Ravi Shankar - Incredible Ravi Shankar - Raga Charukauns (1986)

As a performer, composer, teacher and writer, Ravi Shankar has arguably done more to popularize Indian music than any other Indian musician. Indeed, his greatest legacy may be his ability to make Indian classical music more accessible to Western audiences without compromising the idiom itself. Mainly a practitioner of the north Indian Hindustani style of music, Ravi Shankar has nonetheless also experimented with styles from other areas of the continent.

Since the 1950s, Shankar popularized a number of ragas from southern India; charukeshi is one of them. In 1978, in a combination of charukeshi with malkauns, a style of music from Hindustan, he created a new raga: charukauns. The romanticism and pathos of charukeshi mingle with the depth, grandeur and dignity of malkauns, establishing a truly unique musical atmosphere. Of the two sections heard here, section one consists of "Alap" "Jod," and "Jhala," which features the sitar solo, while section two consists of a slow rhythm in 16 beats, and a faster rhythm in 12 beats which features sitar with tabla drums.