Emotional impact of four specific ragas of carnatic music
Abstract
Carnatic music has immense therapeutic potential that has clearly been documented in many studies. Ragas are considered the backbone of Carnatic music. Each raga is unique in its ability to have a distinct emotional effect on the mind, thus evoking different rasas or emotions like cheerfulness, sadness, romance, peace, strength/courage, anger, devotion, and passion. The overarching goal of this study was to understand the impact of four specific ragas namely Bilahari, Shankarabaranam, Kannada and Vakulabharanam as perceived by individuals who had very little or no knowledge of Carnatic music.18 Participants were asked to listen to pre-recorded audio files of these ragas and record the personal emotional effect elicited by each raga. The objective of this study was developed based on the results of our previously published pilot study aimed at understanding the psychological effect of twelve different Carnatic ragas, including the four abovementioned ragas, on women respondents experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, and negativity. It indicated that Kannada and Vakulabharanam incite calmness to the listener, while Bilahari and Shankarabaranam were deemed to provide a cheerful/optimistic and positive effect on most participants. The ultimate purpose of this series of studies is to deploy suitable Carnatic ragas in a therapeutic manner for healthy individuals as well as with special health challenges.
Downloads
References
2. Kumar TS, Muthuraman M, Krishnakumar R. Effect of the raga Ananda bhairavi in post-operative pain relief management. Indian J Surg. 2014;76(5):363–70.
3. Agrawal A, Reddy B, Phanisree P, Priyanka M, Kavitha D, Indira S, et al. Effect of music therapy in patients with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury. J Datta Meghe Inst Med Sci Univ. 2017;12(1):51.
4. Mathur A, Vijayakumar SH, Chakrabarti B, Singh NC. Emotional responses to Hindustani raga music: the role of musical structure. Front Psychol. 2015;6:513.
5. Hegde S. Music therapy for mental disorder and mental health: the untapped potential of Indian classical music. BJPsych Int. 2017;14(2):31–3.
6. Koduri GK, Indurkhya B. A behavioral study of emotions in south indian classical music andits implications in music recommendation systems. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM workshop on Social, adaptive and personalized multimedia interaction and access - SAPMIA ’10. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press; 2010. p. 55–60.
7. Victor Devadoss A, Aseervatham S. A Comparative Study between Properties of Carnatic Raagas and Emotions of Devotional Songs Using Bidirectional Associative Memories (BAM). Int J Eng Res Technol (Ahmedabad) [Internet]. 2013 [cited 2021 Jun 22];2(6). Available from: https://www.ijert.org/a-comparative-study-between-properties-of-carnatic-raagas-and-emotions-of-devotional-songs-using-bidirectional-associative-memories-bam
8. Researchgate.net. [cited 2021 Jun 22]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340502319_Impact_of_Music_Therapy_on_the_Emotional_Well-Being_of_Women_with_Marital_Disharmony
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright © Author(s) retain the copyright of this article.
.