Essay: History and benefits of the fusion of Western and South Asian music

An overview of the history of the fusion of Western and South Asian music reveals a positive correlation between the increasing global connectivity and the increasing popularity of the trend of mixing Western and South Asian sounds. This musical fusion can be found in many different contexts including, but not limited to; the integration of Jazz music and traditional South Asian musical elements in the middle of the 20th century, Bollywood, and collegiate groups, such as Penn Masala. Even though this process of international integration has attracted a considerable amount of scholarly interest since the 19th century, it was not until the 1970s  that the term “globalization” became popularized. In an attempt to define this newly coined term of soaring relevance to the modern world, the anthropologist Gregory S. Gullette describes globalization in his article Globalization (2012) as “the development and proliferation of complex, interdependent international connections created through the movement of capital, natural resources, information, culture, and people across national borders. This includes the social and cultural resistances and receptions to these varied movements”. Adversaries of globalization typically consider this escalating worldwide integration to be a threat to the perseverance of traditional cultural elements such as ethnic music and sounds. This paper, however, advocates a more positive view of the role of globalization in the context of musical development. An examination of the fusion of South-Asian and Western music in its different contexts indicates that globalization speeds up the natural evolution of sound, rather than posing a threat to traditional musical genres.
The origins of Indian music can be traced back to the Vedic days, almost two millennia ago. The Indian musical tradition can be seen as an accumulated heritage of centuries, including a series of sonical influences between India and its extended neighborhood. It is important to understand the concept of music in Indian culture. Unlike the western understanding of music as a set of sounds, the Hindu word for music (“sangeet”) incorporates vocal (“gayana”), and instrumental (“vadana”)  sounds, as well as choreographical elements (“ntriya”). These three subelements of music are in turn based on three critical aspects of Indian music; the tone (“swara”), the rhythm (“tala”), and the melody (“raga”). Indian music originated as a spiritual genre; Hindu tradition attributes divine character to the sound that pervades the whole universe, known as Nadabrahma. Indian music was greatly promoted during the Gupta Era, also known as the Golden Age of India. The Gupta Empire became an important center of cultural exchange, kindling a mutual cultural influence between India and its nearby kingdoms and regions in Burma, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. The first wave of intense external influence on Indian music occurred during the medieval period, with the development of Sufism, which was heavily based on Persian influences. The inclusion of Persian sounds in spiritual Hindi music marked the beginning of the divergence between the two prevalent musical genres in India; Hindustani and Carnatic music. The Persian influence was stronger in the north of India, leading to the development of Hindustani music, and its distinction from south India’s Carnatic music, later influenced by the Bhakti movement (15th – 17th centuries CE). Even though both Hindustani and Carnatic music are monophonic, and are based on the same foundational elements of swara, raga, and tala, they differ in many ways; Hindustani music favors improvisation and consists of six principle ragas, whereas Carnatic values composition more and consists of seventy-two ragas-melakarta. The instrumentation of the two genres is also quite different; the tabla, the sarangi, the sitar and the santoor are fundamental to Hindustani music, the veena, the mridangam, and the mandolin to Carnatic music, while the flute and the violin are featured in both genres. The violin is a good example of the influence of Western culture in South Asian music from the early 1800s, when Muthuswami Dikshitar, a great Indian composer, included the violin in his concerts. An overview of the origins of Indian music indicates that it is the result of  several international influences, dating 2000 years back. It is, therefore, irrational to consider the current fusion of western and South-Asian music as a threat to Indian musical tradition. Instead it makes more sense to consider it as the next step in its dynamic process of evolution.
The fusion of Western and South-Asian music became more relevant with the integration of Jazz music and traditional South-Asian musical elements in the middle of the 20th century. At first glance, the devotional music of India, originally performed in ancient Indian temples, seems unrelated to Jazz, an African-American musical genre that originated in the black church, and was later performed in night clubs, and even brothels. Despite appearances, the influence of Indian music in Jazz has a long and pervasive history. Even though the African-American composer Yusef Lateef is accredited the innovator of blending Jazz and Eastern music in the 1950s, the major fusion of Indian music and Jazz was inspired by the sitar legend Ravi Shankar, who integrated traditional Indian instrumentation in the modern African-American musical genre. The influence of Indian music in Jazz was reinforced with the development of modal jazz, popularized by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, who was Shankar’s close friend and devoted admirer of his music. In fact, Coltrane was captivated by the flexibility found in Indian music, and he even integrated a chant from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita in one of his pieces, which he named after the sacred Hindu syllable “Om” for the infinite. Shankar’s influence on Western music was not limited to Jazz. In fact he is mostly known for his association with George Harrison from the Beatles. Harrison studied the sitar with Shankar in 1966 in order to integrate this traditional Indian instrument in one of his band’s songs. The integration of Indian sonical elements in American popularized music, indicates that the integration of distinct musical elements does not destroy the musical traditions of the separate genres. On the contrary, their blending may inspire musical masterpieces, as exemplified by the works of the aforementioned pioneers in the fusion of jazz and classical Indian music.
A more recent and popular example of the fusion of Western and South-Asian sound is found in the soundtracks of Bollywood movies. Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in India, representing 43% of the net box office revenue. Its prolific production, consisting of more than 300 films per year, render Bollywood one of the biggest film industries in the world.  Bollywood’s increasing popularity in the west is indicated by its recurrence in western media. For example, many well respected newspapers, such as The New York Times, and the Washington Post, regularly feature reviews on popular Bollywood productions. The most distinguishing characteristic of Bollywood films is their musicality. Bollywood productions include catchy music in the form of song and dance numbers embedded into the script, reinforcing the strong association of sound and dance in Hindi musical culture. Bollywood films feature at least six music pieces on average, and their success depends on the quality of those pieces. In fact, Bollywood music is the primary source of Hindi pop music, and like every pop culture it is influenced by diverse sources. The orchestration of these musical numbers includes traditional Indian instruments such as the sitar, the sarod, the sarangi, and the bansuri, as well as Western instruments such as the violin, the saxophone, and the flute. The language of the lyrics is a mixture of Hindi, Pakistani, and other South-Asian languages with English. Bollywood productions are heavily influenced by Western culture, but they also influence Western culture. For example, the British dramatist Sudha Bhuchar adapted a Hindi film, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, into an English musical, “Fourteen Songs” which was well liked by the British audience. The Bollywood musical hybrid, often accused of deforming traditional culture, is the main forefront of Hindi culture in the world. It is thus fair to argue that the fusion of western and Hindi musical elements does not corrupt traditional music, but instead it revives it.
The fusion of Western and South-Asian musical cultures is not unique to professional artists. Many collegiate musical groups that take pride in fusing western and south-asian music have emerged across the US, following the pioneering example of Penn Masala, a musical group at the University of Pennsylvania. I was lucky to have the opportunity to observe two of the group’s practices, allowing me to directly experience the process of this cultural fusion. Penn Masala practice takes place in a very small room, in Rodin Underground; the room consists of only a piano and a table with a couple of chairs. The room was packed with the eleven members of the group, ten Indians and one American.  They informed me that they were practicing for a big event coming up. Surprisingly, they did not seem stressed at all, but rather excited to share their music! The practice officially started with vocal warmup exercises. There was no need for any instructions; they are so well coordinated that they just start, knowing every step of the warmup.  Once the warmup exercises ended, they went on to practice the potpourri they would present in their next event. They have prepared a unique mix of very popular western songs, including; Taylor Swifts’s “Love Story”, U2’s “With or Without You”, One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” and “One Thing”, Iyaz’s “Replay”, Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball”, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”, Train’s “Hey Soul Sister”, Roy Orbinson’s “Pretty Woman”, Walk The Moon’s “Shut Up And Dance With Me”, and Fun’s “We Are Young”. They worked on these songs meticulously, crafting their own chords and rhythms for each of them. The transitions between the songs are also very well planned, based on phonetic interleaving. Beat-boxing is also an integral element in their music production. The overall result is very melodic, and clearly very original. After they completed the piece, they began to discuss it. They were very respective towards each other, with everyone chiming in on some aspect of it. Then, they went on to sing the same piece again; however, this time they kept stopping and repeating every point they considered wrong. To my untrained ears, everything sounded great, but to these artists, they had so much to comment on every single sound created by each member of the group. This creative process is very interesting to observe since it indicates that the entire piece was built through personal observation, trial, and error. Having observed their practices, I was really excited to watch one of their public performances, since the fusion of Indian and Western culture is more intensely portrayed on stage. Their performance included original mixes of popular Hindi and English songs. The members of the group did not only perform pieces that blend Hindi and English songs, but they also performed some of their pieces wearing traditional Indian attire. The success of Penn Masala, and other similar collegiate groups indicated that this musical fusion does not corrupt traditional music, but instead popularizes it among the young population, ensuring its preservation and bridging cultural gaps between Indian and American students.
In conclusion, the examination of the south-asian and western musical fusion in its different contexts underlines its benefits, and refutes the criticism against it. Music, like every form of art, is inspired by socio-cultural changes, and develops along with them. It is unfair to dismiss hybrid genres as a form of corruption of the original genres. Instead hybrid genres revert to original genres for inspiration, which is integral in the production of any form of art.