
Monsoon rains on Pichola Lake, Rajasthan, India (image courtesy mckaysavage)
There’s a famous story out of South Asia, about music, mood, and weather. Because many Hindustani and Karnatik ragas are highly evocative of the everyday – some sung very specifically during certain times of day, year, or season. In fact, there’s an entire corpus of compositions dedicated solely to the weather, the monsoons especially. Which makes perfect sense if you’ve ever seen a really Indian or Pakistani monsoon.
Anyway, back to the music. The north Indo-Pakistani Hindustani classical kind, in particular. [Read more…]