Musikon with Wim van der Meer: The raga as a music entity

In the video below Wim van der Meer and I discuss rāga. “Technically, rāga is a musical entity in which the intonation of notes, as well as their relative duration and order, are defined,” writes van der Meer in his book “Hindustani music in the 20th century”(1980). But this is only a technical aspect of the rāga; it also has an ideational one, an abstract image “on which one can concentrate and from which inspiration can be derived”. When the technical and ideational aspects are aligned in performance, the measurable, ‘scientific’ foundation of the rāga is subsumed in the ‘magical’ presence through which the entity manifests itself. . ..

Who is Wim van der Meer, why is the Musikon interested in ragas and what is the musicologica of North India? It is all in the video (best to be watched on YouTube, don’t miss the links and the references in the description).