Navigate the Carnatic classical music landscape — lineages, timelines, ragas, and recordings, all woven together in a single browser page. No server. No database. No framework.
git clone https://github.com/vyaas/bani_flow.git
cd bani_flow
pip install -e .
bani-render && bani-serve # opens http://localhost:8765/graph.htmlYouTube embeds require a real origin — always open via the local server, not file://.
The teacher-student lineage as a force-directed graph. Every node is a musician; every edge is a transmission of sound and style across generations — from the Trinity to the present day.
- Click a node → sidebar shows lineage, era, instrument, bani; neighbourhood highlighted
- Click an edge → guru→shishya pair, relationship note, confidence, source
- Green border → node has recordings attached; click any track to open a floating YouTube player
- Filter chips → narrow by era or instrument
The same musicians laid out on a horizontal time axis — birth year left to right, era in vertical lanes. Reveals who was alive at the same time, who overlapped, who never met.
The 72 melakarta ragas arranged as a wheel, grouped by cakra. Click a melakarta to expand its janya ragas; click a janya to see compositions; click a composition to see every musician in the graph who has performed it.
Bani Flow is the search that ties all three views together. Type any composition or raga into the search bar and the graph instantly:
- Highlights every musician who has a recorded performance of that piece
- Builds a listening trail in the left sidebar — one entry per performance, sorted chronologically, with timestamp links that jump straight to that moment in the concert video
- Shows co-performers bracketed under each primary artist
This is the core idea: start with a raga, follow it through generations of performers, listen to how each bani shapes the same melodic material differently.
| Entity | Count (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Musicians | 80+ nodes across six eras |
| Guru→shishya edges | 100+ sourced relationships |
| Structured concert recordings | 9 concerts (1932–1973) |
| Ragas | 100+ including all 72 melakartas |
| Compositions | 200+ with composer, raga, tala |
Recordings are deduplication-aware: the same YouTube video can appear under multiple musicians (e.g. a duet), and the same composition can have multiple versions by the same artist — each version is a distinct, timestamped entry.
| Visual property | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Node colour | Era — Trinity → Bridge → Golden Age → Disseminator → Living Pillars → Contemporary |
| Node shape | Instrument — ellipse = vocal, diamond = veena, rectangle = violin, … |
| Node size | Degree centrality — more connections = larger |
| Green border | Node has recordings |
| Edge thickness | Confidence of the guru→shishya relationship |
bani_flow/
README.md ← this file
pyproject.toml ← pip install
carnatic/
render.py ← builds graph.html from all data files
serve.py ← zero-dep local server; opens browser automatically
cli.py ← read-only CLI (stats, lookups, validation)
write_cli.py ← atomic write CLI (add musician, edge, recording, …)
data/
musicians.json ← nodes + edges + youtube entries (canonical)
compositions.json ← ragas, composers, compositions
recordings/ ← one JSON file per structured concert recording
render/
templates/ ← bani_flow.js, graph_view.js, raga_wheel.js, …
MIT © Bani Flow Contributors