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Indian Classical Music and the Gramophone, 1900–1930
In 1902 The Gramophone Company in London sent out recording experts on "expeditions" across the world to record voices from different cultures and backgrounds. All over India, it was women who embraced the challenge of overcoming numerous social taboos and aesthetic handicaps that came along with this nascent technology. Women who took the plunge and recorded largely belonged to the courtesan community, called tawaifs and devadasis , in North and South India, respectively. Recording brought with it great fame, brand recognition, freedom from exploitative patrons, and monetary benefits to the women singers. They were to become pioneers of the music industry in the Indian sub-continent. However, despite the pioneering role played by these women, their stories have largely been forgotten. Contemporaneous with the courtesan women adapting to recording technology was the anti-nautch campaign that sought to abolish these women from the performing space and brand them as common prostitutes. A vigorous renaissance and arts revival movement followed, leading to the creation of a new classical paradigm in both North Indian (Hindustani) and South Indian (Carnatic) classical music. This resulted in the standardization, universalization, and institutionalization of Indian classical music. This newly created classical paradigm impacted future recordings of The Gramophone Company in terms of a shift in genres and styles. Vikram Sampath sheds light on the role and impact of The Gramophone Company’s early recording expeditions on Indian classical music by examining the phenomenon through a sociocultural, historical and musical lens. The book features the indefatigable stories of the women and their experiences in adapting to recording technology. The artists from across India featured Gauhar Jaan of Calcutta, Janki Bai of Allahabad, Zohra Bai of Agra, Malka Jaan of Agra, Salem Godavari, Bangalore Nagarathnamma, Coimbatore Thayi, Dhanakoti of Kanchipuram, Bai Sundarabai of Pune, and Husna Jaan of Banaras.
262 pages, Paperback
Published September 25, 2023
About the author
Vikram Sampath
17 books374 followersBorn and raised in Bangalore, Vikram Sampath completed his schooling in Bangalore at the Sri Aurobindo Memorial School and Bishop Cotton Boys' School. He thereafter obtained a Bachelors in Engineering in Electronics and a Masters in Mathematics from one of India's most reputed schools, BITS-Pilani. He then went on to obtain an MBA in Finance from S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai. Vikram has worked in many leading multinational firms like GE Money and Citibank and currently is a Team Leader with a information technology company in Bangalore.
His first book, Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars has been widely acclaimed across India, and has been termed as one of the most definitive accounts on the Mysore royal family in recent times. His second book "My Name is Gauhar Jaan!" - The Life and Times of a Musician is the biography of Gauhar Jaan, India's first classical musician to record on the gramophone. The book has been hailed by several luminaries in India and abroad, and has also won the prestigious ARSC (Association of Recorded Sound Collections) International Award for Excellence in Historical Research - the first Indian book to have ever won this honour. Vikram's third book Voice of the Veena: S Balachander - A Biography narrates the story of eminent Veena maestro late Padmabhushan Dr. S Balachander.
Vikram has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, Germany (for 2010-11) where he studied the early gramophone recordings of Indian music. He has also established the Archive of Indian Music (AIM) as a private Trust that seeks to digitize and preserve old gramophone recordings of India.
Vikram publishes regularly in leading Indian dailies and magazines on a wide array of topics. In addition, Vikram is also a serious student of Carnatic Classical vocal music and has been training under various eminent practitioners of the art form. Subjects related to history, music, art and culture are close to his heart.
His first book, Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars has been widely acclaimed across India, and has been termed as one of the most definitive accounts on the Mysore royal family in recent times. His second book "My Name is Gauhar Jaan!" - The Life and Times of a Musician is the biography of Gauhar Jaan, India's first classical musician to record on the gramophone. The book has been hailed by several luminaries in India and abroad, and has also won the prestigious ARSC (Association of Recorded Sound Collections) International Award for Excellence in Historical Research - the first Indian book to have ever won this honour. Vikram's third book Voice of the Veena: S Balachander - A Biography narrates the story of eminent Veena maestro late Padmabhushan Dr. S Balachander.
Vikram has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, Germany (for 2010-11) where he studied the early gramophone recordings of Indian music. He has also established the Archive of Indian Music (AIM) as a private Trust that seeks to digitize and preserve old gramophone recordings of India.
Vikram publishes regularly in leading Indian dailies and magazines on a wide array of topics. In addition, Vikram is also a serious student of Carnatic Classical vocal music and has been training under various eminent practitioners of the art form. Subjects related to history, music, art and culture are close to his heart.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 6, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing (and rereading on occasion) all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review, back when I read them.
This book is one of those rare cultural histories that quietly transforms how you think about sound, technology, and tradition. After finishing the book, I promise you, the gramophone will feel more like a seismic device that reshaped the entire ecology of Indian music.
Sampath shows how the arrival of recording technology did not merely preserve music—it reorganized it, compressed it, commodified it, and ultimately democratized it.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Indian classical music still thrived largely within courts, salons, and hereditary lineages. Performances could stretch for hours, luxuriating in improvisation and slow melodic expansion.
The gramophone, with its brutally practical three-minute recording limit, forced musicians to rethink everything. Suddenly ragas had to be condensed, elaborations trimmed, and performances adapted to a mechanical listener. What seems like a technical constraint gradually became an aesthetic shift.
Sampath’s narrative is populated with extraordinary personalities navigating this transformation. Among them stands the flamboyant Gauhar Jaan, whose confident declaration at the end of recordings—“My name is Gauhar Jaan!”—became both identification tag and theatrical signature.
Artists like her were pioneers in translating courtly art into recorded commodity. Through these stories, the gramophone appears less as cold machinery and more as a stage extension, carrying voices beyond elite spaces into middle-class homes across colonial India.
What makes the book particularly engaging is its archival richness. Sampath mines advertisements, catalogues, early record labels, and company correspondence to reconstruct a world where commerce, technology, and artistry collided.
Recording companies were not passive archivists; they actively shaped musical tastes by deciding which artists to record, which languages to market, and which genres would sell. In that sense, the gramophone industry became an invisible curator of modern musical memory.
Reading this history also sharpens awareness of the paradox at its core. The gramophone preserved voices that might otherwise have vanished, yet the process also standardized and simplified a tradition known for expansive improvisation.
Preservation came intertwined with transformation.
In the end, this book reveals that technology is never neutral. It changes not only how art is consumed but how it is conceived.
The whirring gramophone horn did more than record music—it quietly rewrote the grammar of performance, ensuring that the echoes of a fading courtly culture would travel into the modern world on spinning discs.
Most recommended.
This book is one of those rare cultural histories that quietly transforms how you think about sound, technology, and tradition. After finishing the book, I promise you, the gramophone will feel more like a seismic device that reshaped the entire ecology of Indian music.
Sampath shows how the arrival of recording technology did not merely preserve music—it reorganized it, compressed it, commodified it, and ultimately democratized it.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Indian classical music still thrived largely within courts, salons, and hereditary lineages. Performances could stretch for hours, luxuriating in improvisation and slow melodic expansion.
The gramophone, with its brutally practical three-minute recording limit, forced musicians to rethink everything. Suddenly ragas had to be condensed, elaborations trimmed, and performances adapted to a mechanical listener. What seems like a technical constraint gradually became an aesthetic shift.
Sampath’s narrative is populated with extraordinary personalities navigating this transformation. Among them stands the flamboyant Gauhar Jaan, whose confident declaration at the end of recordings—“My name is Gauhar Jaan!”—became both identification tag and theatrical signature.
Artists like her were pioneers in translating courtly art into recorded commodity. Through these stories, the gramophone appears less as cold machinery and more as a stage extension, carrying voices beyond elite spaces into middle-class homes across colonial India.
What makes the book particularly engaging is its archival richness. Sampath mines advertisements, catalogues, early record labels, and company correspondence to reconstruct a world where commerce, technology, and artistry collided.
Recording companies were not passive archivists; they actively shaped musical tastes by deciding which artists to record, which languages to market, and which genres would sell. In that sense, the gramophone industry became an invisible curator of modern musical memory.
Reading this history also sharpens awareness of the paradox at its core. The gramophone preserved voices that might otherwise have vanished, yet the process also standardized and simplified a tradition known for expansive improvisation.
Preservation came intertwined with transformation.
In the end, this book reveals that technology is never neutral. It changes not only how art is consumed but how it is conceived.
The whirring gramophone horn did more than record music—it quietly rewrote the grammar of performance, ensuring that the echoes of a fading courtly culture would travel into the modern world on spinning discs.
Most recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review