By : Admin

Raga Jog omits the second and the sixth intervals, Ri and Dha, making it pentatonic, or Audav in nature. In ascending, it uses Shuddha Ga, and in descending, it uses Komal Ga. It takes Raga Tilang for its base which itself is derived from Khamaj. 

Jog is an immensely popular and versatile post-sunset raga in contemporary music.. The raga now enjoys considerable popularity also in the semi-classical and light genres. The raga did not merit elaborate discussion in major early 20th-century works such as Bhatkhande Sangeet Shastra. It can be assumed, therefore, to have acquired its significance in the latter half of the last century. The raga bears a close resemblance to the raga Nat of the Carnatic [South Indian] tradition.

 According to Manikbuwa Thakurdas, [Raga Darshan, Vol II, 1st Edition, Krishna Bros. Ajmer, 1988], two variants of the raga are in circulation. The variant with an affinity to raga Dhani utilizes only the komal [flat] Ni, while the variant with a Tilang affinity utilizes both, the komal as well as the shuddha [natural] Ni swaras. The latter version was performed commonly well into the 1960s by even the leading musicians of the pre-independence generation. The problem with the Tilang-biased [twin-Ga and twin-Ni usage] was that the Tilang facet tended to dominate the aesthetic experience, and the resultant raga found it difficult to establish its distinctive melodic personality. In later years, therefore, the preference has stabilized around the Dhani-biased variant with only a single [komal] Ni and twin-Ga usage. 

This is the raga currently recognized as Jog. The raga belongs to the Khamaj parent scale of Hindustani music, and is hyper-pentatonic, omitting Re and Dh swaras in the ascent as well as descent. It deploys both Ga swaras -- the shuddha [natural] Ga in the ascent, and the komal [flat] Ga in the descent. According to Subbarao [Subbarao, B. Raga Nidhi, Vol. II, 4th Edition, 1996, Music Academy, Madras], the Vadi and Samvadi swaras [primary and secondary dominants] of the raga are [shuddha] Ga and the higher-octave Sa respectively. 

According to Manikbuwa Thakurdas [Ibid], the Vadi-Samvadi are Pa and Sa. In contemporary practice, however, the treatment of the raga suggests [shuddha] Ga as the vadi and base-Sa as the samvadi. However, after the release of a Jog recording of the influential vocalist, Ustad Ameer Khan [STCS.04B.7374], Ma has also gained considerable significance in the raga, though not sufficient to replace Ga as the vadi.

 In the phrasing pattern of Jog, phrases are permitted to terminate only on S, [shuddha] G, and P, two of the three being the vadi-samvadi pair. However, the contemporary Jog conforms to a general tendency amongst musicians to enlarge the melodic potential of pentatonic ragas by treating all the swaras as permissible terminal points in phrasing. 

A melodic focus on Ma became acceptable after Ustad Ameer Khan’s rendition of the raga. Musicians of later generations have now added [komal] Ni to the permissible terminal points for phrasing, thus effectively removing all constraints on phrasing, and allowing the tonal geometry of the raga to become the sole repository of its raga-nessThis is the initial editor content.