Subcontinental Synthesis explores the history of India’s first electronic music studio, founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad with the support of the composer David Tudor. The essays and writings unravel the narrative and context surrounding the studio as well as the work of the Indian composers who created groundbreaking recordings during its four years of activity.

The texts reflect on the role of electronic music within a post-independence India, considering its interconnections with experimental design, radical pedagogies, and the international avant-garde, as well as the encircling conditions of Western ideological soft power within the global expansion of Modernism.

Contributors

Geeta Dayal, Alannah Chance, Matt Williams, Shilpa Das, Jinraj Joshipura, You Nakai, Rahila Haque, and Paul Purgas. Foreword by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay.

“It might seem like a miracle that a novel Moog synthesizer travelled to the distant shores of Ahmedabad, India in 1969, seeking a cultural root in the subcontinent… Historically, no one could touch a sarod or a sitar until the guru had taught a student how to play them – the subcontinent had a hierarchical and often feudal approach to music-making. The synthesizer became a sonic instrument that appeared without these traditional crutches. The people who gathered around it and considred it a laboratory object, a situation for pure experimentation saw the instrument as accessible without much cultural conditioning. This sense of democratic freedom to experiment was unique – as we hear from the contributors to his book.” (Budhadityla Chattopadhyay)

This is a book companion to the compilation album The NID Tapes: Electronic Music in India 1969-1972, available on vinyl via State51 in London.