In the last post, I talked about a new feature on MySwar to search for Hindi film songs featuring specified musical instruments. In this post, I talk about looking for songs based on the usage of raagas.
I have only superficial knowledge of Indian classical music and raagas. I did, however, have an inkling that very few Hindi film songs are perfect representations of classical raagas. “Classical” Hindi film songs often tend to deviate from the raagas they are based on. This trait of Hindi film songs makes the identification of raagas a bit of a subjective exercise. The quest to associate a song with a raaga has sparked many a spirited debate (to put it lightly) on internet forums and comments sections. Given this, I have stayed away from tagging songs with raagas on MySwar despite many requests to do so over the past few years. I finally gave in when a few well-wishers of MySwar agreed to help me with this exercise.
A brief introduction of the experts (my descriptor, they are too modest to make any such claim) who contributed to this exercise:
- Vipin Nair runs the music blog MusicAloud, popular for its insightful music reviews and annual “best” lists
- Pradeep Namblat‘s eclectic taste in music makes for interesting and informative music-related posts on X
- Archisman Mozumder’s way with words and deep insights into music set him apart from the average music lover
- Chetan Vinchhi’s knowledge of Hindustani raagas goes hand in hand with his passion for Hindi film music of the classical era
- Sanjeev Ramabhadran is a professional singer and the go-to guy for raaga identification in the RMIMusenet group
- Kalpana Swamy shares her love for music through the curated shows of Nostalgiaana Muzicalli
The following resources were used in addition to the inputs of these experts:
- The Chandrakantha blog
- Rajan Parrikar’s music archive
- Archisman’s YouTube channel
- #Raagtag playlists in MusicAloud’s YouTube channel
- Discussions in the RMIM Google Group
The current exercise resulted in about 2000 songs being tagged on MySwar with one or more of over 100 raagas. Here’s a summary of the top ten raagas tagged in this exercise, in terms of the number of Hindi film songs based on the raaga:
- Bhairavi – 235
- Pahadi – 131
- Yaman – 128
- Pilu – 90
- Khamaj – 71
- Bhimpalasi – 59
- Shivranjani – 46
- Darbari Kanada – 43
- Bageshree & Yaman Kalyan – 41
- Desh – 40
Users who have logged in can perform Tag Search based on raagas and view the raaga of songs on the song page.
This is a small beginning but with the input of experts and MySwar users, we intend to keep expanding the scope of the exercise. The idea isn’t to tag every Hindi film song with a raaga, it is to identify songs that are reasonably good expositions of classical raagas. As a result, we’ll try to avoid tagging songs that deviate significantly from a given raaga or are a mishmash of multiple raagas (raagamalas will be part of the scope, of course). Given the subjectivity of this exercise, I am sure there will be instances where there isn’t universal agreement on our raaga tags. We’ll make reasonable attempts to settle these disagreements and update MySwar if required. Do make use of the Edit Raaga feature in the song details page to submit your inputs.
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