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Dhrupad singing evolved from the singing of prabandhas in the medieval period, and like the writings of the bhakti saints of the time, it is suffused with a mystical devotion to God. It later receives the patronage of the Mughal court, and its survival to the present times owes much to the support of its various royal patrons. Despite a decline in its popularity over the last two centuries, Dhrupad is still considered to be the purest of all classical forms, and its treatment of ragas is still taken to be the ideal one.

A Dhrupad performance starts with the alap, which in its initial stage, is a slow and elaborate delineation of the raga using free flowing melodic patterns. Usually starting with the sa of the middle octave, the alap pattern gradually descend to the lower octave, and then returning to the middle octave they rise to the highest register in a gradual succession of melodic patterns. A final return to the middle octave sa concludes the first part of the alap. In uttaranga pradhan ragas like Bahar or Adana, the alap is done mainly in the higher register. The singing of a Sankrit shloka, which is set to the same kind of free flowing melodic patterns, sometimes precedes the alap. This shloka serves as a prelude to the alap.