"I mix Indian instruments with Western instruments all the time"
About this Quote
Coming from Satyajit Ray, the line also sits inside a larger aesthetic argument his films make without speeches: modern Indian life is already mixed. Calcutta’s drawing rooms, radios, cinemas, books, and street sounds are porous to global influence, and Ray treats that permeability as reality rather than loss. The intent isn’t to “Westernize” Indian music or to sprinkle sitar over a Western score for flavor. It’s to build an emotional grammar that can move between worlds - a melodic phrase that carries local memory, a harmonic texture that signals modernity, an arrangement that can suggest class, aspiration, or dislocation in a single cue.
There’s subtext, too, about authorship. Ray composed and designed with the confidence of someone refusing the colonial division of labor: the West provides technique, the East supplies color. In his hands, the mix becomes sovereignty - not borrowed sophistication, but self-directed synthesis.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ray, Satyajit. (2026, January 17). I mix Indian instruments with Western instruments all the time. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-mix-indian-instruments-with-western-instruments-71402/
Chicago Style
Ray, Satyajit. "I mix Indian instruments with Western instruments all the time." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-mix-indian-instruments-with-western-instruments-71402/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I mix Indian instruments with Western instruments all the time." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-mix-indian-instruments-with-western-instruments-71402/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.




