Quotes & Sayings About Indian Music

Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas! — Norah Jones

My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens. — Yael Naim

For the Indian,dance is a personal form of prayer. When the Eagle Dancer puts on his costume,when he begins to dance to the music,he doesn't simply perform it; he actually becomes the eagle itself. The dancer is virtually inseparable from the dance. — Jamake Highwater

You can begin to see an amalgamation of cultures, the real beginning of one world. Ten years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a Cockney singing group with a Southern Negro style and Indian and electronic music. I wonder if people have even noticed what a tremendous cultural signal the Beatles are. — Alan Arkin

'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock. — Chris Cornell

My secret ambition was always to provide music for animation films: something with an Indian theme, either a fairy tale or mythological tale or on the Krishna theme. I still have a very deep desire, but these sorts of chances don't always come. — Ravi Shankar

Rock music is quite big in India - but it mostly just replaces all the intricacies of Indian rhythms and Indian melody with lumpen rock drumming and power chords. — Jonny Greenwood

Farsi Couplet:
Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast
Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest


English Translation:
The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers,
To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise. — Amir Khusrau

I listen to a wide range of music, from country to pop to alternative rock, as well as Indian music. You know, what excites me are new ideas. And with a lot of the international hits - from Lady Gaga to Rihanna and others - you'd find excellent production and groundbreaking ideas that lift the music to a greater realm. — Shreya Ghoshal

I love Indian music very much, but I haven't studied that specifically. — Lee Konitz

The strangest part of Indian music is its lack of chords: There's no such thing as major or minor, and it's unusual to hear more than two different pitches at the same time. — Jonny Greenwood

When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts. — John Tavener

In the early '70s [the late] Ras Shorty and I took Indian dholak drumming [from chutney music, another Indo-Trinidadian creation], fused it with calypso's African rhythms, and soca was born against the wishes of the purists. — Machel Montano

In the white marble hall of the hotel, I'm waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we're dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The Beatles have a deeper appreciation of all music. There's a humor, there's a Broadway sense, and later on, the Indian stuff came in. The Beatles were always taking in stuff and filtering stuff out to us. There's such a classical sense of arrangement, and their harmonies-what the Beatles did vocally is amazing. — Jimmy Vivino

My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.' — Ravi Shankar

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground. — John McLaughlin

In the U.K., classical music is composed by individuals and written down. Indian music is based on certain sequences called ragas. When I perform live, 95% of the music is improvised: it never sounds the same twice. — Ravi Shankar

The world by day is like European music; a flowing concourse of vast harmony, composed of concord and discord and many disconnected fragments. And the night world is our Indian music; one pure, deep and tender raga. — Rabindranath Tagore

I just believe in my Indian, spiritual god and my music. — Link Wray

In a certain sense, these were lessons I learned by playing with Indian musicians. The rhythmic forms that they use are very complex, and very challenging. In order to play in fifteen, or eleven, or seven or even five, you have to have mastered that time in order to be able to be free with the music. — John McLaughlin

I don't listen to Bollywood music much. But yes, I listen to Indian music quite often, and other non- film music. — Kailash Kher

The entire political elite has mismanaged the Indian economy for the last 50 years. You cannot solve a crisis that is borne as a symptom of mismanagement in just five minutes or in a week. It will involve significant sacrifices and pain, and I doubt that in India there is the political will to face the music. — Marc Faber

Bollywood music is definitely a big part of Indian music and can be a great way to introduce people to the sound. But I hope to continue to incorporate other types of Indian music into my work. — A.R. Rahman

I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act. — Brie Larson

I want young Indian composers to be able to do more than just film music. I want to give them the skills that will enable them to create their own palette of sounds instead of having to write formulaic music. It doesn't matter if they become sound engineers, producers, composers or performers - I want them to be as imaginative as they like. — A.R. Rahman

Though music transcends language, culture and time, and though notes are the same, Indian music is unique because it is evolved, sophisticated and melodies are defined. — Dayananda Saraswati

The pulse of India throbs in the music and the dance-drama. It is in the realm of living that India exposes herself, without consciousness. The poetry, the stoicism in the face of aching tragedy...the languishing air of over-rich beauty, the heaviness of joss-stick perfume...all these are India. The plaintive shepherd's flute surging across forbidding Himalayan valleys; a wandering Rajasthani minstrel intoning an hour-long ballad, carrying with him the breath of middle ages... — Peggy Holroyde

I don't purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music. — John Lennon

Suckle was the first West Indian DJ and he had this fantastic source of music. — Georgie Fame

I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that, whether it's Indian or it's Western. — A.R. Rahman

My CD collection has a lot of world music - lots of Indian, African, Portuguese, Greek, Italian music. Because of my husband, a lot of jazz, too. — Kiran Ahluwalia

In Bombay, we have a fine concert hall. I think it is high time we built venues in Delhi and Calcutta, not only for western music, but also Indian music. It doesn't matter which party is in power; don't you think the capital of India should have a concert hall? — Zubin Mehta

The origins of Indian classical music, not unlike their western counterparts, lie in the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures of 2,000 years ago. — Tariq Ali

Generally, I like Indian music because the melodies are usually not too complex, which is how I like music, and that's the way I write music. — Kenny G

I was interested in both Western and Indian classical music. — Satyajit Ray

Music is monophonic in the Eastern world, especially if we're talking about Indian music, Persian music. What we have in classical and Western world is harmony. So I think it's a great idea to be able to bring the best of two together and create something new. — Hafez Nazeri

Alien Chutney is just what the name suggests it is. Its music that is so funny and quirky and weird that it feels entirely alien to the listener; yet, the content and the subject matter is so Indian and relatable, it's still chutney. — Vir Das

Our music draws the listener away, beyond the limits of everyday human joys and sorrows, and takes us to that lonely region of renunciation which lies to the root of the universe, while European music leads us to a variegated dance through the endless rise and fall of human grief and joy. — Rabindranath Tagore

I forget what the official name of it was, but they did an all-day of roots music - every kind of music you can imagine from around the country - New Orleans Jazz to Indian flute players, R&B, you name it. I met and became good friends with (blues guitar player) Joe Louis Walker. He was on the show. — Scotty Moore

My music and lyrics became an extension of this Indian philosophy. — Gary Wright

Once you have heard the Indian Bamboo flute then everything else is just ordinary! — Osho

I had been interested in Indian music and I actually started studying Tableaus before I met him. — Terry Riley

You accept food and music from every part of the world without reservation, don't you? You don't have to be Danish to eat Danish pastries or Italian to eat pasta and pizzas. You don't have to be a German to enjoy Beethoven or an Indian to listen to sitar music. Why then, when it comes to wisdom, do we become so narrow-minded? — Francois Gautier

Each culture has some knowledge. That's why I studied with Saj Dev, an Indian flute player. That's why I studied Stockhausen's music. The pygmies' music of the rain forest is very rich music. So the knowledge is out there. And I also believe one should seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. With that kind of inquisitiveness, one discovers things that were unknown before. — Yusef Lateef

In Indian music, it is not possible to build anything other than the raga basis. We can run away from its fetters, but not from its main outline. — Rabindranath Tagore

The Indian music market is very film-oriented, and any other creative music venture doesn't receive enough support. I'd rather do singles and put them on my website. — Shreya Ghoshal

There are so many wonderful, wonderful musicians in the world, I cannot possibly make a distinction between the fact that they might play classical music, or bluegrass, or Irish traditional, or Indian music. — Daniel Hope

leave me some music
that's chocolate
for the heart. — Sanober Khan

Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all. — Tariq Ali

Indian food is like classical music raga- it takes time to build up to a crescendo. — Shobhaa De

I've learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales. — Nigel Kennedy

I've been writing Indian music for a while. Indian music is about Mother Earth, and mine is no exception. — Jimmy Carl Black

I am a product of Indian cinema; I've grown up watching Indian films ever since I can remember. And song and dance is part of our lives; it's part of our culture; we wake up to songs, we sleep to lullabies, you know, we celebrate every religious and traditional function with music. — Karan Johar

It is said, that South Indian Music, as known today, flourished in Deogiri the capital city of the Yadavas in the middle ages, and that after the invasion and plunder of the city by the Muslims, the entire cultural life of the city took shelter in the Carnatic Empire of Vijayanagar under the reign of Krishnadevaraya. Thereafter, the music — Gaurav Mishra

When I began competing with the other artists in New York, I discovered classical North Indian music. — Henry Flynt