This book offers an engaging and accessible journey into Indian music by blending art, science, and human experience into a single narrative. Rather than treating music only as a cultural tradition, it presents it as a fascinating system of sound, emotion, and meaning that connects the physical world with the human mind.Beginning with the roots of Indian music, the book traces how natural sounds gradually evolved into structured forms like rāga and tāl, shaped by human perception and emotion. It then highlights the ground-breaking work of Sir C.V. Raman, who revealed the hidden science behind Indian musical instruments, showing how traditional designs embody complex acoustic principles.The narrative moves into modern scientific research in music, exploring the role of institutions such as the ITC Sangeet Research Academy, the Sir C.V. Raman Centre for Physics and Music at Jadavpur University and Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra. These three institutions have demonstrated how ancient musical knowledge can interact with contemporary tools such as signal processing, neuroscience, computational musicology and artificial intelligence. Studies on brain responses to music, for instance, show how rāgas can influence emotions and cognition in measurable ways.At its heart, the book argues that music exists at the intersection of sound and consciousness. By combining physics, psychology, statistics, audio signal processing and cultural insight, it invites readers to see music not just as something we hear, but as a powerful medium that shapes how we think, feel, and connect with the world.
Ranjan Sengupta
Dr Ranjan Sengupta holds a Ph.D. in high-energy physics from Jadavpur University and was Senior Research Scientist and Head of the Scientific Research Department, ITC Sangeet Research Academy, Kolkata, India, for 27 years. Since 2010, he has been associated with the Sir C.V. Raman Centre for Physics and Music, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, as a scientific consultant. He has published more than 150 papers in the areas of high-energy physics, music signal processing, speaker recognition, music information retrieval, music perception and cognition and music acoustics. He has twice received the Sir C.V. Raman Award from the Acoustical Society of India. He was the co-supervisor of four doctoral students who completed their Ph.D.s at the Sir C.V. Raman Centre. He is currently the co-supervisor of a Ph.D. student pursuing her research at the centre. Dr Sengupta is a Life Fellow of the Acoustical Society of India and a Life Member of the Indian Physical Society and the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science.
Email: sgranjan@gmail.com
Affiliation: Sir CV Raman Centre for Physics and Music, Jadavpur
University, Kolkata-700032, West Bengal, India
Shankha Sanyal
Dr Shankha Sanyal is a senior research associate at the Sir C.V. Raman Centre for Physics and Music, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He holds a Ph.D. in cognitive neurophysics from the Department of Physics, Jadavpur University. His primary research focuses on the neuroscientific basis of emotion perception and cognition in Indian music and languages. Dr Sanyal has over 80 published papers in the domain of cognitive neuroscience and the neurocognition of speech and music, using nonlinear physics techniques such as fractal and multifractal analysis to analyse brain signals (EEG) and acoustic properties. He has been awarded the Sir C.V. Raman Award by the Acoustical Society of India.
Dipak Ghosh
Prof. (Dr) Dipak Ghosh, a university gold medallist who holds a Ph.D. in high-energy physics, is presently an Emeritus Professor at the Sir C.V. Raman Centre for Physics and Music and Honorary Director of the Biren Roy Research Laboratory for Radioactivity and Earthquake Studies, Jadavpur University. Formerly, he was a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Science, Jadavpur University. Prof. Ghosh has received several awards, including the S.N. Bose Memorial Medal and the C.V. Raman Award from the University Grants Commission, in recognition of his in-depth research work. He was the principal investigator from India in projects involving major research organisations such as CERN and Fermilab. He has more than 500 publications in reputed international journals and several books to his credit. His research interests include nuclear and particle physics, nonlinear dynamics applied to biomedical problems, and neurocognition of music. He has also served as a reviewer for international journals including Physical Review Letters, Physica A and EPL.
Soubhik Chakraborty
Prof. (Dr) Soubhik Chakraborty, primarily a statistician, is currently a professor and former Head of the Department of Mathematics, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. His research interests are algorithm analysis, music analysis and statistical computing. He has guided several research scholars in these areas to Ph.D. degrees and has authored many books, research monographs and papers in peer-reviewed journals. His book Computational Musicology in Hindustani Music, published by Springer in 2014, was described by Springer as its first book devoted to the subject.
Other books on music research that he has authored or co-authored include Music and Medicine: Healing Brain Injury Through Rāgas, CBH Pub, 2016 (with audio CD); Signal Analysis of Hindustani Classical Music, Springer, 2017; Hindustani Classical Music: A Historical and Computational Study, Sanctum Books, 2021 (winner of the IMTA award for the best book on rāga music, given by the Indian Music Therapy Association (IMTA) in 2022); and Stress Management Through Music: A Statistical Study, Notion Press, 2024 (winner of the IMTA-NADA award for the best book of 2024 for “outstanding contribution to music therapy”).
He has been the principal investigator of two music-research projects: Analysing the Structure and Performance of Hindustani Classical Music Through Statistics, sponsored by the University Grants Commission, and Hindustani Rāga Analysis Using Statistical Musicology with Therapeutic Applications for Stress Management, sponsored by IDEAS: Technology Innovation Hub @ Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Two patents arising from the second project have recently been published. He is a life member of the Indian Statistical Institute and the Acoustical Society of India and is also an acknowledged reviewer associated with ACM, IEEE and AMS. He has received several awards in both teaching and research. He is also a former flautist.
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