In the mid-1960s British and American bands began carrying the sitar, the tabla and the drone of the tambura into pop songs, and the press gave the result a name: raga rock. This page follows that idea from the London underground of 1969 to a Kerala band that built progressive rock on Carnatic rhythms. On this site I use Indo-Prog for the later, longer-form side of the story: musicians who took Indian music into extended structures rather than a single sitar riff.

The short version

Raga rock is rock or pop with a marked Indian influence, whether in the way the songs are built, in their sound, or in instruments such as the sitar, tambura and tabla. It grew up inside the psychedelic rock of the 1960s, and most of its classic recordings come from that decade. The term first appeared in March 1966, in press material that the Byrds’ publicist wrote for “Eight Miles High”, and Sally Kempton of The Village Voice was the first to use it in print. Ravi Shankar was a major influence, and George Harrison, who played sitar on the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” and studied with Shankar in 1966, was dubbed “the maharaja of raga-rock” by the writer Nicholas Schaffner. The writer Rob Chapman calls the label a “catch-all term”, and it does stretch: in this guide it runs from Quintessence and Ananda Shankar around 1970 to Kula Shaker in the 1990s and Motherjane in the 2000s.

From the sitar boom to the long form

The first wave came fast. In June 1965 the Yardbirds released “Heart Full of Soul”, with Jeff Beck imitating a sitar on electric guitar; a month later the Kinks issued “See My Friends”, where Ray Davies used open-tuned guitars to suggest the tambura’s drone. In December 1965 “Norwegian Wood” became the first Western pop song to use an actual sitar, and Shankar later described the wave of interest that followed as “the great sitar explosion”. In 1966 came the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (Roger McGuinn actually played a 12-string Rickenbacker, and he later denied it was raga rock at all), the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black”, with Brian Jones on sitar, and the Beatles’ “Revolver”, which included “Love You To” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”. By September 1966 Life magazine was reporting on the trend.

In 1967 Harrison’s “Within You Without You” followed the structure of Hindustani classical music, and Dave Mason played sitar on Traffic’s singles “Paper Sun” and “Hole in My Shoe”. The Doors, Donovan, the Pretty Things and the Moody Blues all recorded in the style. Then the wave broke: the scholar William Echard says the trend was largely over by early 1968, and the musicologist Jonathan Bellman argues that in 1968 exploration gave way to formula.

What survived the fashion went in a different direction. Quintessence formed in April 1969 in Notting Hill, London, and mixed Indian classical music with rock and jazz; AllMusic’s Bruce Eder counts them among the “true progressive rock outfits” of their time. They signed to Island, released the concept album “In Blissful Company” in November 1969, played the first two Glastonbury festivals in 1970 and 1971, and moved to RCA for “Self” and “Indweller” in 1972. Their flautist Raja Ram later helped create psytrance in the 1990s and is best known for Shpongle.

Ananda Shankar came at the same meeting point from the other side. Born in Almora in 1942, the son of the dancers Uday and Amala Shankar and the nephew of Ravi Shankar, he studied sitar not with his uncle but with Lalmani Misra at Banaras Hindu University. In the late 1960s he went to Los Angeles and played with rock musicians, Jimi Hendrix among them. His self-titled debut, released by Reprise in April 1970, set his sitar against Paul Lewinson’s Moog synthesizer and included versions of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Light My Fire”. Richie Unterberger noted that Shankar approached East–West fusion from the Indian side, unlike most raga rock artists. Back in India he recorded “Ananda Shankar and His Music” (1975), a jazz-funk record built around Moog synthesizers. In the mid-1990s London club DJs rediscovered his records, and Blue Note’s 1996 compilation “Blue Juice Vol. 1” included two tracks from that 1975 album. He died in 1999.

Jazz musicians took up the idea too. John McLaughlin formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra in New York in 1971, with a name given to him by his teacher Sri Chinmoy and arrangements shaped by his interest in Indian classical music. After that band dissolved in 1976 he formed Shakti with the violinist L. Shankar and the tabla player Zakir Hussain, an acoustic group that combined Carnatic music with jazz.

The 1990s brought a revival. Kula Shaker began in London in 1993 as the Kays, led by Crispian Mills, and took its new name in May 1995 from Kulashekhara, a ninth-century Indian king. Their debut “K”, released by Columbia in September 1996, reached No. 1 on the UK Official Albums Chart, first charting in the week of 28 September 1996. Its single “Govinda” is sung entirely in Sanskrit, the chorus of “Tattva” was adapted from an ancient Sanskrit text, and the album credits list sarod, tabla and tamboura alongside the guitars. The band split in 1999, re-formed in 2004, a return made public in 2006, and has kept recording, up to “Wormslayer” in 2026. In the same years Cornershop released “When I Was Born for the 7th Time” (1997), which includes a Punjabi version of “Norwegian Wood”.

The newest chapter in this guide was written in India itself. Motherjane formed in Kochi, Kerala, in 1996, starting out to fill a slot at a college festival. Their debut was “Insane Biography”, and they were promoting their second album, “Maktub” (2008), when they played the first Rock ’n India festival in Bangalore that year. Writing in Prog, Tushar Menon described the band’s sound as Carnatic prog rock and singled out the opener “Chasing the Sun”, which rests on a mridangam-based rhythm in a repeating 5-5-9 pattern. Guitarist Baiju Dharmajan, who played with the band from 1999 to 2010, is known for Carnatic phrasing in his riffs and solos. After a twelve-year break the band returned to the stage for a 15th-anniversary tour of “Maktub”.

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The bands in this guide

Four acts have their own pages here: two from the first Indo-rock era, one from the 1990s revival and one from the Indian rock scene of the 2000s.

Elsewhere on Prog Atlas

Traffic, which I cover in my British section, is one of the bands the raga rock histories name directly: Dave Mason is credited with sitar and tambura on their 1967 debut album, and his sitar is on the singles “Paper Sun” and “Hole in My Shoe”. The Moody Blues also recorded in the style: on “In Search of the Lost Chord” (1968) Justin Hayward is credited with sitar, and “Visions of Paradise” and “Om” use Indian instruments; Hayward has said that George Harrison drew the band’s attention to them. The jazz branch of the story starts with Mahavishnu Orchestra, John McLaughlin’s band, whose early sound blended Indian classical music, jazz and psychedelic rock before McLaughlin moved on to Shakti.

Where to start

I would start in 1967 with Traffic’s “Mr. Fantasy” (1967): the original UK album leaves out the sitar singles, but Dave Mason’s sitar is on “Utterly Simple”, and AllMusic lists Indian music among the album’s many sources. Then move to the London underground with Quintessence’s debut “In Blissful Company” (1969), which AllMusic’s review calls a high point of the band’s catalogue, with guest sitar and tamboura in the credits. Ananda Shankar’s self-titled “Ananda Shankar” (1970) is the sitar-and-Moog record; John Lewis of Time Out called it the most artistically successful of the sitar rock releases. His “Ananda Shankar and His Music” (1975) shows the jazz-funk side that club DJs found again twenty years later. For the revival, Kula Shaker’s “K” (1996) holds “Govinda”, “Tattva” and “Sleeping Jiva”, the track with the guest sarod. And for the Carnatic end of the map, Motherjane’s “Maktub” (2008), which Tushar Menon in Prog called a truly progressive album.

Related scenes

Raga rock was born inside psychedelia, so its closest neighbour is Psychedelic & Space Rock. The McLaughlin and Shakti line leads into Jazz Rock & Fusion; the acoustic, drone-based side meets Progressive Folk; and Traffic and the Moody Blues sit in British Progressive Rock.

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