Music – Sound or Emotion?

“What are the two types of Indian music? First, Hindustani music is more about sound while Carnatic music is about emotions.”

—Sadhguru

In terms of understanding sound and using it to influence the human system, I have personally studied this aspect in all my travels. Nowhere else in the world has sound been looked at with the kind of depth as in Hindustani music.

Within Indian classical music, there are two basic groups: Carnatic music, which is of the South, and Hindustani, of the North. Hindustani music is more about the sound; Carnatic is based on emotions. It is not that they have no understanding of sounds, definitely they do, but there is more emotion involved. It may not have been so earlier, but in the last four hundred years, Carnatic music has become more emotion based because of the bhakti movement, the devotion movement that happened in southern India. Most of the existing Carnatic music was written by devotees like Thyagaraja or Purandara Dasa, so a lot of emotion was brought into the music.

Read the full article on Isha Foundation Site.

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