Miyan Ki Todi

Miyan Ki Todi stands at the summit of Hindustani classical music — a raga so deep, so demanding, and so emotionally concentrated that it is performed only by the most accomplished artists and only in performances of the highest seriousness.

Attributed to Miyan Tansen, who is said to have refined the ancient Todi thaat to create a raga that could contain the full weight of human longing, it represents the Mughal-era classical synthesis at its most sophisticated: a musical architecture of extraordinary complexity in which four altered notes — komal Re, komal Ga, tivra Ma, komal Dha — create an almost unbearable density of emotional implication.

The mythology surrounding this raga includes the famous legend that Tansen, commanded by Akbar to perform Deepak raga (believed to light lamps through its power), countered the burning heat that this produced by singing Miyan Ki Todi, whose cooling, watery quality — associated with the early monsoon and the relief of first rains — extinguished the fire; whether historical or legendary, this story illuminates the tradition's understanding of this raga as possessing elemental, almost supernatural emotional force.

Ustad Vilayat Khan's recording of Miyan Ki Todi on sitar, made in the 1960s for the HMV label, is widely considered one of the greatest recordings in the history of Indian classical music; Pandit Bhimsen Joshi's vocal version with its heart-stopping treatment of komal Ga, and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan's sarod renditions are equally celebrated.

In Hindi cinema, the composition 'O Re Manwa' from Madhumati, sung by Lata Mangeshkar in a Todi-tinged mode, and several compositions in Gulzar's films have drawn on Todi's emotional palette.

The morning hour of Miyan Ki Todi's prescription — the early, grey, pre-sunrise hour — is understood as the moment when the night's accumulated emotion is at its most tender and the spirit most vulnerable to beauty.