Western Classical Music

It is mainly patronized by the Indian Zoroastrian community and small esoteric groups with historical exposure to Western Classical Music. Another esoteric group with significant patronage is the Protestant Christian community in Chennai and Bangalore. St Andrews and St Georges in Chennai and St Marks in Bangalore are churches with regular pipe organ recitals. There are practically no conservatories, opera companies or working symphonies that cater to Western Classical music. Western Music education is also severely neglected and pretty rare in India. Western Keyboard, drums and guitar instruction being an exception as it has found some interest; mainly in an effort to create musicians to service contemporary popular Indian music. Many reasons have been citied for the obscurity of Western Classical Music in India, a country rich in its musical heritage by its own right, however the two main reasons are an utter lack of exposure and a passive disinterest in what is considered esoteric at best. Also, the difficulty in importing Western Musical instruments and their rarity has also contributed to the obscurity of Classical Western music.
Despite more than a century of exposure to Western classical music and two centuries of British colonialism, classical music in India has never gained more than 'fringe' popularity. Many attempts to popularize Western Classical Music in India have failed in the past due to disinterest and lack of sustained efforts, most notably in the setting up of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra by Mehli Mehta in the 1930s. In 2006 at Mumbai (Bombay), the National Centre for the Performing Arts was established with a grant of Rs 4 million from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (an eminent Indian-Zoroastrian entrepreneur) and the collaboration of other corporate houses to promote Western Classical music and visual arts. It was designed to accommodate performance of symphony orchestras and Operas. However, there are still no schools of repute that train musicians in Western classical music or vocalists in Opera to this day. Most Indians in Western classical music reside outside India in countries with adequate training and performance opportunities.

Indian Rock And Metal Music

The rock music "scene" in India is extremely small when compared to filmi or fusion music "scenes" but has of recent years come into its own, achieving a cult status of sorts. Rock music in India has its origins in 1960s and 70's when international stars such as The Beatles visited India and brought their music with them. These artistes' collaboration with Indian musicians such as Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain have led to the development of Raga Rock. International short wave radio stations such as The Voice of America, BBC, and Radio Ceylon played a major part in bringing Western pop, folk, and rock music to the masses. You can hear some of the songs that were heard over these stations during the 60's here. However Indian Rock Bands began to gain prominence only much later, around the late 1980s. It was around this time that the rock band Indus Creed formerly known as The Rock Machine got itself noticed on the international stage with hits like Rock N Roll Renegade. Other bands quickly followed. As of now, the rock music scene in India is quietly growing day by day and gathering more support. With the introduction of MTV in the early 1990s, Indians began to be exposed to various forms of rock such as grunge and speed metal. This influence can be clearly seen in many Indian bands today. The cities of Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have emerged as major melting pots for rock and metal enthusiasts. Some prominent bands include Indian Ocean, Dementra, Parikrama, Pentagram,Reverrse Polarity, Hologram, Thermal and a Quarter,No Idea, Zero, Half Step Down, Scribe, Indus Creed, Demonic Resurrection, PRITHVI, Agni, Exiled, Cassini's Division, The Supersonics, Span, Camouflage, Five Little Indians and Nexus. The future looks encouraging thanks to entities such as Green Ozone, DogmaTone Records, Eastern Fare Music Foundation, that are dedicated to promoting and supporting Indian Rock.

Indian PoP Music

Indian pop music, often known as Indipop or Indi-pop, is based on an amalgamation of Indian folk and classical music, and modern beats from different parts of the world. Much of Indian Pop music comes from the Indian Film Industry, and until the 1990s, few singers like Usha Uthup, Sharon Prabhakar, and Peenaz Masani outside it were popular. Since then, pop singers in the latter group have included Baba Sehgal, Alisha Chinai, Shantanu Mukherjee aka Shaan, Sagarika, Colonial Cousins (Hariharan, Leslie Lewis), Lucky Ali, and Sonu Nigam, and music composers like Jawahar Wattal, who made top selling albums with, Daler Mehndi, Shubha Mudgal , Baba Sehgal, Swetha Shetty and Hans Raj Hans.
Besides those listed above, popular Indi-Pop singers include Zubeen Garg,Daler Mehndi, Raghav Sachar Rageshwari, Devika Chawla, Bombay Vikings, Asha Bhosle, Sunidhi Chauhan, Bombay Rockers, Anu Malik, Jazzy B, Malkit Singh, Hans Raj Hans, Raghav, Jay Sean, Juggy D, Rishi Rich, Sheila Chandra, Bally Sagoo,jabi MC, Bhangra Knights, Mehna, and Sanober.
Recently, Indian pop has taken an interesting turn with the "remixing" of songs from past Indian movie songs, new beats being added to them.

Indian folk Music

Indian folk music is diverse because of India's vast cultural diversity. It has many forms including bhangra, lavani, dandiya and Rajasthani. The arrival of movies and pop music weakened folk music's popularity, but cheaply recordable music has made it easier to find and helped revive the traditions. Folk music (desi) has been influential on classical music, which is viewed as a higher art form. Instruments and styles have impacted classical ragas. It is also not uncommon for major writers, saints and poets to have large musical libraries and traditions to their name, often sung in thumri (semi-classical) style. Most of the folk music of India is dance-oriented.

Filmi Music Of India

Filmi music tends to have appeal across India and overseas, especially among the Indian diaspora. Songs are often in different languages depending on the industry, for example in Hindi or Tamil. Playback singers are usually more noted for their ability to sing rather than their charisma as performers. Though these singers may release solo albums, their performances in film soundtracks tend to be more noticed due to the widespread appeal of movies.
At the "Filmi Melody: Song and Dance in Indian Cinema" archive presentation at UCLA, filmi was praised as a generally more fitting term for the tradition than 'Bombay melody' "to suggest that the exuberant music and melodrama so closely identified with the Hindi commercial cinema produced in Bombay (Mumbai) are truly pan-Indian."

Bhajan Music Of India

A Bhajan is any type of Indian devotional song. It has no fixed form: it may be as simple as a mantra or kirtan or as sophisticated as the dhrupad or kriti with music based on classical ragas and talas. It is normally lyrical, expressing love for the Divine. The name, a cognate of bhakti, meaning religious devotion, suggests its importance to the bhakti movement that spread from the south of India throughout the entire subcontinent in the Moghul era.
Anecdotes and episodes from scriptures, the teachings of saints and descriptions of gods have all been the subject of bhajans. The Dhrupad style, Sufi qawwali and the kirtan or song in the Haridas tradition are related to bhajan. Nanak, Kabir, Meera, Narottama Dasa, Surdas and Tulsidas are notable composers. Traditions of bhajan such as Nirguni, Gorakhanathi, Vallabhapanthi, Ashtachhap, Madhura-bhakti and the traditional South Indian form Sampradya Bhajan each have their own repertoire and methods of singing.

Rap Music

Rap music is a style of poetic rhyming set to a heavy percussive beat often including a chorus sung by another performer in the style of traditional pop or rhythm and blues. Rap music is primarily an American medium but in recent years has exploded onto the world stage and rappers can now be found on almost every nation.
Most music fans associate rap music with African American youth from the ghettos, projects, and lower strata of American society, and since most performers come from one of those backgrounds the idea has gained acceptance.The 1970s in New York was when Rap found it’s way into Hip hop music, initially as a small part of an overall track, and later as the major part of a track with a small Hip Hop component. The first track to enter the billboard charts with a rap sound was the group Last Poets with their debut track ‘Wake Up, Niggers’, a political commentary that accompanied the film “Right On”.