Raga Asavari or Asawari
Raga Asavari is a Hindustani classical raga. It belongs to the Asavari thaat and is performed in the morning hours.
In pre-Bhatkhande days this Asavari used the Komal Rishab instead of Shuddh Rishab. When Bhatkhandeji created the thaat process, he changed that Asavari's Komal Rishab to Shuddha Rishab but the name remained the same. From that time the old or real 'Asavari' has been called the Komal Rishabh Asavari, and the new Shuddha Rishabh Asavari is simply called 'Asavari'.
Raga Asavari and Komal Rishabh Asavari also appears in the Sikh tradition from northern India and is part of the Sikh holy scripture called Sri Guru Granth Sahib. Sikh Gurus Sri Guru Ramdas Ji and Sri Guru Arjun Dev Ji used these ragas. The Raga Komal Rishabh Asavari appears as 'Raga Asavari Sudhang' in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji.
Rag Asawari is considered to be the fundamental rag in Asawari that. There are several film songs in Asavari; one common one is 'Mujhe Gale Se Laga Lo Bahut Udas Hun Main' , 'Ruk jaa raat, theher jaa re chanda' from the movie Dil ek mandir. Asawari is a morning rag. It is Audav - Sampurna due to the omission of the Ga and Ni in the ascending structure. For those who still adhere to the Vadi / Samvadi theory, it has been suggested that the vadi is Dha and the samvadi is Ga.
There is considerable disagreement concerning the Re. It seems that there are three schools of thought. The predominant view is that only shuddha Re is used. There is another school, which suggests that both shauddha and komal can be used. Finally, there are those that contend that only the komal Re be used. For the purposes of this website we will consider the first two to be within the bounds of Asavari, while the last one we will define to be 'Komal Re Asavari'
Asavari and its clones Jaunpuri and Dev Gandhar belong to late morning. The original version of Asavari used all four komal swaras – much like Bhairavi. It then ceded popularity to the modern version of Asavari, which uses shudh ‘re’ but komal ‘ga’, ‘dha’ and ‘ni’. When Pandit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande grouped north Indian ragas into ten thaats, he chose Asavari (with shudh ‘re’) as the key raga of the thaat named after it. The original Asavari is now known as ‘Komal Rishabh Asavari’. The modern Asavari in turn ceded popularity to Jaunpuri, which differs from it only in using the seventh note ‘ni’ in ascending movement. Interestingly, with the shifting of people’s preference from shudh ‘re’ Asavari to Jaunpuri, komal ‘re’ Asavari has made a comeback of sorts. Most of the recordings labeled simply Asavari are in komal ‘re’ Asavari. Dev Gandhar also uses shudh ‘ga’ sparingly in addition to the Komal one. The three ragas sound very similar and some experts on music, including Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, do not consider Asavari and Jaunpuri to be different ragas.
Asawari raga is very popular in North Indian classical music. It is a morning raga, which evokes the moods depicting yearning for love, anguish, and melancholy. Raga Asavari is effective in eliminating the impurities of blood and related diseases. In South Indian musical scheme, Asavari thaat is known as Natabhairavi Mela.