Indian Disco: How India Turned Disco Into Something Completely Different

I’ve been going down another rabbit hole, this time looking at Indian dance music from the late 1970s and 1980s.

What started as disco arriving in India became something much stranger. Composers and musicians were pulling from disco, funk, jazz, electronic music and Indian classical traditions, then pushing all of those sounds through film music and regional pop.

Disco was already making its way into Indian nightlife during the 1970s, with clubs appearing in cities including Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. But the really interesting part came when Indian film composers started taking those sounds and making them their own.

Instead of simply copying what was coming out of America and Europe, they were putting disco rhythms, synthesizers and funk arrangements alongside Indian melodies, orchestration and established film music traditions.

A major turning point came in 1980 with “Aap Jaisa Koi” from the film “Qurbani”. The song was produced by British-Indian producer Biddu and sung by Pakistani teenager Nazia Hassan. Its success helped push disco further into South Asian popular music, followed by Hassan’s 1981 album “Disco Deewane”, which became a major commercial success across the region.

This is where Bappi Lahiri comes in.

Bappi Lahiri is probably one of the first names people associate with Indian disco. His film soundtracks helped turn disco into a huge part of Hindi popular music, with records like “Disco Dancer” and “Wanted Dead or Alive” mixing electronic production, funk, orchestration and huge dancefloor hooks. Lahiri had already been working as a film composer through the 1970s before disco became central to his sound.

Then you have, who were already established film composers but started bringing international dance sounds into their work. Their soundtrack for “Haadsa” is a great example of how strange Indian film music could get during this period.

And this wasn't happening in Hindi cinema alone. Across India, composers were experimenting with the sounds coming through records, radio, cinemas and nightclubs, while regional film industries developed their own versions of these ideas.

And this is when things get even more interesting.

Rupa Biswas recorded “Disco Jazz” in 1982, bringing together jazz, funk, disco and Indian musical ideas. The album disappeared from wider attention for decades before being rediscovered, with “Aaj Shanibar” becoming one of the tracks that introduced a new generation to her music.

Ananda Shankar was taking another route, combining Indian instruments and melodies with rock, funk and electronic sounds.

And then there’s Charanjit Singh.

In 1982, he recorded “Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat”, using the Roland TR-808 drum machine, TB-303 bass synthesizer and Jupiter-8 synthesizer to build electronic versions of Indian ragas. The record was commercially unsuccessful when first released, but its later rediscovery led to comparisons with the acid house sound that emerged several years later.

Then there’s Nazia Hassan.

Her 1981 album “Disco Deewane”, produced by Biddu, became a huge South Asian pop record. “Boom Boom” followed in 1982, continuing the combination of South Asian melodies with contemporary disco and electronic pop.

Parvati Khan’s “Jimmy Jimmy Aaja” takes us back into Bollywood disco, while Ilaiyaraaja opens up another side of the story through South Indian film music, where synthesizers, funk, disco and orchestral arrangements found their way into Tamil cinema.

The more I listen, the harder this becomes to describe as simply “Indian disco”. There are ragas being played through drum machines, jazz records built around Indian melodies, Bollywood soundtracks borrowing from international dance music and regional composers experimenting with synthesizers.

And I think the timing makes the whole thing even more interesting. Disco was beginning to fade from the mainstream in North America by the early 1980s, while South Asian disco was reaching its peak. India and the wider region weren't following the same timeline. They were taking the sound and developing their own version of it.

So I’ve started putting together a playlist of the music I’m finding.

This feels less like one genre and more like a period where Indian musicians took everything coming through the speakers and figured out what they could do with it.