Indian music as all the other arts of India is as old as history of India.  Even in the courts of the Emperors, music has always been very much alive in their courts. Tansen of the nine Ratnas in the court of King Akbar is definitely one of the most outstanding examples of the history of Indian music.  It is said when he sang he could bring rainfall with his ragas.  

Raga literally means that which tinges the mind with a particular feeling, passion or emotion. The structure of each raga and the melodic movement within its framework are governed by definite and extensive rules laid down in ancient treatise  on music written much before the Christian era. Indian music recognizes twenty-two  notes and microtones in the octave. The technique of a raga, put in the simplest form, consists in the use of certain fixed notes and microtones to the deliberate exclusion of others. Within this fixed framework, however, there is unlimited scope for improvisation. Each artiste can have his own individual interpretation and vision of a particular raga. No two renderings of the same raga by the same singer or player may be exactly the same . There is no written composition in the Western sense of the term.

Indian ragas, which form the main body of classical music in the country, deal with Nine Rasas: Shringar, Devotion, Humour, Pathos, Heroism, Fury, Terror, Disgust, Wonderment and  Peace. Theoretically speaking, if every permissible permutation and combination of notes was exploited, it would yield 38,000 ragas. As it is , only about 200 are prevalent. Many ragas are common to the two main systems of music in Indian, the Hindustani and the Carnatic Prevalent in the North and the South , respectively.

The basic framework of Indian music is melodic. The voice never isolates individual notes from the melodic line, but glides over the intervals that separate them. Tala which is the constant accompanying rhythm, explicitly and prominently beaten out on a percussion instrument, is a feature of Indian music which every Indian takes for granted but which strikes others as extraordinary . Talas range from slow, medium and fast tempos  used in accordance with the mood of the musical passage. There is a very large number of rhythmic patterns, most of them of great intricacy, within which the performer moves with perfect ease.