India, with such rich culture and music, has had a large influence on American music today. George Harrison, a former member of the Beatles, was one out of the many musicians to take a large liking to Indian music in America. George gave the United States a taste of Indian music through his own music by introducing certain characteristics and styles that we Americans were once unaware of. Those musical characteristics involved things such as melody, rhythm, texture, timbre, dynamic, and form. The melodies in India are divided from a prescribed series of notes known as ragas. A raga is the melodic form or, otherwise known as, the Indian scale. There are up to one hundred ragas. In the North region, those ragas include things such as the time
