From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
raag
This article discusses raag as a foundational concept in Hindustani music. For raag-specific adaptations, see Hindustani vocal adaptations of Beach Surgery.
A raag (also spelled raga) is the foundational melodic framework of Hindustani classical music, built on the principle that certain note-sequences (ascending and descending paths through the 22 shrutis, or microtones, of the octave) evoke specific emotional and spiritual states.
Each raag is incompletely defined: a raag is not a tune but a set of rules and emotional intentions. A musician performs a raag by entering it, exploring its contours, and improvising within its grammar. No two renderings are identical. The raag itself is never finished—it is always being completed, abandoned, and re-entered.
This structure mirrors Beach Surgery's central problem: the glitch, the unfinishable cycle, the refusal to resolve. Adaptations using Hindustani vocal music stage Leif and Katita's recurrence as raag-improvisation: each loop is a new rasa-space, the notes familiar but the emotional path always diverging. Baul singers extend this by incorporating raag-meditation into devotional practice around the franchise.
The spine's high-pitched resonance—which Katita theorises could reverse the earth's spin—aligns with the highest frequencies of raag performance: the human voice singing its upper limits, approaching the sound of the earth rubbing against space.