This article by MAP's Anusha Vikram explores the humble beginnings of the disco genre in India. On the coattails space race that was capturing India's imagination, came a musical revolution that changed how music is approached in the film industry. Trace the revolution that brought the oomph to Indian shores!

To explore what the disco era in the Hindi film industry and other music that inspired disco sounds like you can listen to this curated playlist on Spotify.

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South-Asian pop culture embraced a cosmic wave in the 1970s and 1980s clad with glitter, luscious lipstick, and flowy dance moves. This era of decadence and indulgence has a faint connection to electro-science experiments, which might carry the answer to the question; why did disco sound and look the way it did? In 1970, an experimental group of artists visited India and this may have perhaps sparked the early beginnings of a collaboration between sound engineers and musicians in the music industry. Geeta Sarabhai, a musician herself is credited with encouraging collaborations between Western and Indian music. She introduced the synthesiser with the help of David Tudor an American musician at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. Around the same time, her brother, Vikram Sarabhai was heading space research at the National Committee for Space Research. Artists from Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation on a trip to India under the “American Artists in India” program in 1970. The Sarabhai siblings were enthusiastic about projects with E.A.T. 

Although this collaboration was contained within the institutional walls of the NID Ahmedabad, the technology eventually found its way to mainstream film music. In the year 1980, the Indian government applied economic liberalisation by loosening restrictions on business creation and import controls - this particular moment in India’s economic history changed the way we saw music