Bilawal बिलावल

Bilawal thaat is one of the ten parent scales (thaats) of Hindustani music, the system set out by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, and it uses the seven shuddha (natural) notes S R G M P D N. Raag Bilawal, the raga of the same name, has its own page: Raag Bilawal. A thaat is a scale, not a raga. It fixes the form of each note and says nothing about movement, emphasis or time of performance; those belong to the ragas built on it. The nearest thaat is Khamaj thaat, which lowers Ni to komal; Kalyan thaat keeps every other note and raises Ma to tivra.

Bhatkhande named each thaat after a prominent raga that uses its notes. The ragas grouped under Bilawal include Alhaiya Bilawal, the most performed member of the Bilawal group, and Durga and Hansdhwani, both pentatonic ragas that take five of the seven notes. The same seven notes form Dheerasankarabharanam, melakarta 29 of Carnatic music, and the Western major scale, the Ionian mode.

B. Chaitanya Deva, summarising Bhatkhande's rules on the time of ragas, places ragas built on shuddha Re, Ga, Dha and Ni, the note set of Bilawal thaat, in the first two watches of the day or of the night after twilight. KalaSudha presents ragas of this thaat in concert and on record, and its courses, each built by its instructor with KalaSudha, take a learner from the scale into the raga: see our courses.