Word: ragas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Methodist hymns and Handel"). He has mapped the world folk-song families, found surprising links between them. The pinch-voiced, samisen-playing geisha finds an echo in the Spanish mountain-farm laborer thumping a ximbomba drum; "the lonesome, death-ridden American cowboy is a blood cousin to the raga singer in India...
...occasionally puzzled. The sitar itself is a confusing-looking instrument, shaped like an oversized guitar (up to 12 ft. long) and equipped with six playing strings, 13 "sympathetic" resonating strings, and two gourds which serve as sound box and resonator. Indian music is based on melodic forms known as ragas. Neither scales nor modes, ragas are separate, individual series of notes-there are thousands of different ragas-most of them passed orally from one musician to another. In combination with the drummer's rhythm, a raga gives the starting theme of a composition. The sitar player can improvise...