ABSTRACT
This chapter explores independent, non-film, popular music in India, using rock as the point of entry. New musics emerged using hybrid strategies, where artists or groups blend and re-imagine traditional genres such as classical and folk with popular, original genres such as Vedic metal and Goan trance, and particularly Sufi popular music, which crossed categorical boundaries manifesting as film, Sufi, rock, pop, devotional, and folk. Pre-independent India in the 1920s, the 1930s and 1940s saw the rise of the India self-rule movement supported by Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, and other freedom fighters, ultimately leading to British withdrawal in 1947. After the end of British rule, India underwent massive political and economic changes. International musicians performed in India along with Indian jazz musicians who were well-established fixtures in the nightclubs of Park Street in Calcutta and the Taj in Bombay – locations frequented by Anglo-Indians, Parsis, and Indian clientele.
