A brief history of Indian electronic music

'The computer is the future.'

A remark someone made in 1976. The same year that Kraftwerk from Dusseldorf, Germany released their album, Trans-European Express, and although the thought behind the statement was true, it would take a couple of decades to manifest itself.

Technology would extend itself into creativity (almost like an evolutionary parasite) in a gradual, incremental way for millions of people across the world and for hundreds of different reasons.

The story of electronic music and the advent of mass culture amplified by technology made a definitive impact on India in the new millennium, just like it did in Germany in 1970s; in the UK and US, and Japan in the 1980s, thereafter smashing its way from Rio to Beijing.

The 1970s as a decade of experimentation in jazz and rock, witnessed the rise of a pioneering electronic music subculture via German bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dreams and Can.

Futuristic and sci-fi driven; inspiring a handful of composers across Europe and America, electronic sounds and tools became ‘ear friendly’ and ‘pop compatible’ for musicians and audiences.

Electronic music eventually spilled over into mass appeal, post the Kraftwerk’s breakthrough album, Man-Machine released in 1978 (first German band/album to top British charts for six weeks) and Giorgio Moroder's historic classic hit “I Feel Love” (selling 300,000 records in 1982).

Why David Bowie, Nick Cage or Brian Eno exited the gloomy post punk Thatcherised England to seek newer grounds and sounds, is anybody’s guess. Electronic sound and instruments had finally come of age, and were now being viewed as harbingers of the avant-garde music culture of the future.

The Indian spot

As early as 1982, Charanjit Singh (a synthesizer and guitar player working in leading Bollywood studios) recorded the album, Ten Ragas to Disco Beat; which remains the earliest recorded feature of Indian melodic ragas performed on synthesizers in sync with machine rhythms via the TR808 and 909.

Though the album remains very obscure and minimal in terms of consumption and interest, the reappearance of this record, holds a great debate within.

Charanjit Singh as a composer and his attempts are clearly contiguous to the rise of acid and techno music around the world; the first acid house records were produced a year later (in 1983) in Chicago, by a group called Phuture, founded by DJ Pierre, Earl Jr. and Herbert Jackson in 1983).

With his attempts to fuse classical overtures with 'square bass lines' and 'disco beats', Charanjit Singh remains the earliest and most curious Indian pioneer of electronic music. The album resurfaced in vinyl collectors’ circles and as late as 2009, re-released by a UK-based label, The Bombay Connection.

Unconnected and high in contrast to Charanjit’s album, were the smash hit Hindi-disco songs of the Pakistani siblings Nazia and Zoheb Hassan, produced by London-based Bangalore-born producer Biddu in 1983; who eventually became a Bollywood music director in the late ‘80s.

Their single, “Disco Diwane” went on to become a longstanding hit in South Africa, and was surprisingly hailed from other places as far away as Sao Paulo, Dhaka and Toronto. (Yes, and in the same breath, we dare not ignore the much-appreciated, cult native-disco creations of Bappi Lahiri and Usha Uthup).

The crux of Indian listeners, audiences and composers would remain mostly unaffected by the surge of electronic music and technology much through the ‘80s; the real change would be felt with the arrival of digital recording systems and synthesizers in Bollywood studios.

Brilliant and almost obscure cult movies such as Om Dar Badar (directed by Kamal Swaroop) featured moody psychedelic mash-ups of electronic sounds, bass lines, drum machine beats and vocoders mixed with native voices and lyrics, composed by Rajat Dholakia (now a big commercial music producer in Mumbai).

Nevertheless, electronic music flavours and the vast composition possibilities offered by synthesizers and samplers remained in the 'safe hands' of a few elite composers in India throughout the decade.

Click to read on about Goa trance and the Asian Underground.