Research Guides: International Music Resources by Country: India

Map of India

Citation (3)

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music-India

India
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Books

Bollywood Sounds by Brian Diettrich; Jane Freeman Moulin; Michael Hugh Webb; Jayson Beaster-Jones Bollywood Sounds focuses on the songs of Indian films in their historical, social, commercial, and cinematic contexts. Author Jayson Beaster-Jones takes readers through the highly collaborative compositional process, highlighting the contributions of film directors, music directors (composers), lyricists, musicians, and singers in song production. Through close musical and multimedia analysis of more than twenty landmark compositions, Bollywood Sounds illustrates how the producers of Indian film songs have long mediated a variety of musical styles, instruments, and performance practices to create a uniquely cosmopolitan music genre. As an exploration of the music of seventy years of Hindi films, Bollywood Sounds provides long-term historical insights into film songs and their musical and cinematic conventions in ways that will appeal both to scholars and to newcomers to Indian cinema.
Call Number: ML2075 .B39 2015
Dance in Thumri by Projesh Banerjee On the thumri style in Hindustani school of music, romantic and devotional in temperament, with introduction to the vocalists and dancers of the genre and Thumri dance-songs in Hindi and English.
Call Number: ML3748 .B3 1986
The Life of Music in North India by Daniel M. Neuman Daniel M. Neuman offers an account of North Indian Hindustani music culture and the changing social context of which it is part, as expressed in the thoughts and actions of its professional musicians. Drawing primarily from fieldwork performed in Delhi in 1969-71--from interviewing musicians, learning and performing on the Indian fiddle, and speaking with music connoisseurs--Neuman examines the cultural and social matrix in which Hindustani music is nurtured, listened and attended to, cultivated, and consumed in contemporary India. Through his interpretation of the impact that modern media, educational institutions, and public performances exert on the music and musicians, Neuman highlights the drama of a great musical tradition engaging a changing world, and presents the adaptive strategies its practitioners employ to practice their art. His work has gained the distinction of introducing a new approach to research on Indian music, and appears in this edition with a new preface by the author.
Call Number: ML338 .N44 1990
More Than Bollywood by Gregory D. Booth (Editor); Bradley Shope (Editor) This is the first book to tackle the diverse styles and multiple histories of popular music in India. It brings together fourteen of the field's leading scholars to contribute chapters on a range of topics from the classic songs of Bollywood to contemporary remixes. The chapters in this volume address the impact of media and technology on contemporary music, the variety of industrial developments and contexts for Indian popular music, and historical trends in popular music development both before and after the Indian Independence in 1947. The contributors also address the subcontinent's historical relationships with colonialism, the transnational market economies, local governmental factors, international conventions, and a host of other circumstances that shed light on the development of popular music throughout India. To illustrate each chapter author's points, and to make available music otherwise not always easily accessible, the book features a companion website of audio and video tracks.
Call Number: ML3502.I4 M47 2014
They Sing the Wedding of God by John Napier In Rajasthan, India, a caste of musicians and mendicants, the Nath-Jogis, sing stories of kings who renounce their thrones to become wandering mendicants. They also sing of a god, Mahadeva, Shiva, who must abandon his world-renouncing life and marry, thus establishing the very caste that tells his story. This is the first detailed ethnomusicological study of the music of this caste, examining how the existential questions of the sung stories--of the conflict between loyalty to families or communities and the transcending desire to renounce the material world--are articulated in musical performances in which the caste's own ethnography is inscribed. Discussing the relationship between the performed repertoire and the caste's identity, the contexts of performance and ways in which familiar stories are effectively retold, the book offers a transcription, translation and musical and ethnographic analysis of one performance, by Kishori Nath, and shows how the questions the performances project are not merely speculative acts of self-identification but also challenges to audiences to consider their own responses.
Call Number: ML3502.I47 A48 2013

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Facts in Brief

Capital: New Delhi

Official Languages: Hindi, English, Sanskrit, and 20 regional languages

Current Population: 1.38 billion

National Anthem: "Jana-gana-mana" (Thou Art the Ruler of the Minds of All People)

Largest Cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad

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Religious Indian Music

Hindu

Bhajan (from Sanskrit: bhajana) is the generic term identifying popular Hindu religious songs associated with bhakti, an approach to union with God. The bhajan literature is extensive, comprising many thousands of songs in many languages, including Sanskrit. Bhajan also denotes a genre of religious ritual exercised in all parts of India. The rites are usually congregational, ranging in number of participants from three or four to many thousands. The Sanskrit words bhajana and bhakti are both derived from the root word bhaj (‘to share’ or ‘to give of’) and are connected with an approach to God in which the relationship of the worshipper to the deity is based on attitudes of love.

The musical elements in bhajan are intended to convey the all-important words. The rhythms used are comparatively uncomplicated, usually employing a tāla (time cycle) consisting of four beats. Melodies, especially those sung congregationally, are simple, direct, and generally lack the complexities found in classical music. Bhajan songs are composed in rāgas that are limited to a few identifiable characteristics and are therefore easily recognized by the general public. Bhajan songs generally include either refrain-type or jāpa forms; the number of lines in refrains and stanzas and the numbers of repetitions of refrains vary with each performance.

Musical instruments are used to accompany most bhajan songs and rituals. Although drums and cymbals are most common, any instruments may be employed by worshippers. Pairs of brass cymbals (tāl, tāḷam), generally ranging from 2 to 15 cm in diameter and varying greatly in shape and gauge, are struck together by singing devotees. Wooden or metal clappers (kartāl) of varying size with jingles or tiny bells mounted on them are also played by worshippers. The harmonium, a keyboard instrument originally brought to India by Christian missionaries, is a highly valued instrument. The tambūrā (a long-necked fretless lute) and śruti -box (either an electronic drone or a small harmonium with a limited number of reeds) are also widely used drone instruments.

Citation (4)

Streaming Video: JVC Video Anthology of World Music & Dance-India

Musician Highlight: Lata Mangeshkar

Lata Mangeshkar

1929-2022

Indian film playback singer . The best-known and respected female singer in the history of Indian film music, Lata Mangeshkar has recorded more film songs than any other singer. As the eldest daughter of Marathi stage actor-singer and travelling theatre owner Mangeshkar she received no formal schooling and was forced to support her mother and four younger siblings when her father died in 1942. Lata immediately joined the film industry as an actress-singer with a Marathi film company, Prafulla Pictures in Pune. For a short time she also became a disciple of classical singer Aman Ali Khan Bindibazarwala, then after his departure to Pakistan in 1947 she studied with Amanat Ali until his death in 1951. Lata sang her first Marathi film playback song in 1942, and her first playback for a Hindi film in 1947, Pa lagun kar jori re for Aap ki sewa mein. Lata's high-pitched, thin voice differed from the prevailing full-throated style of Hindi film actress-singers Noorjehan, Suraiya, Zohrabai and others, but after the success of her songs in Majboor (1948), composed by director Ghulam Haider, all the leading Hindi film music directors offered her song recordings.

During the 1950s and 60s she recorded an average of five songs per day. With competition only from the few other leading female playback artists – namely Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum and her sister Asha Bhosle – Lata's songs gained enormous, widespread popularity via film, radio and commercial recordings. She won the annual Filmfare award for Best Female Playback Singer in 1958 (A ja re pardesi in Madhumati), in 1962 (Kahin dip jale in Bees saal baad), in 1965 (Tumhi mere mandir in Khandaan), and in 1969 (for Ap mujhe acche lagne lage in Jeene ki raah), after which she renounced all Filmfare awards in favour of younger singers, besides a Lifetime award. In addition to singing Lata has composed music for five Marathi films, four under the pseudonym Anandghan, and has produced films in both Marathi and Hindi. Her numerous honours include the Presidential Padma Bhushan award in 1969, honorary citizenship of the USA presented in Houston, Texas, in 1987, the Dada Saheb Phalke award for her lifetime contribution to cinema in 1989, and the 1996 Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana for her outstanding contribution to the nation through her singing. Lata Mangeshkar continues to record film songs and spends several months each year on concert tours around the world.

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International Music Resources by Country: India