Rhythms of India: Sounds of the City

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Rhythms of India

India's rich and diverse culture and history revealed by its music.

Composer Soumik Datta travels around India exploring the country's rich and diverse culture and history through its music.

Soumik Datta

Richard Bright

Pete Stanton

Rhythms of India: Series 1: Sounds of the City

Sounds of the City

Series 1

BBC Four - Rhythms of India, Series 1, Sounds of the City

How changes in Bollywood and the rise of hip hop are impacting on India's popular music.

Music travelogue. Soumik Datta travels to Mumbai, Delhi and Pune, where he discovers the impact that changes in Bollywood, the internet and the rise of hip hop are having on India's popular music.

Soumik Datta’s musical journey around India ends with a look at the popular music scene, discovering how Bollywood is changing, the impact of the internet and the rise of hip hop.

He starts in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, where legendary screenwriter Javed Akhtar describes the roots of popular songs in Bollywood’s storytelling tradition. Soumik also meets, and performs with, famous Bollywood playback singer Kavita Krishnamurthy, the voice behind one of Soumik’s favourite Bollywood films, Mr India.

To discover how the internet is transforming the music industry, he visits the headquarters of T-Series in Delhi, India’s biggest music and film company whose internet channel is now the biggest on YouTube. And in Goa he meets Nucleya, an independent dance producer using WhatsApp to reach his huge young fanbase.

The film also explores how artists are finding different ways to mix western and Indian influences. At the NH7 festival in Pune, Soumik discovers how rock band Parvaaz, recently acclaimed by Rolling Stone as one of the most exciting bands in India, are making a name for themselves singing in their own regional language.

Back in Delhi, Soumik discovers how hip hop is shaking up the music industry. In a bedroom studio in west Delhi he meets the producers behind Mere Gully Mein, one of the anthems of Indian hip hop. A hugely influential celebration of life in the gullies or inner city backstreets, the song was the inspiration for a new Bollywood movie, Gully Boy. Soumik ends his journey at the launch of the movie in Mumbai, witnessing how the energy of India’s hip hop scene is now being embraced by the mainstream.

Rhythms of India: Series 1

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From folk singers in Rajasthan to hip-hop artists in Delhi, Soumik Datta explores how India’s musical diversity helps us understand the nation’s past and its fast changing present.

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