Film music and playback singing
For most of the last century, Indian popular music was film music. Songs are written for films, released ahead of them, and then belong to everybody — at weddings, in taxis, at every party.
Playback singing
Actors don't sing. Songs are pre-recorded by professional playback singers, and actors lip-sync on screen. This is why a handful of singers' voices have come out of the mouths of hundreds of stars across decades — and why those singers are as famous as the actors.
Names worth knowing
| Lata Mangeshkar & Asha Bhosle | Sisters; between them, the female voice of Indian cinema for over fifty years |
| Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh | The defining male playback voices of the classic era |
| R. D. Burman | The composer who brought rock and funk into Hindi film music |
| A. R. Rahman | Reset the sound from 1992 onward; two Academy Awards for Slumdog Millionaire |
| Ilaiyaraaja | Tamil cinema's towering composer — thousands of songs, and a serious orchestral composer besides |
| Gulzar, Javed Akhtar | Lyricists whose words are quoted as poetry independently of the films |
Beyond film
- Ghazals and qawwali — Urdu poetic and Sufi devotional traditions; Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan carried qawwali worldwide.
- Bhangra — Punjabi folk turned global dance music, largely via the British Asian scene of the 1980s and 90s.
- Indipop and independent music — a real, growing scene outside the film industry for the first time in decades.
- Desi hip-hop — Mumbai's Gully Gang and Punjabi rap now chart internationally.
Last updated: 2026-08-11
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