, comprehensive book portray and explain the different histories, tonalities, and rhythms of 74 of Hindu's most common ragas. The raga, a musical form of ancient Hindustani prayer and poetry, has been the cornerstone of Indian music for centuries, evolving into a complex set of expressions inviting improvisation and varying according to purpose, mood, story, and ritual. Stately in their sounds, ragas are most often created with sitar, sarod, tabla, tamboura (or drone), and voice with each note functioning as an evocation of the world's sanctity. The Raga Guide offers five hours and 15 minutes of stunningly beautiful music, played by masters of the instrument and accompanied by informative description, music transcriptions, and (where applicable) texts with English translations. Lovingly recorded, carefully authored, simply laid out, this wonderful package is the essence of perfection, topped off by exquisite color plates of ragamalas, or paintings depicting the stories of the ragas. A sublime tribute to Indian classical music. --Karen Karleski
CD Reviews
Ideal for beginners and casual listeners
sumitro | Chantilly, VA United States | 08/09/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This set of four cds is an extraordinary collection to get introduced to the richness of Indian classical music. One can get the basic 'chalan' (movement) of as many as 74 ragas. One can argue that the expositions are too short to bring out all the nuances of a raga, but that's not the purpose of these performances. The best thing about the performers is that they kept things simple, yet enjoyable.One suggestion though. Rather than arranging the ragas alphabetically, it could have been better arranged by the time of the day they are supposed to be played. That's just my humble opinion."
A great learning tool
AJIT JOSHI | Chicago, IL | 01/19/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Raga Guide comes with a ~200 page book with explanation of taal and brief background on hindustani music and scores for each raag. It is a great text for beginners esp. those with exposure to reading musical scores. If you can't read music, that's okay too, there is good explanation on how the scores are written. If you followed/aware of the raag kosh for hindustani ragas, this would be the logical multimedia extension to the raag kosh. Each raag lasts only about 3mins, so these CD's (which supplement the text) are strictly for learning and not for easy listening. All in all, I think this is a wonderful piece from Nimbus records and it is about time someone took the intiative to make learning hindustani music so lucid. I give it five stars as a learning tool."
A Master Class
Jorge Barbarosa | the back 9 | 07/27/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Please read the other reviews for clarity of musicology. What I'm here to talk about is the quality of this production and the reference material which accompanies it.
You receive 4 CD's and a guide to raga. Not just a plastic cd jewel case with some foldout but a guidebook.
The information contained in the guidebook is a wonderful resource. The whole package is very similar to a college textbook with media.
The sound quality is top shelf. Again, this is a quality production.
Enjoy"
SudhirIP
sudhirip | Valrico, FL United States | 01/28/2001
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This is a great review of 74 Indian Ragas with their history and "chalan" with Indian and Western musical notations. The creators of this item clearly must have put in years of effort to create it. I don't know of any similar compilation of this magnitude. However, there are a few minor shortfalls. The book should have been in a larger size, larger font, and better binding to compliment the great efforts of its editors. The music could have been a little longer than three minutes. I hope they come out with volume #2 with these changes with other ragas like Mand, Bairagi, Bengal Bhairav, and such. Still, this collection is a must for a serious student of Indian classical music."
Great collection for reference
Aditya Vedula | Princeton, NJ United States | 09/20/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is a solid compilation and would be a great reference or a gift. The artists featured are top-notch: Buddhadev Dasgupta, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, etc., The text is concise and helpful. The quality of the recordings is excellent and I loved the colourful booklet.
However, the 74 ragas performed are not full-fledged performances as such but more like short demo pieces, so an expert listener may not enjoy it as much - but then again the average listener probably would not appreciate a 75 minute performance of Raga Multani anyway."
Track Listings (18) - Disc #1