No Title
Sudhir Chandra Mathur
THE SOUND OF INDIAN MUSIC: A JOURNEY INTO RAGA by Raghava R. Menon Indian Book Company, 1976, 85 pp., 35.00
October 1976, volume 1, No 4

The book under review is part of the ‘India Library’ series not ‘learned treatises on Indology, nor meant to be reference works … ‘ but’ … to give encyclopaedic, compressed information on each subject’. As such, this book is a simple plebian attempt to undergo a journey into Raga—the sound of Indian music.

The book, as the author admits, unlike other books on Indian classical music does not attempt to explain either the history or the technical details of the raga, nor does it go into the philosophy of classical music which has direct relation to Indian philosophy. It only attempts to outline the nature of the sound of Indian music, and ‘in the direction of the source from which the true enjoyment and meaning of the fantastic heritage of our raga music emerges’.

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