Raag Kirwani | Deepak Shah | Piano | Reading | Kala Festival 2025

Deepak Shah performed Raag Kirwani on piano at Reading Raga Resonance, held at The Great Hall, University of Reading, on 14 September 2025 as part of Kala Festival 2025. He was accompanied by Hanif Khan on tabla.

Raag Kirwani originates in South Indian Carnatic music and carries the symmetry of the Harmonic Minor scale (S R g m P d N S'), where the lower tetrachord mirrors the upper. It is a late-night raga whose mood rests in Karuna rasa (pathos, weight, and a quality of sustained inner stillness). Its characteristic movement descends through g m P, d P, m g R S before the leading note N resolves back to Sa, giving the raga a sense of inevitability.

On piano, Shah works within the raga's linear grammar: no quarter-tones, but the Harmonic Minor's fixed intervals align closely with Kirwani's scale, allowing the melody to speak. He moves through the aroha and avroh with phrasing drawn from the raga's pakad rather than the keyboard's default idioms. Hanif Khan's tabla underpins the pace, his Delhi kayda vocabulary keeping the rhythm conversational.