Nat Malhar

Nat Malhar is the most exuberant of the composite ragas, combining the ancient, vigorous heroism of Nat—one of the oldest ragas in the Hindustani canon, associated with Nataraja's cosmic dance of creation and destruction—with the monsoon ecstasy of the Malhar family, which carries in its hereditary memory the ancient belief that certain ragas have the power to invoke rain.

Where most Malhar-family ragas express longing for the monsoon—Megh Malhar's cloudy anticipation, Miyan ki Malhar's romantic yearning for rain—Nat Malhar celebrates the monsoon's triumphant arrival, rain not awaited but here, greeted with dancing and laughter and the physical joy of being soaked to the skin.

The mythological background of Nat itself is deeply ancient: in the Natyashastra tradition, Nat (or Nata) is connected to the cosmic drama of Shiva's dance that creates, sustains, and destroys the universe, and to the foundational role of theatrical performance in human culture; when this heroic, theatrical energy is blended with the monsoon's release, the result is a raga of enormous vitality that seems to recreate in music the moment the first heavy drops fall on dry earth.

Ustad Amir Khan's recordings of Nat Malhar are considered essential, combining the raga's heroic energy with his characteristic meditative depth in a way that found unexpected emotional complexity within its festive character.

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi's renditions brought an infectious, full-throated energy to the raga that communicated its celebratory monsoon spirit to audiences immediately and memorably.

The film song 'Barso Re Megha' from the film Guru (2007), composed by A.R.

Rahman and sung by Shreya Ghoshal, draws on the Malhar tradition's monsoon idiom and captures the Nat Malhar spirit of joyful monsoon celebration, though in a lighter, popular form.