In America, Indian music, identified now with Sitar, Sarod and tabla of Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Alla Rakha, became the associated with the emerging "Hippie" culture in the Sixties. Since then the spread of economic markets into different countries has caused the music of the world to travel the seas even faster. South Asians living abroad are feeling a larger need to express their two sided identities of Eastern as well as Western through music, dance, and dress. However, the thing to remember is that the occurrence of fusion is not a modern phenomenon. More precisely, fusion does not only mean a fusion between East and West. In fact, folk dances such as Bhangra or the court dances like mujra once only performed in intimate spaces, being performed on proscenium stages and at venues like dance competitions and culture shows today are a synthesis of different expectations, knowledges, and atmospheres. This fusion, in turn, affects the music, aesthetics, and languages of the dances themselves.

Here's a brief history of the phenomenon known as “Bollywood,” that unfortunately can't do justice to the complexities of this film industry. The Setting is British ruled India, in a region not yet called India. Two French brothers, the Lumieres, are said to have brought cinema to India when they first brought their vide recording to a hotel in Bombay in 1896 to do a screening of six silent movies. These initial images were just of everyday events until a better understanding of the video instrument sparked artistic interests as well. Indian cinema had a unique flavor from the beginning, because it took its leads from older Indian musical theater, particularly from the Urdu poetic dramas of the late nineteenth century. The influence of these traditions ensured that Indian movies would favor mythological or legendary-historical stories, that their dialogue would carry an Urdu flavor even in languages other than Urdu, and that every film would be a musical. At first many mythological and ancient historical themes were depicted because the stories were familiar to a lot of people and required minimum commentary. Though singing, dancing, sculpture, painting, and literature were not new to India, this new mechanical medium of narrating visually came after a century of British rule. What lots of people forget to realize is that under British rule, visual and narrative arts were suppressed a lot. Some Indian filmmakers did touch upon Gandhian ideas in their films, however the British government soon realized that the force of cinema was being used for political incitement. So, in order to prevent the depiction of these anti establishment ideas in films, the British censor board tightened film censorship around 1918. The censorship was especially sensitive to issues such as the Indian princes, labor, communist ideas, the Gandhian program and Hindu-Muslim relations. As a consequence, the Indian filmmaker confined himself to predominantly non-controversial entertainment. This was the origin of the tradition of escapist cinema in India. But some gifted directors, like the noted director Shyam Benegal, were able to find the balance between issue and mass appeal and grappled with issues of class contradictions, the displacement caused by industrialization, the impotency of democracy, etc in Hindi as well. Film Music too has been a big aspect of films now. Because of the playback singer system, a few good singers have sung many of the songs for various movies. Hindi film music has borrowed unabashedly from all known styles and genres of music, and much like Indian culture as a whole, refuses to acknowledge the concept of "copyright". India produces more movies than any other country in the world-over 900 feature-length films in at least 16 languages. It’s important to know that Indian movies are also big in places like: British Caribbean, Fiji, East and South Africa, the U.K., United States, Canada, or the Middle East.

India, unlike America for example, does not have only one film industry. There are many different regional film industries in order to accommodate the diversity of languages and peoples in this country. Having a widest visibility of any South Asian film industry is the Tamil film industry (Kollywood), based out of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In comparison with Hindi film hits, Tamil films incorporate realism to a greater extent. The dancing and music is also heavily classically influenced and is used with less frequency than in Hindi movies. Unlike the other industries in India (other than the Hindi Film Industry), the Tamil film industry can boast larger budgets and higher production values. The Tamil industries reputation is comparable with the Hindi film industry’s, as many actors from the Hindi Film industry go south to work for some of the most esteemed directors in India such as Mani Ratnam.