India’s musical heritage is a palimpsest of evolving traditions shaped by millennia of cultural, political, and ideological exchange. The country’s rich musical heritage has long served as a site for cultural negotiation, embodying a dynamic interplay between tradition, modernity, and individual identity. Historically, musical practices in India were deeply rooted in regional, linguistic, and religious frameworks. However, the advent of digital technologies, increasing urbanisation, and globalisation have significantly reshaped how music is experienced, disseminated, and performed across the subcontinent.This presentation briefly traces the development of Indian music contextualising its transformation through key historical moments including the Vedic period, Islamic rule, British colonialism, and post-independence modernity with each phase contributing uniquely to the formation of India’s sonic landscape. Colonial contact introduced new forms of musical hybridity. The emergence of Hindoostani Airs—Western arrangements of Indian melodies—and Nottuswaras—a blend of Indian Classical swarms (notes) with Western musical airs composed by Muthuswami Dikshitar—illustrates early syntheses of European harmony with Indian melodic frameworks (Subramanian, 2006). Later, the rise of Bollywood drew extensively from classical, folk, jazz, and global pop genres, creating an expansive sonic vocabulary that is both accessible and cosmopolitan (Booth, 2008).Drawing on Richard Dawkins' (1976) concept of memes—units of cultural transmission—this presentation explores how Indian musical ideas have adapted, replicated, and transformed across generations and geographies. Music in India often travels as memes: raga patterns, rhythmic cycles, and ornamentations are transmitted aurally and reshaped through performance, pedagogy, and media. This presentation explores key historical and cultural moments that have influenced the contemporary musical landscape in India while offering reimagined artistic reinterpretations of certain folk and popular musical forms for varied audiences. The presenters collaborated over 18 months engaging with Indian musical narratives that celebrate India’s sonic diversity, to provide accessible and joyful pathways for performers to connect with these musical stories.The session culminates in a short performance of newly arranged art songs based on Indian folk traditions including Rabindrasangeet, the music of Rabindranath Tagore (Chakravarthy, 2011).These reimaginings are intended for concert settings, drawing upon Western art song conventions while preserving the emotional core and cultural specificity of the originals thus enabling these musical stories to be accessible to a wider global audience and inviting performers to engage joyfully with the nuanced textures of Indian musical heritage.