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Raga rock is a term used to describe rock and roll records with heavy South Asian influence, either in construction, timbre or use of instrumentation, such as sitar and tabla. More recently it has been adopted by scholars describing British rock and roll from the 1960s and 1970s that utilizes South Asian musical materials and instruments and Western ideas of South Asia.
The term as commonly used does not refer to a specific genre of music, but rather as a general descriptor for any sort of rock with heavy, audible debts to Indian classic music. Since Indian influences extend in particular through much 1960s rock, the term is most frequently used to refer to certain sounds from that decade, although heavily Indian-derived sounds are found in some post-1960s rock.
Ragas are specific melodic modes used in classical music of South Asia. Thus, any rock songs with obvious Indian influences may be deemed "raga-rock" although the term is frequently used to refer to much more explicitly Indian musical outings. The advent of raga rock is often traced to the July 1965 release of "See My Friends", a top ten single for The Kinks in the UK, although The Yardbirds' "Heart Full of Soul", released earlier that year, featured a sitar-like riff by guitarist Jeff Beck. The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" popularized the genre.
In the 1970s guitarist John McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra introduced a virtuoso version of raga rock, playing to packed houses and releasing instrumental albums that entered the main Billboard charts. McLaughlin has since played with Indian musicians in the instrumental groups Shakti and Remember Shakti.
In the 1990s the British rock group Kula Shaker had a multiplatinum album entitled simply "K", which featured Top Ten raga rock hits including "Tattva" and "Govinda", both of which included Sanskrit lyrics. Kula Shaker reformed in 2005 after a hiatus of some years, and have since been touring in Britain, Europe and Japan, introducing new material including the raga rock "Song of Love/Narayana".
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Some scholars approach raga rock and other uses of non-Western musical materials in Western popular music from sociological perspectives, especially as a manifestation of Orientalism. Common themes include drug use, sexual exploration, and spirituality. Jonathan Bellman writes that "the Kinks use of eastern musical influences to allude to personal and sexual matters is directly in keeping with historical uses of exoticism as signifier for forbidden sexuality." [1] Bellman and other scholars suggest that the Orient once again becomes a Western fantasy land, mediated to mass culture audiences of the mid and late twentieth century through Rock and Roll.
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