Emotion in Raga Music

Parag Chordia (GTCMT)Alex Rae (GTCMT)

{ppc, arae3}@gatech.edu

Goals

• Do specific ragas consistently elicit certain emotions?

• Does this depend on enculturation?

• For a given emotional dimension, what are the main factors, are there interactions?

Introduction to Raga

E F D C E F A G

D G E F A G E F D C

Ascending: C D G E F A G CDescending: C B A G F G D C

D G G E G F E F

G F E F

Set of motives

Expression

Scale abstraction

Raga aesthetics• Traditional theory linking emotion and raga• Rasa / bhava / raga

Method

• Internet-based survey

• Asked to explicitly rate how well certain emotion terms applied to raga excerpt

• Terms derived from previous study that included free response and some quantitative responses

Previous Work: Free Responses• Darbari

• Desh

“Emptiness. I’m tumbling down a deep abyss. Weightless, then maybe. Dark and surrounding. Fall.”

“It feels like pain, an agony that is long lasting and is happening at the time that the music is playing, a time of hardship.”

“Absolutely fresh.... Clearing all the bad thoughts... Gives fresh meaning to life. Sounds serene. Very Peaceful i felt.”

“Pure, unblemished...Something white as milk, offering to take you in, clean all your sins...Compassionate and loving, but in a distant sort of way. ”

Previous Work: Free Responses• Khamaj

• Marwa

“It so reminds me of the blossoming of flowers and prosperity... the happy chuckles of newborns... The pride of their mothers... ”

“spring time. birds chirping. sun is shinging. love. a mother is telling her child a story. the child is smiling. good times are upon us.”

“my reaction to this raaga was almost sexual. I felt desire. felt very aware of my body. at times I felt a strange anger and the desire to control somebody else. i felt very powerful. i felt like a woman.”

“very depressing...felt like crying...someone was going away... describes life in some way....the ups and downs. ”

Previous Work: Content AnalysisWord Histogram

Semantic Category Histogram

Raag Database

Raag Database

• Instruments– Sitar– Sarod– Male vocal– Female vocal

• Four performances in a given raag• 60 second excerpt from alap

Emotional Dimensions

Survey Screenshot

Subject Data

• 557 respondents, 20,082 total judgments• 77 % Male / 23 % Female• 26.3 Average age (std = 9.2)

Familiarity with NICM

somewhat

very35%

29%

36%none / little

Results: Effect of Raag for ‘Happy’

Results: Effect of Raag for ‘Sad’

Results: Effect of Raag for ‘Angry’

Results: Effect of Raag for ‘Calming’

Results: Effect of Raag for ‘Devotional’

Results: Effect of Raag for ‘Emotional’

Results: Effect of Raag for ‘Loving’

Results: Effect of Enculturation for ‘Emotional’

Results: Effect of Enculturation for ‘Loving’

Results: Effect of Enculturation for ‘Happy’

Results: Effect of Enculturation for ‘Sad’

Results: Effect of Enculturation for ‘Sad’

Results: Effect of Instrument for ‘Sad’

Results: Effect of Instrument for ‘Loving’

Results: Effect of Instrument for ‘Happy’

Results: Interaction Effects

• Main interaction effect was for Raag and Enculturation for the emotion ‘Sad’ (p < .013)

• Currently exploring this relationship for different ragas

Conclusions

• Across many emotions clustering pattern evident– Positive valence: Khamaj, Desh and Bageshri– Medium: Bhimpalasi and Yaman– Negative valence: Gujari Todi, Marwa, Shree and

Darbari. • Enculturation was a significant main effect for

‘Loving’ and ‘Emotional’. – ‘Very’ and ‘a little’ enculturated listeners rated these

terms higher compared with ‘not at all’ and ‘somewhat’ enculturated

Conclusions

• Highest scoring emotions for a given raga conformed well to traditional descriptions, whether or not the listener was at all familiar with Indian music.– Khamaj and Desh were 'happy', 'peaceful' and

'calming’– Darbari, Shree and Marwa were 'powerful', 'sad',

'strong', and 'restless'.

Future Work

• Explicit model emotional dimensions using acoustic and musical features– Pitch-class distribution– Spectral centroid– MFCCs– Event density– Attack timex

• Implicit measures of emotion

Further Information

• Data will be made available at http://paragchordia.com

• Interactive visualizer– See data by emotion, raag and filter by

demographic variables