The NID Tapes: A Listening Session

In 1969, India's first electronic music studio was founded at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, with the support of the American composer David Tudor. This listening session and discussion will explore the facility’s history and present excerpts from a recently uncovered archive of experimental electronic music developed at the NID across the three year period of the studio's operational activity, shedding light on the work of five previously-unknown Indian composers such as Gita Sarabhai, Atul Desai, S.C. Sharma, I.S. Mathur and Jinraj Joshipura, working with a collection of tape machines and a custom Moog modular synthesizer installed by Tudor. The collection of music, tape experiments and field recordings encapsulate a utopian period as India explored a new post-colonial sonic imaginary within an emerging progressive vision for art, design and technology. This was a moment in which the dialogues between Eastern and Western modernisms converged, and the pioneering spirit of the NID developed a unique cultural exchange with the New York avant-garde. 

This event accompanies the release of the compilation The NID Tapes: Electronic Music from India 1969-1972 (The State51 Conspiracy, 2023)  and a supporting essay collection published by Strange Attractor/MIT Press