• Owing to India's vastness and diversity, Indian music encompasses numerous genres in multiple varieties and forms which include classical music, folk, rock, and pop. It has a history spanning several millennia and developed over several geo-locations spanning the sub-continent. Music in India began as an integral part of socio-religious life.
• The 30,000-year-old paleolithic and neolithic cave paintings at the UNESCO world heritage site at Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh show a type of dance. Mesolithic and chalcolithic cave art of Bhimbetka illustrates musical instruments such as Gongs, Bowed Lyre, daf etc.
• Chalcolithic era (4000 BCE onward) narrow bar shaped polished stone celts like music instruments, one of the earlier musical instruments in India, were excavated at Sankarjang in the Angul district of Odisha. There is historical evidence in the form of sculptural evidence, i.e. musical instruments, singing and dancing postures of damsels in the Ranigumpha Caves in Khandagiri and Udayagiri at Bhubaneswar.
• Indus River Valley Civilization
• Dancing Girl sculpture (2500 BCE) was found from the Indus Valley civilization (IVC) site. There are IVC-era paintings on pottery of a man with a dhol hanging from his neck and a woman holding a drum under her left arm.
• Vedas (c. 1500 – c. 800 BCE Vedic period) document rituals with performing arts and play. For example, Shatapatha Brahmana (~800–700 BCE) has verses in chapter 13.2 written in the form of a play between two actors. Tala or taal is an ancient music concept traceable to Vedic era texts of Hinduism, such as the Samaveda and methods for singing the Vedic hymns. Smriti (500 BCE to 100 BCE ) post-vedic Hindu texts include Valmiki's Ramayana (500 BCE to 100 BCE) which mentions dance and music ( Apsaras such as Urvashi, Rambha, Menaka, Tilottama Panchāpsaras, and Ravana's wives excelling in nrityageeta or "singing and dancing" and nritavaditra or "playing musical instruments"), music and singing by Gandharvas, several string instruments (vina, tantri, bīn, vipanci and vallaki similar to veena), wind instruments (shankha, venu and venugana – likely a mouth organ made by tying several flutes together), raga (including kaushika such as raag kaushik dhwani), vocal registers (seven svara or sur, ana or ekashurti drag note, murchana the regulated rise and fall of voice in matra and tripramana three-fold teen taal laya such as drut or quick, madhya or middle, and vilambit or slow), poetry recitation in Bala Kanda and also in Uttara Kanda by Luv and Kusha in marga style.
• Starting from the earliest known work Tholkappiyam (500 BCE), there are several references to music and Panns in the ancient pre-Sangam and Sangam literature starting from the earliest known work Tholkappiyam (500 BCE). Among Sangam literature, Mathuraikkanci refers to women singing sevvazhi pann to invoke the mercy of God during childbirth. In Tolkappiyam, the five landscapes of the Sangam literature had each an associated Pann, each describing the mood of the song associated with that landscape. Among the numerous panns that find mention in the ancient Tamil literature are, Ambal Pann, which is suitable to be played on the flute, sevvazhi pann on the Yazh (lute), Nottiram and Sevvazhi expressing pathos, the captivating Kurinji pann and the invigorating Murudappann. Pann (Tamil: பண்) is the melodic mode used by the Tamil people in their music since the ancient times. The ancient panns over centuries evolved first into a pentatonic scale and later into the seven note Carnatic Sargam. But from the earliest times, Tamil Music is heptatonic and known as Ezhisai (ஏழிசை).
• sanskrit saint-poet Jayadeva, who was the great composer and illustrious master of classical music, shaped Odra-Magadhi style music and had great influence on Odissi Sangita.
• Śārṅgadeva composed Sangita-Ratnakara, one of the most important Sanskrit musicological texts from India, which is regarded as the definitive text in both Hindustani music and Carnatic music traditions of Indian classical music.
• Assamese poet Madhava Kandali, writer of Saptakanda Ramayana, lists several instruments in his version of "Ramayana", such as mardala, khumuchi, bhemachi, dagar, gratal, ramtal, tabal, jhajhar, jinjiri, bheri mahari, tokari, dosari, kendara, dotara, vina, rudra-vipanchi, etc. (meaning that these instruments existed since his time in the 14th century or earlier). The Indian system of notation is perhaps the world's oldest and most elaborate.
• In the early 14th century under the Khiljis, there were concerts and competitions between Hindustani and Carnatic musicians.
• From the 16th century onwards, treatises written on music were Sangitamava Chandrika, Gita Prakasha, Sangita Kalalata and Natya Manorama.
• In the early 1960s Jazz pioneers such as John Coltrane and George Harrison collaborated with Indian instrumentalists and started to use Indian instruments such as sitar in their songs. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, rock and roll fusions with Indian music were well known throughout Europe and North America. In the late 1980s, Indian-British artists fused Indian and Western traditions to make the Asian Underground. In the new millennium, American hip-hop has featured Indian filmi and bhangra. Mainstream hip-hop artists have sampled songs from Bollywood movies and have collaborated with Indian artists, such as Timbaland's "Indian Flute"
• In 2010, Laura Marling and Mumford and Sons collaborated with the Dharohar Project
• Music in ancient India, can be reproduced from written works dating to the Indian classical period, such as the Nātya Shastra, and through surviving examples of liturgical music such as the hymns of the Samaveda. Musical instruments dating to the prehistoric period have been recovered from archaeological excavations.
• Musical instruments, such as the seven-holed flute and various types of stringed instruments such as ravanahatha, cymbals have been recovered from Indus Valley civilization archaeological sites. Evidence suggests use of drum or dhol in the Indus valley civilization. There have not been a lot of depictions of musical instruments from IVC, but contemporary BMAC civilization which traded with it has archaeological depictions of lyre and many cylindrical drums were also discovered from Indus Valley. A kind of harp is also depicted in the chalcolithic cave drawings of India along with Gong. There is also evidence of dancing figurines from Indus valley civilization suggesting an established musical tradition. A kind of lithophone has also been discovered from Orissa around 1000 BCE.
• The Samaveda, one of the ancient core Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas, consists of a collection (samhita) of hymns, portions of hymns and detached verses, all but 75 of which are taken from the Rigveda. They were intended to be sung using melodies called Samagana whose musical forms are indicated. These hymns were sung by Udgatar priests at sacrifices in which the juice of the Soma plant, clarified and mixed with milk and other ingredients, were offered in libation to various deities. This memorization by Hindu priests of the sacred Vedas included up to eleven musical forms of recitation that could be used on the same text.