Filmi - Music Directors

Music Directors

R. C. Boral, Harishchandra Bali, Pankaj Mullick, Anil Biswas, Naushad, Khawaja Khurshid Anwar and S. Rajeswara Rao were noteworthy music directors of the 1940s. Rao, who scored the 1948 Tamil Chandralekha, the first all-India hit, continued music directing in Chennai until the 1980s. The 1950s and 1960s, included music composers like Shankar Jaikishan, S.D. Burman, O.P. Nayyar, Madan Mohan, Hemant Kumar, C. Ramchandra, Roshan, Vasant Desai, Kalyanji Anandji and Khayyam in Hindi film music. K. V. Mahadevan, Vishwanathan-Ramamoorthy, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, G. Devarajan, V Dakshinamoorthy and M. S. Viswanathan were active music directors for more than 35 years from the 1950s.

As Indian cinema segued into the 1960s and 1970s, pop artists like R.D. Burman, Bappi Lahiri and duos like Nadeem-Shravan and Jatin-Lalit gave filmi a stronger western flavor with composers Ilaiyaraaja and Raveendran who rose to fame during the 1970s and 1980s in Tamil film music.

Major musical forces in the 1990s and 2000s have included A. R. Rahman, Nadeem-Shravan, Harris Jayaraj, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Vishal-Shekhar, Vidyasagar, M. Jayachandran, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Deepak Dev, Johnson, Anu Malik, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Salim-Sulaiman, etc. A. R. Rahman, who was described by Time magazine as "India's most prominent movie songwriter," is widely accepted to be the most internationally recognized Indian musician.