About Ragas Live Festival

Raga is the classical music of South Asia. The deep listening music is unique in that specific modes are considered to harmonize with the moods and energy of particular times of day, such as sunrise, sunset, or the darkest hours of the night..

Inspired by this time cycle, the Ragas Live Festival is a 24-hour experience of transcendent sound, presenting masters of the raga tradition alongside legends in ambient music, minimalism, jazz, and global musical forms.

The festival began in 2012 as an ambitious WKCR radio broadcast produced by host David Ellenbogen at Columbia University. Fifty musicians volunteered to perform live, in-studio sets of classical raga for 24 continuous hours, taking listeners on a journey through day and night. The response—from New York to India—was immediate and enthusiastic, and the broadcast became an annual tradition.

By the fifth year, at the urging of both listeners and musicians, the festival stepped out of the studio and into Pioneer Works, becoming a live, in-person broadcast and cultivating a devoted audience.

During the 2020 pandemic, a virtual edition presented more than ninety artists across fifteen cities and seven countries, including Zakir Hussain, Toumani Diabaté, Terry Riley, and Betsayda Machado. The success of the stream and the outpouring of global support led the live video component to become a core part of the festival alongside the radio broadcast and in-person experience.

Today, the Ragas Live Festival continues as a 24-hour live event at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, simultaneously broadcast on WKCR, streamed via live video, and released as a podcast on NYC Radio Live.

The 2025 festival featured some of the greatest living sitar players, Shahid Parvez Khan and Purbayan Chatterjee; the ecstatic Saami Brothers Qawwal; L. Shankar, the legendary co-founder of Shakti with John McLaughlin; a Zakir Hussain tribute led by Grammy-winners Sikiru Adepoju and V. Selvaganesh; the jaw-dropping violin virtuosity of Charumathi Raghuraman; and the exploratory electronics of eucademix (Yuka Honda), performing for a sold-out crowd.

The Ragas Live Festival will return to Pioneer Works in October 2026!

Ragas Live Festival is produced by Pioneer Works in collaboration with NYC Radio Live, The Society for Arts and Culture of South Asia (Palo Alto), People of Rhythm Productions, and Brooklyn Raga Massive.

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