Marwa

Marwa is one of the starkest-sounding ragas in mainstream repertoire: komal Re and tivra Ma against an otherwise shuddha scale, with Pa dropped completely and Sa itself treated as a note to avoid resting on rather than the tonal home base it is everywhere else. That deliberate avoidance of Sa is what gives Marwa its restless, unresolved character, traditionally associated with the anxious hour of dusk. Vadi and samvadi are usually given as komal Re and shuddha Dha, though the musicologist V.N. Patwardhan argued the two don't form a valid consonant pair under classical interval rules and proposed Dha and Ga instead — a good example of how even a raga's most basic classification can be genuinely contested. Overemphasizing Ga, though, risks drifting toward the closely related raga Puriya, so most performers keep it in a supporting role however they reckon vadi and samvadi.