This week was Raga Kumarapriya which in my software was unexpectedly pentatonic (?) and difficult to do anything with. I tried that minor 7th thing which has an arcade sort of feel, I guess.
Anyway I will use this opportunity to look it up a little on Wikipedia. "Janya" means derive, so a "Janya Raga" is a derived raga... one of those created by removing notes is called "Varja"... and "Audava" means it has 5 notes. So there we go... so I asked myself, "What are Upanga ragas if they are supposedly derived from the parent but without using notes/swaras that aren't from the parent and still distinct from Varja conceptually?" It seems I had a misconception from the start and they don't have to be distinct... Varja simply refers to how notes/swaras have been removed, whereas Upanga refers to the derived scale's purity when compared to the source - to be contrasted with Bhashanga which would add foreign notes/swaras and have less purity as a derived scale. But I doubt the forced minor 7ths on each note would be Bhashanga... doing something as wacky as that eliminates all the original context entirely lmoa

Tags: week 22 2026, View by:Sir Bunting