Carnatic Ragas as Music Information Retrieval Entities

Carnatic music is the ‘art’ music of the four southern States of India (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamilnadu). One difference between Carnatic music and the better-known Hindusthani music of North India is its embeddedness in a religious-philosophical context. This context crucially determines the objects of knowledge organization and the indigenous theory of musical affect. The author presents the view that a digital library of Carnatic music should contain the objects of knowledge organization and their interrelationships as conceived by indigenous practitioners and audiences, rather than by Western specialists or North Indian practitioners. The author demonstrates how three features of Carnatic music (viz. aural transmission, improvisation and cultural context) have particular implications for the development of a digital library. Aural transmission results in musical documents being less important sources of information than recordings. Improvisation results in a highly transformational and often ambiguous relationship between (intra)musical signifiers and signified, causing problems of classification and machine recognition. The cultural context favours the prioritisation of emotional affect over introductory ease of listening and even technical recording quality in the selection of the recordings to be included in a digital library of Carnatic music.