History — The Story of Indian Cinema, Music and Television

The history of Indian entertainment is a story of people finding new ways to sing, perform, tell stories and share experiences. Long before cinema halls and television sets, audiences gathered around musicians, dancers, storytellers and theatrical performers. Later, recordings, films and broadcasts carried those experiences beyond the place of performance.

Cinema, music and television developed their own identities, but their histories continually intersect. Songs helped define popular films. Radio brought performers into homes. Television created familiar characters and shared viewing routines. Streaming introduced further ways to discover work across languages and borders.

This is a broad introduction to those connections, rather than a complete chronology. India's many regions and communities have histories that cannot be reduced to a single national sequence.

Before the Screen: Music, Theatre and Oral Traditions

India's entertainment heritage draws on centuries of musical, dramatic and storytelling practices. Performances developed in courts, religious settings, public gatherings and everyday community life. Classical, folk and devotional traditions influenced one another while retaining distinctive forms.

Hindustani and Carnatic music became two major classical traditions, alongside a wide range of regional musical practices. Theatre, dance, poetry and oral storytelling also provided ways to communicate histories, beliefs, humour and social experience. Source: Centre for Cultural Resources and Training.

These traditions were not simply replaced by modern media. They continued as living arts, while providing performers, stories and musical ideas that could be adapted for recordings and screens.

Recorded Music: A Performance That Could Travel

Sound recording changed the relationship between a performer and an audience. A listener could hear the same performance repeatedly without attending a concert.

Gauhar Jaan's recordings in 1902 belong to the pioneering period of commercial recording in India. Her career illustrates how gramophone records could carry a singer's work to listeners beyond the original setting of performance. Early recording formats also encouraged artists to adapt longer musical material to the limited duration of a disc. Source: Gauhar Jaan historical overview.

Recorded music created new opportunities for recognition and commerce. It also began a lasting question in entertainment history: how does a change in technology influence what artists create and what audiences hear?

Cinema Arrives: From Moving Images to Indian Stories

Lumière films were screened in Bombay in 1896, an important milestone in the arrival of cinema in India. What began as the novelty of moving photographs soon offered opportunities for storytelling. Source: Press Information Bureau.

Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra, released in 1913, is widely regarded as India's first full-length indigenous feature film. Based on the story of King Harishchandra, it demonstrated the possibilities of making screen stories for Indian audiences. Source: film history.

Silent filmmaking relied on images, performance and intertitles rather than synchronized recorded dialogue. The medium was new, but familiar stories and performance traditions helped audiences enter its world.

1931: Sound Connects Cinema and Music

Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara, released in 1931, marked the arrival of India's first feature-length talkie. Recorded dialogue and songs transformed the screen experience and strengthened the relationship between cinema and music. Source: Alam Ara history.

Voices and languages became central to screen identity. Songs could express a character's emotions, accompany a celebration or become popular independently of the film.

The song sequence developed into a distinctive collaborative art, combining poetry, musical composition, singing, acting, choreography, cinematography and editing. It became one of the defining features of Indian popular cinema, although not every Indian film followed that form. Source: British Film Institute.

Radio: Music and Stories Enter Everyday Life

Radio created another connection between performers and listeners. India's broadcasting activity preceded the adoption of the name All India Radio in 1936. AIR's later expansion provided a network for news, music and spoken programming.

The launch of Vividh Bharati in 1957, with popular film music as a major component, strengthened the connection between radio and cinema. Songs could reach people who had not seen the films in which they appeared. Source: Prasar Bharati.

Radio encouraged listening as part of daily life. It also gave music an audience beyond the visual attraction of screen performers, placing particular importance on voices, presentation and sound.

The 1950s–1970s: Popular Classics and Alternative Visions

The decades after independence produced different, overlapping ideas of what cinema could be. Hindi films such as Pyaasa and Mother India, both released in 1957, helped establish the period's reputation for combining popular appeal with social and emotional depth. Source: University of Iowa.

Satyajit Ray's Bengali debut Pather Panchali (1955) offered an intimate account of rural family life. Ray and Ritwik Ghatak were important precursors to the flourishing of Parallel Cinema from the late 1960s. Filmmakers including Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Mani Kaul and G. Aravindan explored different forms of social criticism and cinematic expression. Source: BFI, Indian Parallel Cinema.

Commercial spectacle developed alongside these approaches. Sholay (1975) became a defining example of a popular film blending action, friendship, romance, comedy and music. Indian cinema's history contains these traditions together, rather than one simply replacing another. Source: BFI, Sholay at 50.

Television Begins: From Experiment to Household Medium

Television broadcasting began experimentally in Delhi on 15 September 1959. Regular service followed in 1965, and services gradually extended to other cities. Doordarshan separated institutionally from All India Radio in 1976; 1982 marked the introduction of national colour telecasts. Source: Press Information Bureau, Doordarshan history.

Television brought moving images into domestic space. Its schedule could bring together news, education, cultural programmes and entertainment, creating a different relationship with audiences from a visit to the cinema.

Serial storytelling encouraged viewers to return to the same characters. Hum Log, which began in 1984, became a landmark family drama, exploring everyday aspirations and social concerns through an ongoing narrative. Source: Hum Log history.

The 1980s: Shared Viewing and Expanding Musical Choice

Doordarshan programmes including Buniyaad, Malgudi Days, Udaan, Ramayan and Mahabharat became important parts of India's television memory. Their variety illustrates the medium's capacity for family drama, literary adaptation, social themes and epic storytelling. Source: Press Information Bureau.

Meanwhile, cassette technology changed the circulation of recorded music. Lower-cost production and distribution supported regional popular repertoires and smaller music businesses alongside established film-music markets. Listeners gained more opportunities to choose recordings for themselves. Source: Peter Manuel, “Democratizing Indian Popular Music”.

Television and recorded music thus offered two different experiences: watching according to a broadcaster's schedule and replaying a chosen recording.

The 1990s: Cable, Satellite and More Channels

Satellite broadcasting and local cable networks reshaped television during the early 1990s. New channels expanded access to entertainment, music and international programming. Neighbourhood cable operators played an important role in connecting homes to these services. Source: Wired's contemporary account.

Zee TV's launch in 1992 was one significant milestone in this transition. Its development illustrates the growth of privately operated Indian television alongside public broadcasting. Source: Zee's anniversary history.

The change also strengthened entertainment's connections across media. Films could reach audiences through television, music gained a visual promotional setting, and serials gave performers careers built around recurring appearances.

The 2000s and 2010s: Digital Change and New Creative Voices

The transition toward digital production and distribution brought further changes to music. Online circulation created new possibilities for discovery while challenging earlier recording-business models. Artists and producers had to navigate new routes between making work and earning from it. Source: Peter Manuel, “Democratizing Indian Popular Music”.

Regional cinema also continued to renew itself. Malayalam films such as Traffic and Salt N' Pepper, both released in 2011, helped define a new-generation movement associated with fresh narrative approaches and contemporary life. This was a renewal within an established tradition, not the beginning of regional innovation. Source: Malayalam new-generation cinema overview.

Screen entertainment increasingly included work designed for online viewing. The debut of Sacred Games in 2018 demonstrated the possibilities of Indian storytelling in an internationally distributed streaming-series format. Source: production and release history.

2020 Onward: Streaming Becomes a Major Release Route

Pandemic disruption accelerated digital premieres in 2020. Films including Gulabo Sitabo, Shakuntala Devi and Sufiyum Sujatayum formed part of a multi-language slate announced for direct release on Amazon Prime Video. Source: The Tribune.

OTT — online streaming — brought movies, serials, documentaries and original series into on-demand catalogues. It added another way for audiences to encounter Indian work across languages and territories.

This expanded international access rather than creating it from nothing: Indian films and artists had reached overseas audiences long before streaming. Availability also remained dependent on rights, territories and catalogue choices. Nor did a new format eliminate the old ones; live performance, radio, television and cinema continued to offer different experiences.

Preserving the Work and the People Behind It

Entertainment history survives through more than famous titles. Film prints, recordings, scripts, posters, photographs, programme schedules, credits and interviews can all help explain how work was made and experienced.

The NFDC–National Film Archive of India identifies the acquisition and preservation of cinematic heritage as a central purpose. Preservation matters because popularity does not guarantee survival, and today's accessible work may not remain accessible without deliberate care. Source: NFDC–NFAI.

For IndiasCinema.com, the History section is an invitation to explore these connections: between regional traditions and wider audiences, between artistic creativity and technology, and between celebrated personalities and the many collaborators behind them.

Every film, song and programme belongs to a larger history. Understanding that history helps us appreciate what we watch and hear today.