2. A Cycle of Rāgs

This part of the book curates the fourteen rāgs of the Rāg samay cakra album, providing supporting materials of practical utility to students and also of interest to listeners and scholars. Of the five sections in this part, the first four are essentially prefatory. Section 2.1 includes background information about the album and summarises the conventions of the khayāl style. Section 2.2 considers the song texts: their poetics, and issues of their translation and transliteration—in short, the problematics of producing a written edition of material passed down orally through tradition. In similar vein, section 2.3 discusses the written representation of the music, and how musicians might deploy the notations supplied here within the orally transmitted conventions of extemporised performance. Section 2.4 is in effect a glossary of technical terms used to specify the rāgs of the collection. Finally, section 2.5 presents the rāgs themselves. For each, we provide a technical specification; a thumbnail description of both the rāg and of the bandiś (song) chosen to represent it; a presentation and translation of the song text; and a notation of the bandiś.