Raga rock is rock or pop music with a heavy Indian influence, either in its construction, its timbre, or its use of instrumentation, such as the sitar and tabla. More recently, scholars have included British rock music from the 1960s and 1970s that utilizes South Asian musical materials and instruments and Western ideas of South Asia.
Raga rock is not normally considered a specific genre of music, but rather a general aspect of any rock significantly influenced by Indian classical music. Since Indian influences are primarily limited to 1960s rock, most raga rock is limited to from that decade, although heavily Indian-derived sounds are found in some post-1960s rock.
Read more about Raga Rock: Development, Orientalism, A List of Examples
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“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
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