Ashta Prahar - "Divine Meditation for Day & Night"

Music arranged and conducted by Ashit Desai and Ronu Majumdar

In Hindu belief, time is a cyclical rather than a linear concept. The cycle of birth, death and rebirth is evident everywhere in nature, and the sun itself is the most obvious heavenly body that not only sustains life on earth but in so doing, makes a daily "journey" according to the dictates of time. In observing the constraints of time and in its apparent motion, the sun also defines time on earth giving each sector of the 24-hour cycle a unique character of its own.

Starting from sunrise and going all the way to the deepest darkness before the rising sun once again bathes everything in its light and beauty, each time-sector has very definite characteristics. It is linked not only to the wider cosmic scheme of things but also to the more mundane day-to-day human existence in terms of the tasks that have to be performed within the 24-hour cycle.

The day is divided into eight sections of three hours each, known as "Paher" in modern Urdu/Hindi or Prahar in Sanskrit. The raag system of North Indian classical music is also inextricably linked to these time observances. Apart from the observance of time as "taal" (or rhythm) within a melody, each of the eight sections of day have specific raags (or melodic structures) deemed appropriate for that part of day. These are sometimes distributed according to musical properties of the raag, but more often than not, it is based on "ras", which literally means "juice" (or essence) but broadly speaking, it refers to a certain emotion inherent in the melody.

This album follows the sun on its apparent journey through the day, pausing at each vital section to interpret its beauty and its spiritual significance through a relevant Vedic Shlok in Sanskrit. A song in Hindi follows the Shlok (or Shloka) or Braj Bhasha (classical literary Hindi) composed in the appropriate raag for that time of day. Although the raags are relevant to a particular section of the day, the entire album can be enjoyed as a continuous journey tracking the changes through the cycles of day and night.