From Ravi Shankar to Diljit Dosanjh: How Indian Music Found the World There was a time when the sound of India travelling around the world was largely associated with one instrument. The sitar. And, more specifically, with one extraordinary musician: Ravi Shankar. Then came Bollywood. Then A.R. Rahman. Then Punjabi pop. Then independent artists, hip-hop, electronic music, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify. Today, an Indian song can travel from Mumbai to Manchester, from Delhi to New York and from Punjab to Los Angeles without waiting for a record company executive in London to approve its passport. Indian music has entered the global conversation. But this is not really a story about one musical explosion. It is a story about seven decades of cultural transmission. Ravi Shankar opened an important door Indian classical music had international connections before the 1960s. But Ravi Shankar became one of its most important global ambassadors. His collaboration with Western musicians—particularly violinist Yehudi Menuhin and later George Harrison of The Beatles—introduced Indian musical ideas to audiences who had previously encountered very little of them. In 1967, Shankar performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival in California. Two years later he appeared at Woodstock. The Woodstock festival’s own