Our Story

Since 2004, SwarGanga has grown from a simple idea — one person trying to preserve the music they love — into a global digital movement for Hindustani Classical Music. This is the journey of how a small website became a living archive of raags, taals, bandishes, notations, festivals, competitions, and thousands of students and listeners around the world.

From a Single Website to a Living Archive

In 2004, the very first SwarGanga website went live. It was small, hand-built, and focused on concerts and workshops — but it carried a powerful vision: to make Hindustani Classical Music easier to explore, search, and understand.

By 2005, that vision began to crystallize with the creation of Raagabase, and alongside it, the first Hindi and Marathi song lists based on raags. In 2006, Taalabase followed, and in 2007, Bandishbase was born. Within just a few years, SwarGanga already housed around 250 raags and a rapidly growing number of compositions.

The Golden Years of Growth

From 2009 to 2016, SwarGanga experienced an incredible surge of activity. Bandishes were added at an astonishing pace — often in the hundreds or over a thousand per year. These were the years when the platform transformed from a static website into a dynamic, daily resource for musicians and students.

Between 2010 and 2016, notation work accelerated. Detailed, carefully crafted notations began to fill Bandishbase, peaking from 2012–2016. This made SwarGanga not just a catalog of titles, but a genuine learning companion.

At the same time, the community around SwarGanga exploded. Starting from a few hundred users in 2009, yearly registrations climbed into the thousands by 2012–2014. Teachers, students, and rasikas worldwide began to rely on the platform as a trusted reference.

Festivals, Crescendo & Community

SwarGanga was never only about data. For 10 consecutive years, the SwarGanga Music Festival ran as a major platform for emerging and lesser-known artists, finally pausing in 2015 due to the logistical and financial burden of sustaining such a large effort.

In parallel, the Crescendo competition became one of the prime platforms for students and young performers. The 2011–2016 window marks the golden era of Crescendo, with multiple categories, age groups, and rounds — both online and in-person — bringing together talent from across the USA and beyond.

Slowdown, Challenges & a Temporary Silence

After 2016, life and technology both changed. Fewer bandishes and notations were added, but the foundation remained strong. Thousands of users still registered and used SwarGanga each year, even as active content development slowed.

By 2024, the original PHP-based site began to break under modern infrastructure and language changes. Parts of the site became hard to maintain or simply stopped working. For many, it felt like SwarGanga was fading — but behind the scenes, the desire to rebuild never went away.

2025: Rebirth & Renewal

In 2025, SwarGanga entered a new chapter. The entire platform is being rebuilt with a modern technology stack, a fresh user experience, and a sharper focus on long-term digital preservation.

The dream that started in 2004 is very much alive — but now it’s stronger, clearer, and more ambitious. The new SwarGanga is designed not just to survive the next decade, but to serve as a permanent digital home for Hindustani Classical Music, its artists, its students, and its global audience.

Timeline at a Glance

SwarGanga’s story is not just about technology or data — it’s about people, memory, and an art form that deserves to live forever. The next chapters are still being written, and you are part of that story now.