Though at first this performance may seem like someone posting their music on YouTube just because they wanted to show off their musical talent to the online world, this is not the case. Ranjan Roy, better known as Maharaj meaning “The King”, is actually a popular musician whose music is played frequently on the All India Radio (A.I.R.). He is an Indian Classical star.
In this video, Maharaj is playing the sitar in a very pulsatile fashion. The sitar is a five-string chordophone that is plucked. There is a bit of ornamentation in this song with the addition of a chime or triangle of some type, but otherwise, all the sound was homophonic and came from the sitar. The song as a whole is of conjunct motion, though there are certain intervals that are not as small compared with the rest of the intervals in the song. In India, Raga is an important principle of guiding the melody that I believe Maharaj uses. Though it is common for Indian music to have a nonpulsatile introduction, also known as an alap, he does not begin this song this way. The beginning is pulsatile, but yet sets the tone for the rest of the song quite well.
In the description of this video, the publisher noted that the original music video of this particular song was three hours long, but had to be cut short for YouTube purposes. Improvisation is common to Indian music, so I am taking an educated guess that this song was improvisation. Also, raga is often over an hour long, and this video fits this description very well.
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