ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a look at Indian film’s foray into rock music, rock’s influence with Sufi music, and the resultant cultural impact from the two. It introduces popular music culture in India as it reaches beyond Bollywood, bringing together the two streams of music – film and independent. Post 1990 Bollywood made substantial advancements towards utilizing rock as a distinct category on its own rather than an exotic source of sonic interest. Indian film’s forte is to supply visual contexts to music, along with characters, plot, and narrative devices, in a manner that is familiar to mainstream Indian lives. Sufi-s are devotees of the mystical branch of Islam, whose most significant musical form is qawwali, a syncretic blend of literary poetic traditions and musical genres of Hindustani classical and folk music. Sufi rock is a resilient and relevant genre that allowed popular music to evolve in India in several ways.
