There are all kinds of influences of Indian Music on Fusion, Pop and Progressive Music. (Middle Eastern Influences are reviewed on my Middle Eastern Fusions/ Rock page). Other Eastern influences occured less often in Western Pop/Rock as Indian Music. (Indonesian Fusions you can find on a seperate page). Where for Middle Eastern influences the oud is most often being used as a basic accompanying instrument, for Indian influences the use of the sitar is the most important. Also the tampura, as an accompanying droning instrument, is used regularly in Fusion. In pop music also some sitar-like instruments were used, like the (coral) electric sitar (or the baby sitar).
For a brief introduction on some of the instruments and terms you can also have a look at the next page(s) first :
The oud's influence in the West is easily traceable until the middle ages. There are only here and there some examples known of Indian musicians traveling trough Europe. The first experiments of fusing styles with Indian Music I know in the 20st century, came from Indo-Jazz Fusion and from some accoustic guitar experiments. It was much later that Pop Music tried to adapt Indian elements. The earliest recording from Indo Jazz Fusion I personally have originates from 1966 (-John Mayer most propably made some more earlier work ?-),. The earliest recording I heard of in accoustic Guitar Raga dates from 1963 (-Davy Graham-). The earliest recording of Psychedelic Raga might be from 1966 (Seventh Sons), and the earliest date of Sitar Pop might be from 1967 (Byrds).
Next regular combinations with sitar became terms of separate genres :
* Indo-Jazz Fusion, as a combination of Indian music with Jazz music,
* Raga Rock (-in the beginning they called all Sitar Pop or Sitar Beat "Raga Rock")
* Sitar Pop and Sitar Beat, Pop-sitar
* Exotic Indian music.
* Raga Guitar music (or guitar raga's).
I made review pages for new items within these genres :
SOME MORE GENERAL INTRODUCTION SITES
FOR
INDO-JAZZ FUSIONS :
One of the best pages to start for this subject is the
SITAR BEAT :
RAGA ROCK :
RAGA GUITAR (sometimes called GUITAR RAGA) :
My page about raga in accoustic guitar-music contains an article in dutch,some comments and links to some accoustic raga guitarists
India/sitar related music for sale :
If you know more shops, please e-mail them to me
Links completely updated 2004-10-19
