Modern Trends
Indian music > Modern Trends
The music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, and classical music. Indian genres like filmy and bhangra have become popular throughout the United Kingdom , South and East Asia, and around the world.
Indian pop stars now sell records in many countries, while world music fans listen to the roots music of India’s diverse nations. American soul , rock and hip hop have also made a large impact, primarily on Indian pop and filmy music. Other highly popular forms are ghazal, qawwali, thumri, dhrupad, dadra, bhajan, kirtan, shabad, and gurbani.
POP MUSIC: The biggest form of Indian pop music is filmi, or songs from Indian musical films. Independent pop acts such as Alisha Chinoy, Shaan, and rock bands like Indus Creed, Indian Ocean, and Euphoria exist and have gained mass appeal with the advent of cable music television.
FILM MUSIC: Many languages are spoken in India, and there are film industries for each of the major languages (see Indian cinema). Film music is mostly used in commercial Indian cinema, which is mainly produced in the centres of Mumbai (Bollywood), Chennai, and Hyderabad. Indian films are best-known for their music and composers (music directors). Today’s most popular music director, A. R. Rahman, got his start in Tamil films and then moved to Bollywood. Well-known music directors of the past include Naushad, Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, S D Burman, R.D. Burman, Rajesh Roshan, Shankar Jaikishan, Bappi Lahiri, and Ilayaraaja.
Most Indian films are musicals. The actors generally do not sing, but lip-synch to songs sung by such accomplished playback singers as Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mukesh, Manna Dey, K. L. Saigal, Yesudas, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, Jayachandran, K. S. Chithra and Alka Yagnik.
The extremely popular Hindi filmi songs combine Indian classical music, with its sophisticated, melismatic vocals & traditional instruments, with catchy tunes and stylings from Western pop music. The novel experimentation (resulting in such mixes as “Indian hip hop”) has been received well in India and continues to grow in popularity.
Binaca Geetmala was a very popular radio show presented by Ameen Sayani giving popularity ratings of hindi film songs from Indian cinema on a weekly basis, listened to by millions of Hindi music lovers (akin to Billboard Hot 100 list of songs). It ran in various incarnations from 1952 to 1993. Annual lists of the most popular songs were played at year end. The list was compiled on the basis sales of records in India.[1] It was the most popular radio program before Satellite television took over in India sometime in 1990s. Currently, hindi filmi songs are sold on tape & CD compilations, played as promos and in programs on various cable & satellite television channels and radio stations, with different popularity ratings claiming different songs as being on the top.
WESTERN FUSION: In the late 1980s and early 1970s, rock and roll fusions with Indian music were well-known throughout Europe and North America. Ali Akbar Khan’s 1955 performance in the United States was perhaps the beginning of this trend, which was soon centred around Ravi Shankar.
In 1962, Shankar and Bud Shank, a jazz musician, released Improvisations and Theme From Pather Pachali and began fusing jazz with Indian traditions. Other jazz pioneers such as John Coltrane—who recorded a composition entitled ‘India’ during the November 1961 sessions for his album Live At The Village Vanguard (the track was not released until 1963 on Coltrane’s album Impressions)—also embraced this fusion. George Harrison (of the Beatles) played the sitar, which he had learned from Shankar, on the song “Norwegian Wood” in 1965. Jazz innovator Miles Davis recorded and performed with musicians like Khalil Balakrishna, Bihari Sharma, and Badal Roy in his post-1968 electric ensembles. Other Western artists like the Grateful Dead, Incredible String Band, the Rolling Stones, the Move and Traffic soon incorporated Indian influences and instruments, and added Indian performers.
Guitarist (and former Miles Davis associate) John McLaughlin experimented with Indian music elements in his electric jazz-rock fusion group The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and pursued this with greater authenticity in the mid-1970s when he collaborated with L. Shankar, Zakir Hussain and others in the acoustic ensemble Shakti.
Though the Indian music craze soon died down among mainstream audiences, diehard fans and immigrants continued the fusion. In the late 1980s, Indian-British artists fused Indian and Western traditions to make the Asian Underground.
In the new millennium, American hip-hop has featured Indian Filmi and Bhangra. Mainstream hip-hop artists have sampled songs from Bollywood movies and have collaborated with Indian artists. Examples include Timbaland’s “Indian Flute”, Erick Sermon and Redman’s “React”, Slum Village’s “Disco”, and Truth Hurts’ hit song “Addictive”, which sampled a Lata Mangeshkar song. British-born Indian artist Panjabi MC also had a Bhangra hit in the U.S. with “Mundian To Bach Ke” which featured rapper Jay-Z. The Canadian-born Raghav has achieved UK success by fusing Bhangra with garage and other western styles. Asian Dub Foundation are not huge mainstream stars, but their politically-charged rap and punk rock influenced sound has a multi-racial audience in their native UK.
FOLK MUSIC: The arrival of films and pop music weakened folk music’s popularity, but cheaply recordable music has made it easier to find and helped revive the traditions. Folk music ( desi ) has been influential on classical music, which is viewed as a higher art form. Instruments and styles have had an effect on classical ragas. It is also not uncommon for major writers, saints and poets to have large musical libraries and traditions to their name, often sung in thumri (semi-classical) style.
BRASS BANDS: Brass bands, descended from English traditions, are now very popular especially at weddings and other special occasions.
BHANGRA: Bhangra is a form of dance-oriented folk music that has become a pop sensation in the United Kingdom and North America. The present musical style is derived from the traditional musical accompaniment to the folk dance of Punjab called by the same name, bhangra.
LAVANI: Lavani is a popular folk form of Maharashtra. Traditionally, the songs are sung by female artistes, but male artistes may occasionally sing Lavanis. The dance format associated with Lavani is known as Tamasha.
DANDIYA: Dandiya is a form of dance-oriented folk music that has also been adapted for pop music worldwide. The present musical style is derived from the traditional musical accompaniment to the folk dance of Dandiya called by the same name, dandiya.
RAJASTHANI: Rajasthani has a diverse collection of musician castes, including langas, sapera, bhopa, jogi and manganiyar.
BAULS: The Bauls of Bengal were a mystical order of musicians in 18th, 19th and early 20th century India who played a form of music using a khamak, ektara and dotara. The word Baul comes from Sanskrit batul meaning divinely inspired insanity. They are a group of mystic minstrels. They are thought to have been influenced greatly by the Hindu tantric sect of the Kartabhajas as well as by Sufi sects. Bauls travel in search of the internal ideal, Maner Manush (Man of the Heart).
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Indian classical music is based on the ragas (“colors”), which are scales and melodies that provide the foundation for a performance. Unlike western classical music, that is deterministic, Indian classical music allows for a much greater degree of “personalization” of the performance, almost to the level of jazz-like improvisation. Thus, each performance of a raga is different. The goal of the raga is to create a trancey state, to broadcast a mood of ecstasy. The main difference with western classical music is that the Indian ragas are not “composed” by a composer, but were created via a lengthy evolutionary process over the centuries. Thus they do not represent mind of the composer but a universal idea of the world. They transmit not personal but impersonal emotion. Another difference is that Indian music is monodic, not polyphonic. Hindustani (North Indian) ragas are assigned to specific times of the day (or night) and to specific seasons. Many ragas share the same scale, and many ragas share the same melodic theme. There are thousands of ragas, but six are considered fundamental: Bhairav, Malkauns, Hindol, Dipak, Megh and Shree. A raga is not necessarily instrumental, and, if vocal, it is not necessarily accompanied. But when it is accompanied by percussion (such as tablas), the rhythm is often rather intricate because it si constructed from a combination of fundamental rhythmic patterns (or talas). The main instrument of the ragas is the sitar, although historically the vina zither was at least equally important.
HINDUSTANI MUSIC: Since the 13th century, most of north India was under Islamic rule, and Hindustani music is the result of a fusion of Mughal, Arabic and Persian traditions with traditional Indian music.
CARNATIC MUSIC:Carnatic music traces much of its contemporary concert repertoire to a series of composers and musicologists in the 15th and 16th centuries including Govindacharya, Venkatamukhi, Purandaradasa, kanakadasa, Tyagaraja and Muttuswami Dikshitar.
RABINDRA SANGEET: A towering figure of Indian music was Rabindranath Tagore. Writing in Bengali, he created a library of over 2,000 songs now known by Bengalis as rabindra sangeet whose form is primarily influenced by Hindustani classical thumri style. Many singers in West Bengal proudly base their entire careers on the singing of Tagore musical masterpieces.
QAWWALI: Qawwali is a Sufi form of devotional music based on the principles of Hindustani classical. It is performed with one or two lead singers, several chorus singers, harmonium, tabla, and dholak.