Modern Indian Music - An Inquiry into its Antecedents and Practice

chillibreeze writer — Amit Kumar

For some, music is a way of life. While the I Pod frenzied, wireless headphone carrying generation would do anything to add those extra MBs to their music players to get a few more songs in, there are some who would preserve the gramophone records more than they would preserve their grandma's jewels. Some might find the beats lively, some might find the vocals absorbing and some others might find the strings attached to them interesting ...but nobody, absolutely nobody would say that music is just an over-rated sequentially arranged combination of the seven notes.

What does "Modern Music" mean?

Before defining the term "Modern Indian Music”, we first need to define what "modern" means. For a paleolithic human, a copper knife is modern. And for a teenager today, a landline telephone is ancient. So what is “modern” when it comes to music? Is it music that was not heard 5 or 10 years ago, or is it something that is liked by today's generation?

“Modern music” as an accepted term means the music of the times it is being talked about in. For example, "Deepak Raag" was Modern Music in the times of Tansen. But a piece of music cannot be termed modern just by the virtue of it being played in a specific era. Modern music is born when someone breaks the conventions of established norms in music and comes up with something new.
The history of Indian music is full of such "modern" music creators. Be it Tansen, Baiju Bawra, Ustaad Ali Akbar Khan, Pandit Ravishankar, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt or Bally Sagoo. You might notice that most of the contemporary names on that list are the ones creating "modern" classical music. The oxymoron objection is sustained, but "modern" essentially means experimental and path breaking.
Indian music itself cannot be characterized as any one kind of music. The same applies to the genre of "Modern" Indian music also. Most musical forms have shown a modernization trend, especially since the beginning of this century.

Modern Indian Classical Music

The Indian classical music is undergoing a modernization in parts.

Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's Mohan Veena, is essentially a lap style Spanish guitar like instrument with 19 strings, which is perhaps why it is called a Veena. His Veena gives a microtone to melody - making it very much a part of the Indian classical music domain, while still sounding like a Western slide Guitar - and yet it is not a fusion instrument.

Taufiq Qureshi, the son of the late Ustaad Allah Rakha Khan and brother of Ustaad Zakir Hussain is known for the polyrhythm he and his band create using their own bodies as instruments. The sounds are truly unplugged and sound exactly like Indian classical and Western drums.

The modernization in classical forms of music is a rather tough job due to the very strict set of rules of classical music. One small step outside the rules, a giant leap outside the form of music itself.

Modern Indian Popular Music

It is the popular music which is, well, popular and is watched and followed closely. By being popular, it also gives its creators much more bandwidth to experiment. And this is where we have seen extreme modernistic trends over the past few years.

Bally Sagoo, started the era of modern Indian popular music by creating a fusion of bhangra, rap and old film music. The "Remix" era had thus begun. Fresh to the ears, the remixes blended the positives of the good old melody with those of today's technology. This fusion era saw folk and semi classical music being remixed with modern music arrangements and soon bands like Euphoria, Bombay Vikings and Silk Route started gaining popularity. Known names from the semi classical and classical music also joined this movement - Shubha Mudgal with "Seekho Na" and Ustaad Sultaan Khan with "Piya Basanti" are just two examples.

Soon singers like Shankar Mahadevan who were trained in classical forms, brought the basics of classical music into popular music. Melody regained its importance on the music scene and started being presented with improved music arrangements. Starting from where R D Burman had left, the new gang was soon joined by names like A.R Rehman, Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Vishal Shekhar. The gang made the film music truly modern, using fusion as a tool instead of an end product.

Popular folk music also started getting modernized - though only locally. Punjabi, Gujarati and Marathi Folk music took on the new avatar of fusion. Soon Tamil movies had Bhangra playing in there and Punjabi movies had people dancing to Marathi songs. Dance floors all over India are seeing a revolution in terms of the number of folk based songs being jockeyed.

All this has been going great guns for a few years now. And there has been no dearth of modern people. Himesh Reshammaya experiments with high pitch nasal voice and emphatic lyrics to create his own brand of popular music. Shankar Mahadevan went breathless to create a concept. The experimentation continues- and so does modernization.

The Indian Music that has not been touched by Modernity

The Qawwalis, Ghazal, Thumri, Khayal, Bhajan etc. form the semi classical form of Indian music. This segment is the one segment that has been least modernistic in Indian music. There has not been much experimentation in this area even lately.

Of course the sound quality and rhythm have improved over time - but that is an obvious technical advancement and not a modernistic advancement. Pankaj Uddhas can be credited with taking Ghazal to the common man by using simplified lyrics and catchy melodies - but it is widely treated as a degradation of the form rather than a creation of something new.

Similarly though Qawwalis are no longer done in the traditional achkan and qawwal topi, apart from the presentation nothing has changed. It is still a combination of fast and slow vocals presented in an anticipation-creating manner.

What is Modern Indian Music then?

Modern Indian music is fusion without confusion. Melody takes the prime post of importance, and fusion is used as an essential enhancement in the Modern Indian Music of the early 21st century. The trend is positive (considering what we had in the 80s) and solid. There are bound to be further experimentations with music as new creators join in. The music lovers certainly will have no dearth of good music.

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—About our writer:

Amit says, "I believe that life is all about making your autobiography a best seller. An Electronic Design Automation Engineer by profession, I am doing that just because I need money to open a bookshop with an entire section of books written by me."

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