gramming. The others broadcast a mix of dramas, talk,
and popular music.
TELEVISION
The National television service, Doordarshan or
“View from afar,” first available only in Delhi, began
broadcasting in a handful of cities in the 1970s. Government channels were the only ones available until the
1990s. Since then, with deregulation and new technologies, private TV channels have proliferated, and hundreds of channels are available. Drama series, sitcoms,
talk shows, reality shows, and film stars feature on Indian TV channels in many languages, which are available
through satellite and cable all over the world.
Urban television ownership is reported overall at about
75 percent, but a high rate in Delhi is balanced by a 15
percent rate in Bihar, North India’s poorest state. In rural India the most recent census reports that only about
one-third of rural households own a TV.1
INTERNET
Like other media technologies, the internet is most
available in cities. Internet services were launched in India in the mid 1990s. The user base in 2013 was reported
to be around 200 million, some 15 percent of the total population. A Gallup poll reported that 3 percent of
those polled responded that they had internet access at
home. Mobile phone technology and usage in India is
high, however, and mobile internet subscriptions make
up one of the fastest growing segments of the tech economy.2
INDIA’S FILM INDUSTRY
The silent movie Raja Harishchandra, based on a story
from the Hindu epic Mahabharata, premiered in 1913
and is celebrated as the first Indian-made feature film.
The first Indian sound film, Alam Ara, was first shown
in Mumbai in March 1931. Today, the Indian film industry is the largest in the world, measured by the number of feature films it produces.
Bollywood is the term for the Hindi-language film
industry, which is largely based in Mumbai. Bollywood
films, with their catchy music and dance sequences,
glamorous stars, and lavish plots, have a huge fan base.
They are loved not only throughout India and South
Asia, but also have had fans in parts of the Middle East,
East Asia, and Eastern Europe for many decades. South
Asian diaspora populations all over the world watch the
latest films and revisit the classics on cable and satellite
TV and DVD. More recently, international collaborations and Bollywood-inspired techniques have made
Bollywood a familiar term in popular culture all over
the world.
Bollywood’s name is well known, and its style is influential, but the Indian film industry has many other centers as well, grouped by the language in which the films
are made. The Film Federation of India reported in 2012
that it certified 1602 feature films in thirty-five different
languages. The Tamil-language film industry, which is
as old as that of Mumbai, is sometimes called Kollywood, named after the neighborhood in Chennai where
it is centered. In 2012, it produced more films than Bollywood. Film industries of other language groups and
dialects respond to the interest of regional audiences and
their diasporas, offering characters, language, and music
styles that feel closer to home than Mumbai.
Indian mainstream films feature song and dance sequences, which are seen as essential to the film’s success. For the most part, film singers do not appear on
the screen; actors lip-sync their songs. But singers and
music composers are nonetheless stars. Film music recordings and music videos are the mainstay of popular
music in India. Film music and dance had their early
sources in traditional theater, but they quickly expanded
their vocabulary by drawing on all kinds of popular and
classical styles, both Indian and European. Film music
and dance in India are exuberant expressions of India’s
cosmopolitan culture. However, it should be noted that
films do not reach the entire population equally. As is
the case for television and other media, urban centers
and middle-class and upper-middle-class populations
remain the central markets for the film industry. International markets also make up a growing share.
Section I Summary
o Music is sound organized in time.
o Sachs and Hornbostel grouped musical instruments
into four categories: chordophones, aerophones,
membranonphones, and idiophones. The “family”
names of instruments are widely used.
o Pitch is the highness or lowness of a sound. It is the
basic building block for melody and harmony.
o The octave is created by doubling the vibrations of
a pitch.
o Western and Indian tradition divides an octave
into twelve intervals called half steps.
o With a Solfege system, the “Do” tonic pitch is
chosen, and a scale is built from there. The tradition of India uses a solfege-type system in which
the pitches are named “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni.”
o Melody is a coherent succession of pitches perceived
as a whole, with a beginning, middle, and end.
o R hythm is the way music is organized in time.
o The beat is the steady, regular pulse underlying
most music. Tempo is the speed of the beat.
o A chord is made up of three or more pitches sounded simultaneously. Harmony is a systematic use of
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A painting of Mira, a poet and sant. The story of Mira’s life is told in her bhajans, which have been
carried by singers all over India.
An eighth-century Tamil poet expressed bhakti as the
anguish of a girl who feels Vishnu has deserted her. One
manifestation of Vishnu (one of the major deities of Hinduism) is a beautiful figure reclining on a great serpent
and floating on the cosmic ocean.
The whole town fast asleep,
the whole world pitch dark,
and the seas utterly still,
when it’s one long extended night
if He who sleeps on the snake
who once devoured the earth and kept it in His belly
will not come to the rescue,
who will save my life?6
The fifteenth-century Hindi poet Surdas expressed
bhakti as a love that leaves no room for any other. Krishna, a manifestation of Vishnu, is visualized as a playful
and handsome youth who was raised by a human family
in rural north India.
There is no room left in my heart;
while Nananandan (Krishna) remains there,
how can another be brought in?
Walking, looking, awake in the day and dream-
ing in slumber at night,
that intoxicating image strays from my heart not
for a single moment.”7
LONGING FOR HER LORD: MIRA
Many of the poets who composed bhajans are honored
as sant-s, people who “know the spiritual truth.” One
of them is Mira (also Meera or Mirabai). The story of
her life is told in her bhajans, which have been carried
by singers all over India. Later, Mira bhajans were also
composed by others in her name.
Mira was born in the late fifteenth century to a royal
family of Rajasthan. She became a devotee of Krishna,
falling in love with him in childhood. As a young woman, she was given in marriage to the king of another royal
household. She refused to act as a royal daughter-in-law,
however, and persisted in her single-minded devotion to
Krishna. She even left the household to join groups of
wandering devotees, a great offense in the social environment of sixteenth-century Rajasthan. Bhajans tell of
her persecution by her father-in-law, who even tried to
poison her. Her poems express longing, suffering, and
the ecstatic joy of pure devotion.
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SECTION III
Indian Classical Music
What Is “Classical”?
The term classical came to be applied to the art music of the courts and temples of the Indian subcontinent
when it came to urban centers in the nineteenth century.
The term implies a long history, sophisticated techniques,
and refined theory. In practical terms, “Indian Classical
Music” is a term for the music based on raga and tala.
Hindustani and Carnatic (or Karnatak) are the terms
for the classical music of North and South India, respectively, which developed distinctive systems by about the
fifteenth century. The sections below will introduce you
to the principles shared by both Hindustani and Carnatic music.
Theory and Practice
A long history of music theory is preserved in written texts in Sanskrit and other languages. The field is
called sangita shastra (“music technical works”), and
music historians study them to reconstruct the thought
and practices of the ancient and medieval periods. The
written texts reflect and represent a long-standing oral
tradition. Formal rules were transmitted through memorization for many generations. A sixteenth-century
scholar would be able to recite many verses on the definition of musical sound, or on the categories of ragas, or
the virtues of a good vocalist. Even now, specialists in
the shastra can recite appealing verses or definitions from
medieval theory.
The Natyashastra, compiled before 400 ce, is a compendium of theory on theater, dance, and music. It includes an elaborate theory of musical pitch (svara and
shruti) that is still studied today. The Natyashastra, like
other technical works, was composed in tightly condensed rhyming verses so that it could be memorized and
handed down in oral traditions.
Theory texts specifically on music were produced all
over North and South India in the centuries that followed, often by court scholars who were also composing
texts on philosophy, poetry, architecture, and many other
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arts and sciences. The ninth-century Brihaddesi contains
the first extended treatment of raga, beginning with the
definition of the word:
A special sound, ornamented with specific pitches
and syllables, which delights the minds of listeners,
is called raga.
The thirteenth-century Sangitaratnakara is the premier text of the medieval period. Its seven chapters became the basis for many later texts written in Persian
and regional languages. The chapters cover pitch (svara),
melody (raga), various techniques (prakiranaka), compositions (prabandha), rhythm (tala), instruments (vadya),
and dance (nrtya).
Traditional scholars memorize technical verses and
call them up as necessary for teaching and in debates.
Thus there is interplay between text and oral tradition.
In the context of South Asia, “theory” and “text” should
not be understood as being entirely dependent on written books.
Modern Theory
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, musicians
came to the growing cities where classical music was
promoted as an urbane art. Some students sought out a
professional musician and studied in an apprenticeship
arrangement. But many more went to one of the schools
for music that were founded on Western models.
Educators saw the practices of traditional musicians
generally as unsystematic and out of touch with modern
education. They even accused professionals of not being
grounded in the theory of the Sanskrit texts. They set
out to create a standardized theory and notation, a project that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
In the North, two high-caste Hindus from western
India were successful in creating curricula that are still
used in many schools today. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar
(1872–1931) was a charismatic performer who attracted
students with his focus on devotional sensibilities. Vish-
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1858
British government commences to formally rule India.
1859
Death of Baluswamy Dikshitar, who is credited with introducing the violin in Carnatic music
c.1875
Dwarkin & Son, a seller of Western and Indian instruments, is founded in Kolkata and begins
manufacturing the Indian harmonium.
1901
Vishnu Digambar Paluskar founds the first branch of his music school (Gandharva
Mahavidyalaya) in Lahore.
1902
Fred Gaisberg records musicians for the British Gramophone Company in Kolkata.
1925
78rpm vinyl record technology is standardized.
1926
V. N. Bhatkhande founds a Music College in Lucknow.
1928
The Madras Music Academy is founded in Chennai.
1931
Alam Ara, the first Bollywood and Indian sound film, premieres.
1932
First regular broadcasts by All India Radio
1947
Indian Independence and Partition (15 August)
1950s
Home record-playing capacity grows, in 78- and 33 1/3-speed formats.
1965
India’s government TV begins daily broadcasts in the greater Delhi area.
1980s
Cassette technology allows for the expansion of regional music studios and mass marketing.
1991
Economic liberalization policies are enacted in India, inviting international investment as a
strategy for economic growth.
1992
Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, goes to Bengali-language filmmaker Satyajit Ray.
1995
VSNL (later Tata Communications) launches internet services in India.
1998
Bharat Ratna award goes to Carnatic singer M. S. Subbulakshmi.
1999
Bharat Ratna award goes to Hindustani sitar player Ravi Shankar.
2000
India’s billionth official birth
2001
Bharat Ratna awards go to playback singer Lata Mangeshkar and Hindustani shehnai player
Bismillah Khan.
2009
Bharat Ratna award goes to Hindustani singer Bhimsen Joshi.
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