This comprehensive database of Indian classical music integrates five independent databases based on reliable open sources offered by authorized institutions: WWIM, AIR, SNA, MAM, and OEMI. The database is divided into two cross-searchable segments: one on musicians and another on musical performances.

In principle, no additions or changes have been made to the original data, with the exception of minor corrections addressing spelling inconsistencies. We have introduced a few new search fields, such as "gender" and "religion," based on musicians' names, photographs, and other available information.

The database was created by a team of six Japanese scholars on Indian music as part of the Integrated Database for Indian Music (IDIM) project funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science since 2019 to 2023. This database of Indian music and musicians has been in the making for many years. Our prior, mostly qualitative, research on Indian classical music traditions made us realize the need for a reliable and comprehensive database, serving as a basis for a supplementary quantitative approach. Such a database should encompass a wide range of data on both music (repertoire, raga, tala, compositions, performance practice, etc.) and musicians (age, gender, musical specialization, training, religious affiliations, etc.) to investigate the relationship between Indian music and the people performing it in greater depth.

Indian classical music has a long history and has been practiced in vast areas by people with diverse backgrounds and attributes; very few other music traditions in the world exhibit such range of complexity and variations. Our objective in creating this database is to consolidate what has been documented by various Indian organizations about music and musicians, providing a foundation for quantitative approaches and perspectives.

We believe that this database presents the largest cultural resources on Indian classical music in one place and hope it is useful for musicologists, musicians, and music lovers around the world.

About us ( March 2024)

Team Members

• Professor Takako Tanaka (Ethnomusicologist), Kyoto University of Education, Japan
• Professor Masakazu Tamori (Anthropologist and sarod player), Faculty of International Communication, Aichi University, Japan
• Professor Emeritus, Yoshitaka Terada (Ethnomusicologist), National Museum of Ethnology and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies. Expired in March 2023.
• Professor Hidetoshi Kobinata (Ethnomusicologist and sitar player), Tokyo College of Music, Japan
• Associate Professor Emi Okada (Ethnomusicologist), National Museum of Ethnology and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan
• Assistant Professor Jun Obi (South Indian cultural researcher), Faculty of International Relations, Daito Bunka University, Japan

Funding: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (19H01206, 2019 to 2023)

Research Project Title: “Indian Music as Cultural Resource in Post-Independence Era”