In This Article
Origins and Vision: How AIR Became the Stage for a Nation
Before All India Radio (AIR) formalised its classical music programming, the art form remained largely confined to princely courts, temple precincts, private mehfils, and regional sabhas. The average Indian listener, particularly one living outside major cultural centres like Kolkata, Mumbai, Varanasi, or Chennai, had virtually no access to the greatest performers of the age. Radio changed this calculus entirely.
AIR's engagement with classical music dates to its earliest incarnation as the Indian Broadcasting Company in the late 1920s, but it was after Independence that a deliberate institutional vision took shape. Under the leadership of figures like B.V. Keskar, who served as India's Minister for Information and Broadcasting from 1950 to 1962, AIR adopted a vigorous policy of promoting classical music. Keskar, himself a scholar of Hindustani music, was deeply committed to elevating what he considered India's serious musical traditions. He controversially curtailed film music broadcasts in the early 1950s, channelling airtime instead towards classical and semi-classical forms. While this decision was debated — and ultimately contributed to the rise of Radio Ceylon as a competitor — it cemented AIR's identity as a patron and disseminator of classical music on an unprecedented scale.
The National Programme of Music, launched in the 1950s, became one of AIR's most prestigious slots. Broadcast on Saturday evenings across the entire national network, it featured a single artist performing for an extended duration — often 45 minutes to over an hour — a format that respected the organic unfolding of a raga. Being invited to perform on the National Programme was considered one of the highest honours in an Indian classical musician's career.
The Sangeet Sammelans: A Festival on the Airwaves
AIR's Sangeet Sammelans (music conferences) were annual festivals organised by various AIR stations, bringing together an extraordinary roster of artists for live performances broadcast to the nation. These were not mere studio recordings; they were full-scale concerts held before live audiences, often spanning multiple days, and transmitted with the crackling immediacy that only live radio could provide.
The major stations — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, and Allahabad — each hosted their own Sammelans, sometimes with regional flavour. The Delhi station's annual Sangeet Sammelan, typically held around October, was among the most prestigious. Listeners across India would tune in to hear consecutive performances by artists of the stature of Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Bismillah Khan, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Gangubai Hangal, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi — all within a single festival.
These Sammelans served multiple functions simultaneously:
- Curatorial platform: AIR's music producers and advisory panels — which included eminent musicologists such as S.N. Ratanjankar, Sumati Mutatkar, and V.N. Bhatkhande's intellectual heirs — curated lineups that balanced vocal and instrumental traditions, Hindustani and Carnatic streams, established legends and emerging talents.
- Archival function: Many of these broadcasts were recorded on tape and preserved in AIR's archives, creating what is arguably the single largest repository of Indian classical music recordings in existence. Some of these recordings have since been released commercially, but vast quantities remain in the archives, a subject of ongoing preservation concern.
- Democratic access: A farmer in rural Punjab, a clerk in a small Odishan town, a student in a Kerala hostel — all could hear Ustad Amir Khan's peerless rendition of Raga Marwa or Kishori Amonkar's soul-stirring Bhairav, simply by turning a dial.
"Radio did for classical music what the printing press did for literature — it broke the stranglehold of geography and patronage, placing the art before anyone who cared to listen."
Special editions of the Sammelans were organised to mark national occasions — Republic Day, Independence Day, and Gandhi Jayanti frequently featured dedicated classical music programming. The Akashvani Sangeet Sammelan held in Delhi in 1955, featuring simultaneous broadcasts across multiple stations, is remembered as a landmark event that showcased the range of India's musical traditions to what was then the largest simultaneous audience for classical music in history.
The AIR Music Competition and Grading System
Perhaps no AIR initiative shaped the professional landscape of Indian classical music more profoundly than its grading system and associated audition and competition structures. AIR classified performing artists into grades — initially A, B, and C, with a 'Top' grade (sometimes called A-Top) later added to honour the most distinguished musicians. Each grade corresponded to a fee structure and determined the prestige of the broadcast slots an artist could be assigned.
The grading was determined through audition panels composed of senior musicians, musicologists, and AIR music producers. Stations like AIR Dharwad, AIR Lucknow, and AIR Madras became important audition centres. For young and aspiring artists, clearing an AIR audition and receiving even a B-grade classification was a significant career milestone — it conferred legitimacy, brought a national audience, and provided a steady source of performance income.
The AIR Music Competition, launched in the 1950s, was a structured nationwide contest that identified promising young talent from across the country. Regional rounds were held at various stations, with winners advancing to zonal and then national rounds. Many artists who later became household names first gained wider recognition through these competitions. Pandit Jasraj, Rashid Khan, and numerous other luminaries of subsequent generations benefited from the exposure and validation that AIR's competitive framework provided.
The system was not without its critics. Some musicians felt the grading process was opaque or subject to factional politics within AIR's advisory committees. There were periodic complaints that the panels favoured certain gharanas or stylistic approaches over others. The fee differentials between grades could also be a source of tension. Nevertheless, the system provided a rare institutional structure of evaluation and recognition in an art form that had historically depended on courtly or private patronage.
Legacy: From Airwaves to the Digital Age
The impact of AIR's classical music programming on the cultural life of twentieth-century India is difficult to overstate. For at least four decades — from the early 1950s through the 1990s — radio was the primary medium through which most Indians encountered classical music. The morning raga slots, the National Programme of Music, the Sangeet Sammelans, and even the iconic signature tune composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar (Raga Kafi-based, first broadcast in 1952) became woven into the daily rhythms of Indian life.
AIR also played a critical role in bridging the Hindustani-Carnatic divide. A listener in Varanasi could hear Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer or Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar; a rasika in Madurai could discover the khayal of Amir Khan or the dhrupad of the Dagar Brothers. This cross-pollination, facilitated purely by the reach of radio waves, fostered a more integrated national appreciation of Indian classical music's full spectrum.
With the advent of television, cassettes, CDs, and eventually digital streaming, AIR's centrality has inevitably diminished. Budget constraints, bureaucratic inertia, and the sheer volume of competing media have eroded its once-dominant position. The archival recordings — many on deteriorating magnetic tape — represent a conservation challenge of the highest urgency. Organisations such as the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) in Gurgaon and various private initiatives have undertaken digitisation efforts, but the scale of AIR's holdings dwarfs what has been preserved so far.
Yet the legacy endures. Countless senior musicians today recall their first encounter with a great artist's voice crackling through a transistor radio as the moment their musical journey began. The Sangeet Sammelans demonstrated that classical music need not be an elite pursuit — that with thoughtful institutional support, it could belong to an entire nation. In an era when algorithms curate our listening, it is worth remembering a time when a single broadcast could unite millions in the shared experience of a raga unfolding in real time, across the vast and varied landscape of India.