Wednesday January 11 2023

I’ve been crabby as hell but the following sequence of music has lifted me towards agreeableness. Mohi Bahauddin Dagar’s Ahir Bhairav is his version of a Hindustani morning raga, lasting almost an hour here. He plays a rudra veena, a variety of “tube zither” that connects a fretted body (dandi) to two large gourds (tumbas). Dagar lets the microtonal action of the drone string take precedence for the first half. After that, plucked bass notes and melody drift in slowly. It sounds like a brain, a base that wells with energy and is joined by a few fireflies of thought.