Raga

A raga or raag (literally "color, hue" but also "beauty, melody"; also spelled raaga, ragam; pronounced rāga, or rāgam or "raag") is one of the melodic modes used in traditional South Asian music genres such as Indian classical music and qawwali.

A raga uses a series of five to nine musical notes upon which a melody is constructed. However, the way the notes are approached and rendered in musical phrases and the mood they convey are more important in defining a raga than the notes themselves. In the Indian musical tradition, rāgas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons. Indian classical music is always set in a rāga. Non-classical music such as popular Indian film songs and ghazals sometimes use rāgas in their compositions.