Causal Analysis of Carnatic Music: A Preliminary Study
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The musicological analysis of Carnatic music is challenging, owing to its rich structure and complexity. Automated rāga classification, pitch detection, tonal analysis, modelling and information retrieval of this form of southern Indian classical music have, however, made significant progress in recent times. A causal analysis to investigate the musicological structure of Carnatic compositions and the identification of the relationships embedded in them have never been previously attempted. In this study, we propose a novel framework for causal discovery, using a compression-complexity measure. Owing to the limited number of compositions available, however, we generated surrogates to further facilitate the analysis of the prevailing causal relationships. Our analysis indicates that the context-free grammar, inferred from more complex compositions, such as the Mēḷakarta rāga, are a structural cause for the Janya rāga. We also analyse certain special cases of the Janya rāga in order to understand their origins and structure better.
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