The Hajinian Grocery Store

kingzucchini:

A Raga For Every Weather

I may have given thought to ragas, the main musical format of classical Indian music, more than most folks who don’t hail from the sub-continent, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert. Yes, I did have a phase of buying every Ravi Shankar album I could find. And yes, I did at one point own a sitar (even learned how to string it). But that’s not why I bring up ragas.

I bring them up because some of them roughly correspond to the time of day. Think of it, soundtracks for your morning. Or your afternoon. Or evening. For me, it might be Mogwai. Except Mogwai really only works if you find yourself on a rainy day, with the occasional sun ray slashing through the clouds. We all have music we put on, depending on the weather, or whether we’re going out, but do we have music we play for a specific time of day?

It’s afternoon as I write this, and so I found an afternoon raga to put on: Bhimpalasi. This also happens to be my favorite raga, mainly because of the title. It’s bhimpin’. If it’s afternoon where you are, use Spotify or some other internet device to listen to it.

It starts out meditative. Most ragas do. Ravi runs through the ascending notes, then the descending notes. This is how he’s going to climb up and down through the song, for roughly the next ten minutes. The music is bright, the beat a steady pace. Not too fast, but not slow. Perfect for the afternoon, which is when you really want to hit your groove. The steady climb after lunch to the quitting hours. This mood and musical attitude could easily stretch itself out another hour or two, and I wouldn’t mind. Buddha box style.

The Guardian put out few podcasts last year (in the Guardian Culture Podcast) that tried something similar. There was one that was designed to be listened to while searching for Christmas presents, another designed to be heard first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee, another should be listened to at 5:30pm while shopping at the grocery store. I haven’t tried these yet, mainly because I haven’t thought of it. If you do, let me know what you think. Because even if we don’t listen to things designed to be heard at a specific time, we rarely listen to nothing.