Explaining Raga

“A raga,” Ravi Shankar explained to his illustrious fans in the west, “is a scientific, precise, subtle and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement consisting of either a full seven-note octave, or a series of six or five notes in a rising or falling structure called the Arohana and Avarohana. It is the subtle difference in the order of notes, an omission of a dissonant note, an emphasis on a particular note, the slide from one note to the other … that demarcate one raga from the other."

From: What the Beatles Missed About Ravi Shankar
by Tariq Ali, Counterpunch, Dec. 14, 2012”