Indian Music Experience Museum

Bengaluru

The Indian Music Experience Museum (IME) in Bengaluru is India’s first interactive music museum, dedicated to preserving and presenting Indian musical traditions through exhibitions, education programs, and live performances.

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About Indian Music Experience Museum

The Indian Music Experience Museum (IME) is India’s first interactive music museum, located in JP Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka. Established in 2019, the museum is a nonprofit cultural institution supported by the Brigade Group. Spread across nearly 50,000 square feet, the museum is dedicated to documenting, preserving, and presenting the diverse traditions of Indian music, ranging from Hindustani and Carnatic classical music to folk, film, and contemporary genres. Through immersive multimedia installations and hands-on exhibits, IME offers visitors an interactive exploration of India’s musical heritage.

The museum features nine thematic exhibition galleries, an outdoor Sound Garden, and a Learning Centre for music education. The galleries present various aspects of Indian music through instruments, archival materials, and digital displays. Notable sections include the Stars Gallery, which features memorabilia related to legendary musicians such as Ustad Bismillah Khan and M. S. Subbulakshmi, and Living Traditions, which introduces visitors to the concepts of ragas, talas, and gharanas in Indian classical music. The Sound Garden includes interactive installations such as the Humming Stone, Singing Stone, and Storm Drum, allowing visitors to explore the science of sound through physical interaction.

Beyond exhibitions, the Indian Music Experience Museum conducts a wide range of educational programs, workshops, concerts, and community outreach initiatives. Its Learning Centre offers classes and diploma programs in areas such as Carnatic vocal, Hindustani vocal, mridangam, and guitar, along with lectures and workshops on music appreciation. The museum has also curated special projects such as the exhibition “Ravi Shankar@100: India’s Global Musician” and digital archives, including Chowdiah.com, dedicated to violin maestro Mysore T. Chowdiah. As an institutional affiliate of the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles, IME also runs outreach initiatives such as Project Svaritha and #YuvaInCulture, engaging children, students, and young cultural practitioners in music education and heritage preservation.

History

The Indian Music Experience Museum (IME) was conceptualised as a large-scale initiative to document and preserve the diverse traditions of Indian music through a modern museum format. The project was supported by the Brigade Group, which envisioned a dedicated cultural institution that would introduce younger generations to India’s rich musical heritage. After more than a decade of planning and development, the museum officially opened to the public in 2019 in Jayaprakash Nagar, Bengaluru.

The museum was designed as an interactive cultural space rather than a traditional static museum. Its creators incorporated multimedia technology, digital archives, and hands-on exhibits to allow visitors to explore Indian music through listening, experimentation, and learning. Since its opening, the museum has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors and has expanded its outreach through online exhibitions, educational workshops, and digital programming.

IME has also collaborated with international cultural institutions and academic platforms to promote Indian music globally. It is an institutional affiliate of the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles, strengthening its international cultural connections. Through exhibitions, archives, concerts, and research initiatives, the museum continues to document and present the evolving history of Indian music.