Abstract:
Healthy pedagogical practices in visual and performing arts increasingly emphasize
experiential learning, emotional intelligence, aesthetic sensitivity, and multimodal
meaning-making. Within music education, learning extends beyond technical
proficiency to include the cultivation of emotional awareness, cultural identity, and
interpretative competence. Carnatic music, with its inseparable relationship between
text, melody, rhythm, and performance, offers a rich pedagogical environment where
learners experience meaning through multiple semiotic systems simultaneously. In this
context, rāga functions not merely as a melodic framework but as an educational medium
that translates verbal meaning into emotional and aesthetic experience. Drawing upon
Roman Jakobson’s concept of intersemiotic translation, semiotic theory, and Indian
aesthetic thought, this paper examines a devotional composition with rāga mudrā
(rāga signature) by Yāḻppāṇam N. Veeramani Iyer to demonstrate how rāga facilitates
the translation of lyrical meaning into affective experience. Using qualitative textual,
musical, and semiotic analysis, the study explores the relationship between poetic
diction, rāga selection, emotional expression (bhāva), and pedagogical engagement. The
findings suggest that the deliberate correspondence between lyrics and rāga provides an
effective pedagogical strategy for developing aesthetic perception, emotional literacy,
cultural understanding, and interpretative skills among music learners. Rather than
functioning as an accompaniment to the text, rāga becomes an active semiotic resource
through which learners internalise devotion, compassion, joy, surrender, and spiritual
reflection. The paper proposes that understanding rāga as an intersemiotic translator
enriches both Translation Studies and music pedagogy by demonstrating how musical
performance itself becomes a process of meaning-making, emotional communication,
and holistic learning. The study contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship connecting
Translation Studies, music education, semiotics, performance studies, and arts pedagogy
while advocating healthy pedagogical practices that nurture creativity, empathy, cultural
continuity, and emotional well-being through Carnatic music.
