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In
the 1960s, classical Indian music entered a new phase when
leading Indian musicians like Pandit Ravi Shankar Ustad Ali
Akbar Khan began to give
performances abroad and started teaching instrumental music to
Western students. The renowned Indian filmmaker, Satyajit Ray,
also brought classical Indian music to the attention of
Westerners through the music scores of some of his early films,
which were composed by Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan. In the
course of time collaborations ensued between Indians musicians
and  Western
musicians and a new kind of experimentation on fusion music
began. Pandit Ravi Shankar was one of the earliest musicians to
have collaborated with western musicians.
He joined hands with the renowned violinist Yehudi
Menuhin and produced a number of East-West albums. In recent
years, Pandit Ravi Shankar has collaborated with the American
minimalist composer, Philip Glass, on
Passages. Ravi Shankar
was also present at the music extravaganza known as "Woodstock".
In subsequent years, the Sarod maestro, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan,
and the tabla maestros, Ustad Alla Rakha and Ustad Zakir Hussain,
also worked with Western musicians. Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia
brought out an experimental album called the
Eternity, which
incorporates many western elements alongside North Indian
Classical. The Grammy Award winner and creator of the Mohan Veena, Vishwa
Mohan Bhatt, did a historic jugalbandi with a Chinese
Erhu Player, Jei Bing Chen to become the first ever Indian to
strike a jugalbandi with a Chinese artiste in the
thousands of years of history of India and China. Vishwa
also combined with the ace American Dobro guitar player Jerry
Douglas, with the American country music singer Taj Mahal
and a rare combination with the Arabian Oudh player Simon
Shaheen. Other successful collaborations over the
years have been between Ustad Sultan Khan (on the Sarangi) and
Marco Guinar (on the Spanish guitar) and Roy Cooder and L.
Shankar and L. Subramaniam (both violinists).
The growing popularity of
Fusion Music, both vocal and instrumental, indicates that
multiculturalism and globalisation are influencing tastes and
creativity in music worldwide. National boundaries or
limitations of their own music and culture no longer
circumscribe musicians, who are keen to experiment and explore
new horizons.
 In
the recent times, the Indian mandolin virtuoso, U. Srinivasan,
produced an album called
Dream, in collaboration with the Candian guitarist Michael
Brook. Pakistan-born
Adnan Sami was the first person to play Indian classical music
on the electric piano.
Recently, a renowned Indian tabla maestro Talvin Singh has
bagged UK's prestigious Technics Mercury Music Prize for his
album OK, which represents a fusion of Indian classical music and
contemporary British dance rhythms. Talvin has also played with
starts like Madonna and Bjork. Talvin has planned two more music
albums: Soundz of the
Asian Underground and
Soundz of the Asian Overground. In the vocal music, the
fusion album The Colonial
Cousins of Hariharan and Lindsey Levie became an
instant hit in India and abroad.
The music wizard, A.R.Rahman, who had produced an album
along with late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, came up with an album
Ekam Satyam with
Michael Jackson in 1999.
In the new millennium, Rahman plans to release another
album Bombay Dreams, which is a musical
jugalbandi with Andrew Lloyd Weber. A.R.Rahman is already well known for his album
Vande Matram and film
scores of Roja, Bombay
and Earth.
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