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The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas
The Raga Guide is an introduction to Hindustani ragas, the melodic basis for the classical music of Northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Ragas are complex entities. Performers, who have spent many years acquiring their knowledge, often prefer to keep silent, and in any case few have been taught to approach ragas from an analytical point of view. Musicologists, on the other hand, often lack a thorough practical insight into raga music.
The authors of this guide are all well-versed in the theory and practice of raga music. Of the hundreds of ragas that exist, the guide surveys seventy-four of the most performed and well-established ones, with specially commissioned recordings by Hariprasad Chaurasia (flute), Buddhadev DasGupta (sarod), Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar (vocal) and Vidyadhar Vyas (vocal).
For each ragathe guide An analytical and historical description; transcription of the alap (melodic construction) for each raga as performed on the CDs; ascent-descent and melodic outline in both western and Indian notation; Song texts with English translation (for sung ragas).
The Raga Guide includes four CDs with over five hours of music. It will be essential reading for listeners and conoisseurs, students and scholars.
JOEP BOR is a professor at Leiden University. He was the founder of the Rotterdam World Music Department, and the artistic advisor for the Amsterdam India Festival. He has written extensively on Indian music.
Ragas are complex entities. Performers, who have spent many years acquiring their knowledge, often prefer to keep silent, and in any case few have been taught to approach ragas from an analytical point of view. Musicologists, on the other hand, often lack a thorough practical insight into raga music.
The authors of this guide are all well-versed in the theory and practice of raga music. Of the hundreds of ragas that exist, the guide surveys seventy-four of the most performed and well-established ones, with specially commissioned recordings by Hariprasad Chaurasia (flute), Buddhadev DasGupta (sarod), Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar (vocal) and Vidyadhar Vyas (vocal).
For each ragathe guide An analytical and historical description; transcription of the alap (melodic construction) for each raga as performed on the CDs; ascent-descent and melodic outline in both western and Indian notation; Song texts with English translation (for sung ragas).
The Raga Guide includes four CDs with over five hours of music. It will be essential reading for listeners and conoisseurs, students and scholars.
JOEP BOR is a professor at Leiden University. He was the founder of the Rotterdam World Music Department, and the artistic advisor for the Amsterdam India Festival. He has written extensively on Indian music.
191 pages, Paperback
Published August 17, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 23, 2009
This 196-page guide is an introduction to Hindustani ragas, the melodic basis for the classical music of northern India, Pakistan, nepal and Bangladesh. For each of the 74 ragas presented, there is an analytical and historical description, ascent-descent and melodic outline in both western and Indian notation, transcriptions of the alap (melodic introduction) for each raga and, for the vocal tracks, song texts in Devanagari script and English translations. One of the many delights of this volume are the four CDs (5 hours, 15 minutes) featuring:
Hariprasad Chaurasia (bansuri), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haripras...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5w7To...
Buddhadev DasGupta (sarod), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhade...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Eo9V...
Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar (vocal), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shruti_S...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P42DJ_...
Vidyadhar Vyas (vocal). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidyadha...
http://cdbaby.com/cd/vidyadharvyas
Mysteriously, the tabla player is not named. Suvarnalata Rao, Wim van der Meer, and Jane Harvey are the co-authors and Joep Bor fom the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music is the editor. There are 40 color plates painted in the Provincial Mughal style, the bulk of which come from the ragamala album, dated 1610. This book is on my Amazon wish list!
Hariprasad Chaurasia (bansuri), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haripras...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5w7To...
Buddhadev DasGupta (sarod), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhade...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Eo9V...
Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar (vocal), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shruti_S...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P42DJ_...
Vidyadhar Vyas (vocal). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidyadha...
http://cdbaby.com/cd/vidyadharvyas
Mysteriously, the tabla player is not named. Suvarnalata Rao, Wim van der Meer, and Jane Harvey are the co-authors and Joep Bor fom the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music is the editor. There are 40 color plates painted in the Provincial Mughal style, the bulk of which come from the ragamala album, dated 1610. This book is on my Amazon wish list!
December 10, 2021
Amazing reference for anyone learning Indian classical music. Wish they would make an extended version with more ragas.
January 24, 2023
Excellent introduction to Hindustani music for musicians who want to learn the craft, and for listeners who want to understand what they are listening to. The tradition of Hindustani classical music is passed on directly from teacher to student. For this reason, there are few books on the subject. This one is written by a Dutch musicologist who commissioned recordings from Indian musicians for the accompanying CDs. It will be especially useful, perhaps critical, to students who do not have regular access (e.g. weekly access for many years) to a master of Indian Classical music. Unfortunately, however, my binding was not very good and several pages are loose after minimal use. This is the only reason for 4 stars.
July 9, 2025
The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas, edited by Joep Bor, entered my life not just as a book, but as a living archive, a whispering map of moods and melodies.
It was 2001, a year already tuned to the hum of adolescent wonder and growing silences, when my English teacher — the late, luminous Biswajit Chattopadhyay — handed it to me. He was no ordinary pedagogue. He was the kind who pronounced Shelley with a murmur of longing, and the kind who dragged students like me out of classrooms and into midnight baithaks at the Dover Lane Music Conference.
It was he who said, with utter seriousness, “To understand English poetry, you must first understand raag Yaman.”
The book, with its unassuming cover and scholarly backbone, did not try to seduce with storytelling. It offered no frills — just the spine of Hindustani classical music laid bare: 74 ragas, each carefully notated, explained, mapped, sung. It came with four CDs, and in an age before Spotify and YouTube rabbit holes, those discs were pure alchemy. They didn’t just play music — they taught you how to listen.
Each raga came with its aroha-avaroha, vadi-samvadi, and time theory, but more than that, it came with a whisper of emotional suggestion: serenity in Bageshree, maternal ache in Bhairavi, erotic languor in Miyan ki Malhar. As I turned pages and followed swaras with trembling fingers, I felt I was being let into an ancient secret — a grammar of feelings, older than empires, subtle as moonlight on a tanpura string.
Joep Bor and his team of scholars (like Suvarnalata Rao and Wim van der Meer) approached Indian music not as exotic spectacle but as a deep, breathing system of thought and discipline. What amazed me then — and continues to delight — is how rigor and rasa are woven together in this guide. It is both science and poetry. The notations are accompanied by visual raga charts (the "svaragrams"), making the book accessible even to Western-trained musicians or absolute novices. But there’s no dilution. Raga Durga is still a forest goddess. Lalit still carries that gentle sting of unresolved yearning at dawn.
As the years passed, the book became less a study aid and more a friend. It sat quietly near my bedside table, always ready to explain why rain feels like Miyan ki Malhar, why twilight aches like Marwa. Dover Lane nights became longer. My teacher passed away. The book remained.
What The Raga Guide gave me — and still gives — is not just knowledge, but orientation. In a world of endless digital playlists, it provides a tactile, reasoned structure — a cosmos. It says: here are 74 moods, 74 constellations of sound. Learn them, not just to name them, but to be with them.
Looking back, I think Biswajit Sir knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t just giving me a book — he was passing down an inheritance, a way of hearing the world. A way of finding pattern in emotion, discipline in ecstasy.
And that, perhaps, is the quiet magic of The Raga Guide: it doesn’t overwhelm. It initiates. It prepares you not just to know the ragas, but to wait for them. Like all good teachers. Like all great music.
It was 2001, a year already tuned to the hum of adolescent wonder and growing silences, when my English teacher — the late, luminous Biswajit Chattopadhyay — handed it to me. He was no ordinary pedagogue. He was the kind who pronounced Shelley with a murmur of longing, and the kind who dragged students like me out of classrooms and into midnight baithaks at the Dover Lane Music Conference.
It was he who said, with utter seriousness, “To understand English poetry, you must first understand raag Yaman.”
The book, with its unassuming cover and scholarly backbone, did not try to seduce with storytelling. It offered no frills — just the spine of Hindustani classical music laid bare: 74 ragas, each carefully notated, explained, mapped, sung. It came with four CDs, and in an age before Spotify and YouTube rabbit holes, those discs were pure alchemy. They didn’t just play music — they taught you how to listen.
Each raga came with its aroha-avaroha, vadi-samvadi, and time theory, but more than that, it came with a whisper of emotional suggestion: serenity in Bageshree, maternal ache in Bhairavi, erotic languor in Miyan ki Malhar. As I turned pages and followed swaras with trembling fingers, I felt I was being let into an ancient secret — a grammar of feelings, older than empires, subtle as moonlight on a tanpura string.
Joep Bor and his team of scholars (like Suvarnalata Rao and Wim van der Meer) approached Indian music not as exotic spectacle but as a deep, breathing system of thought and discipline. What amazed me then — and continues to delight — is how rigor and rasa are woven together in this guide. It is both science and poetry. The notations are accompanied by visual raga charts (the "svaragrams"), making the book accessible even to Western-trained musicians or absolute novices. But there’s no dilution. Raga Durga is still a forest goddess. Lalit still carries that gentle sting of unresolved yearning at dawn.
As the years passed, the book became less a study aid and more a friend. It sat quietly near my bedside table, always ready to explain why rain feels like Miyan ki Malhar, why twilight aches like Marwa. Dover Lane nights became longer. My teacher passed away. The book remained.
What The Raga Guide gave me — and still gives — is not just knowledge, but orientation. In a world of endless digital playlists, it provides a tactile, reasoned structure — a cosmos. It says: here are 74 moods, 74 constellations of sound. Learn them, not just to name them, but to be with them.
Looking back, I think Biswajit Sir knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t just giving me a book — he was passing down an inheritance, a way of hearing the world. A way of finding pattern in emotion, discipline in ecstasy.
And that, perhaps, is the quiet magic of The Raga Guide: it doesn’t overwhelm. It initiates. It prepares you not just to know the ragas, but to wait for them. Like all good teachers. Like all great music.
September 11, 2018
Excellent book with CDs explaining each of the 74 ragas, or musical basis of tunes, with the original Devanagri explanation and the English explanation, very poetic and masterful compendium. Highly recommended.
August 5, 2020
I wrote a lengthy review of this when it first came out, which can be read here: http://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/rag...
It's a useful resource, and highly recommended for lovers of Indian classical music.
It's a useful resource, and highly recommended for lovers of Indian classical music.
February 20, 2024
How to open a book
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March 4, 2009Sounds fabulous!
Want to read
August 20, 2014i love music
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews