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The Most Famous

MUSICIANS from India

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This page contains a list of the greatest Indian Musicians. The pantheon dataset contains 2,662 Musicians, 22 of which were born in India. This makes India the birth place of the 20th most number of Musicians behind Austria and Hungary.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Indian Musicians of all time. This list of famous Indian Musicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Indian Musicians.

Photo of Amir Khusrow

1. Amir Khusrow (1253 - 1325)

With an HPI of 67.67, Amir Khusrow is the most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 58 different languages on wikipedia.

Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau (1253 – 1325 AD), better known as Amīr Khusrau, was an Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar who lived during the period of the Delhi Sultanate. He is an iconic figure in the cultural history of South Asia. He was a mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, India. He wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi. A vocabulary in verse, the Ḳhāliq Bārī, containing Arabic, Persian and Hindavi terms is often attributed to him. Khusrau is sometimes referred to as the "voice of India" or "Parrot of India" (Tuti-e-Hind), and has been called the "father of Urdu literature."Khusrau is regarded as the "father of qawwali" (a devotional form of singing of the Sufis in the Indian subcontinent), and introduced the ghazal style of song into India, both of which still exist widely in India and Pakistan. Khusrau was an expert in many styles of Persian poetry which were developed in medieval Persia, from Khāqānī's qasidas to Nizami's khamsa. He used 11 metrical schemes with 35 distinct divisions. He wrote in many verse forms including ghazal, masnavi, qata, rubai, do-baiti and tarkib-band. His contribution to the development of the ghazal was significant.

Photo of Ravi Shankar

2. Ravi Shankar (1920 - 2012)

With an HPI of 64.85, Ravi Shankar is the 2nd most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 87 different languages.

Ravi Shankar, (Bengali pronunciation: [ˈrobi ˈʃɔŋkor]; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012), was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known expert of North Indian classical music in the second half of the 20th century, and influenced many musicians in India and throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999. Shankar was born to a Bengali family in India, and spent his youth as a dancer touring India and Europe with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. At age 18, he gave up dancing to pursue a career in music, studying the sitar for seven years under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score for scoring the blockbuster Gandhi (1982). In 1956, Shankar began to tour Europe and the Americas playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Beatles guitarist George Harrison. His influence on Harrison helped popularize the use of Indian instruments in Western pop music in the latter half of the 1960s. Shankar engaged Western music by writing compositions for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992, he served as a nominated member of Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. He continued to perform until the end of his life. He was a recipient of numerous prestigious musical accolades, including a Polar Music Prize and five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for The Concert for Bangladesh in 1973.

Photo of Cliff Richard

3. Cliff Richard (1940 - )

With an HPI of 63.72, Cliff Richard is the 3rd most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 53 different languages.

Sir Cliff Richard (born Harry Rodger Webb; 14 October 1940) is a British singer and actor. He has total sales of over 21.5 million singles in the United Kingdom and, in 2002, was the third-top-selling artist in UK Singles Chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley.Richard was originally marketed as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Presley and Little Richard. With his backing group, the Shadows, he dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s to early 1960s. His 1958 hit single "Move It" is often described as Britain's first authentic rock and roll song. In the early 1960s, he had a successful screen career with films including The Young Ones, Summer Holiday and Wonderful Life and his own television show at the BBC. Increased focus on his Christian faith and subsequent softening of his music led to a more middle-of-the-road image, and he sometimes ventured into contemporary Christian music. In a career spanning over 65 years, Richard has amassed several gold and platinum discs and awards, including two Ivor Novello Awards and three Brit Awards. More than 130 of his singles, albums, and EPs have reached the UK Top 20, more than any other artist. Richard has had 67 UK top ten singles, the second highest total for an artist (behind Presley). He holds the record, with Presley, as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades (1950s–2000s). He has achieved 14 UK No. 1 singles, and is the only singer to have had a No. 1 single in the UK in each of five consecutive decades. He also had four UK Christmas No. 1 singles, two of which were as a solo artist; "Mistletoe and Wine" and "Saviour's Day". By the late-1990s, Richard had sold more than 250 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has never achieved the same popularity in the United States despite eight US Top 40 singles, including the million-selling "Devil Woman" and "We Don't Talk Anymore". In Canada, he had a successful period in the early 1960s, the late 1970s and early 1980s, with some releases certified gold and platinum. He has remained a popular music, film, and television personality at home in the UK as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Northern Europe and Asia, and retains a following in other countries. When not touring, he divides his time between Barbados and Portugal. In 2019, he relocated to New York.

Photo of Pete Best

4. Pete Best (1941 - )

With an HPI of 62.62, Pete Best is the 4th most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Randolph Peter Best (né Scanland; born 24 November 1941) is an English musician who was the drummer for the Beatles from 1960 to 1962. He was dismissed immediately before the band achieved worldwide fame and is one of several people who have been referred to as a fifth Beatle. Best's mother, Mona Best (1924–1988), opened the Casbah Coffee Club in the cellar of the Bests' house in Liverpool. The Beatles (at the time known as the Quarrymen) played some of their first concerts at the club. The Beatles invited Best to join the band on 12 August 1960, on the eve of the group's first Hamburg season of club dates. Ringo Starr eventually replaced Best on 16 August 1962 when the group's manager, Brian Epstein, fired Best at the request of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison following the band's first recording session. Over 30 years later, Best received a major monetary payout for his work with the Beatles after the release of their 1995 compilation of their early recordings on Anthology 1; Best played the drums on 10 of the album's tracks, including the Decca auditions. After working in several commercially unsuccessful groups, Best gave up being in the music industry to work as a civil servant for 20 years before starting the Pete Best Band.

Photo of Ram Narayan

5. Ram Narayan (1927 - )

With an HPI of 57.72, Ram Narayan is the 5th most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 77 different languages.

Ram Narayan (IPA: [raːm naːˈɾaːjəɳ]; born 25 December 1927), often referred to with the title Pandit, is an Indian musician who popularised the bowed instrument sarangi as a solo concert instrument in Hindustani classical music and became the first internationally successful sarangi player. Narayan was born near Udaipur and learned to play the sarangi at an early age. He studied under sarangi players and singers and, as a teenager, worked as a music teacher and travelling musician. All India Radio, Lahore, hired Narayan as an accompanist for vocalists in 1944. He moved to Delhi following the partition of India in 1947, but wishing to go beyond accompaniment and frustrated with his supporting role, Narayan moved to Mumbai in 1949 to work in Indian cinema. Narayan became a concert solo artist in 1956 and has since performed at the major music festivals of India. After sitar player Ravi Shankar successfully performed in Western countries, Narayan followed his example. He recorded solo albums and made his first international tour in 1964 to America and Europe with his older brother Chatur Lal, a tabla player who had toured with Shankar in the 1950s. Narayan taught Indian and foreign students and performed, frequently outside India, into the 2000s. He was awarded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2005.

Photo of Tansen

6. Tansen (1493 - 1493)

With an HPI of 55.69, Tansen is the 6th most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Ramtanu Pandey (c. 1493/1500 – 26 April 1589), popularly referred to as Mian Tansen (lit. 'the Learned One'), or Sangeet Samrat (lit. 'Monarch of Hindustani Music'), was a Hindustani classical musician. Born into a Hindu Gaur Brahmin family, he learnt and perfected his art in the northwest region of modern Madhya Pradesh. He began his career and spent most of his adult life in the court and patronage of the Hindu king of Rewa, Raja Ramchandra Singh (r. 1555–1592), where Tansen's musical abilities and studies gained widespread fame. This reputation brought him to the attention of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, who sent messengers to Raja Ramchandra Singh, requesting Tansen to join the musicians at the Mughal court. Tansen did not want to go, but Raja Ramchandra Singh encouraged him to gain a wider audience and sent him along with gifts for Akbar. In 1562, at about the age of 60, the Vaishnava musician Tansen joined Akbar's court, and his performances became the subject of many court historians.Numerous legends have been written about Tansen, mixing facts and fiction, and the historicity of these stories is doubtful. Akbar considered him one of the Navaratnas Nine Ministers (the nine jewels) and gave him the title Mian, an honorific, meaning learned man.Tansen was a composer, musician and vocalist, to whom many compositions have been attributed in northern regions of the Indian subcontinent. He was also an instrumentalist who popularized and improved musical instruments. He is among the most influential personalities in the North Indian tradition of Indian classical music, called Hindustani. His 16th-century studies in music and compositions inspired many, and he is considered by numerous North Indian gharana (regional music schools) to be their lineage founder.Tansen is remembered for his epic Dhrupad compositions, creating several new ragas, as well as for writing two classic books on music, Sri Ganesh Stotra and Sangita Sara.

Photo of Bismillah Khan

7. Bismillah Khan (1916 - 2006)

With an HPI of 51.15, Bismillah Khan is the 7th most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.

Ustad Bismillah Khan (born Qamaruddin Khan, 21 March 1916 – 21 August 2006), often referred to by the title Ustad, was an Indian musician credited with popularizing the shehnai, a reeded woodwind instrument. He played it with such expressive virtuosity that he became a leading Hindustani classical music artist. His name was indelibly linked with the woodwind instrument. While the shehnai had long held importance as a folk instrument played primarily schooled in traditional ceremonies, Khan is credited with elevating its status and bringing it to the concert stage.Khan was a devout Muslim but performed at both Hindu and Muslim ceremonies and was considered a symbol of religious harmony. His fame was such that he was selected to perform for the ceremony at Delhi's historic Red Fort as the Indian flag unfurled at the hour of India's independence on August 15, 1947. His music was played on television every Independence Day. He turned down invitations to perform in other countries before 1966, when the Indian government insisted that he play at the Edinburgh International Festival. This gained him a following in the West, and he continued to appear in Europe and North America thereafter.In 2001, Bismillah Khan was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, and the country observed a national day of mourning following his death in 2006. He became the third classical musician of India after M. S. Subbalakshmi and Ravi Shankar to be awarded the Bharat Ratna.

Photo of Barry Hay

8. Barry Hay (1948 - )

With an HPI of 47.92, Barry Hay is the 8th most famous Indian Musician.  Her biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Barry Andrew Hay (born 16 August 1948) is a Dutch musician; he was the lead vocalist and frontman of Dutch rock band Golden Earring from 1967 until their disbandment in 2021. He has also released three solo albums.

Photo of Christian Zacharias

9. Christian Zacharias (1950 - )

With an HPI of 47.58, Christian Zacharias is the 9th most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Christian Zacharias (born 27 April 1950 in Jamshedpur) is a German pianist and conductor.

Photo of Hariprasad Chaurasia

10. Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938 - )

With an HPI of 47.02, Hariprasad Chaurasia is the 10th most famous Indian Musician.  His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Hariprasad Chaurasia (born 1 July 1938) is an Indian music director and classical flautist, who plays the bansuri, in the Hindustani classical tradition.

Pantheon has 22 people classified as musicians born between 1253 and 1979. Of these 22, 12 (54.55%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living musicians include Cliff Richard, Pete Best, and Ram Narayan. The most famous deceased musicians include Amir Khusrow, Ravi Shankar, and Tansen. As of April 2022, 3 new musicians have been added to Pantheon including Trilok Gurtu, Salil Chowdhury, and Mohammed Zahur Khayyam.

Living Musicians

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Deceased Musicians

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Newly Added Musicians (2022)

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Which Musicians were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 8 most globally memorable Musicians since 1700.