Jazz In South Asia
The Evolving Sound of Learning: Western Music Education in India
by Karan Khosla
In this final article of the series on India's evolving jazz landscape, we examine the growing role of contemporary Western music education in shaping new generations of musicians. For generations, Indian music was handed down through the immersive guru-shishya tradition: students living with, or close to, their teachers, learning by ear, imitation and hours spent in the intensity of live, informal apprenticeship. Broadly, in post-independence India, this personalized relationship gave way to imported pedagogical frameworks dominated by the ...
Continue ReadingIndia After Dark: The New Geography of Jazz
by Karan Khosla
When the large festival stages are packed away, the music finds a more permanent home. All across India, jazz now thrives in a growing network of clubs and bars, the nightly engine rooms that sustain the scene. The new geography of Indian jazz is shaped by these essential venues--relaxed neighborhood joints that serve as the scene's social heartbeat while still commanding the listener's attention. Delhi: The Standard-Bearer Any tour of this landscape must begin in Delhi, at the ...
Continue ReadingThe Big Stage: How Festivals Are Reviving Jazz All Around India
by Karan Khosla
The live music scene in India is flourishing, and jazz is riding the tide. A recent Ernst & Young study estimates that the live music sector in India reached a value of around USD 1.4 billion in 2024 and is predicted to increase 20% yearly. With Gen Z and millennials making approximately 90% of all live event attendance in 2023, India's younger population is clearly driving this increase--unsurprisingly. India has long been known as a land of festivals; ...
Continue ReadingSwinging Scores—How Jazz Shaped Bollywood’s Golden Age
by Karan Khosla
This piece--the first in a five-part series on the Indian jazz revival--focuses on the heavy imprint of jazz on Indian cinema, specifically Bollywood during its golden age between the 1940s and 1970s. It's a story about how a music born in New Orleans made its way to Bombay, and how, for a few wild and brilliant decades, it seeped into the sonic fabric of Hindi-language cinema, leaving behind echoes we can still hear today. This article draws heavily ...
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