In 1988 the Yearbook for Traditional Music published my paper ‘The Rise of Ethnomusicology’ in which I discuss the writings on Indian music by scholars such as Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, Pierre Sonnerat, William Jones and N. Augustus Willard.

I also refer to the ‘Hindostannie’ airs which were arranged for the harpsichord or pianoforte. These were published in William Hamilton Bird’s Oriental Miscellany in 1789 and in several other collections. Later on ‘Hindostannie’ airs received much attention from scholars like Ian Woodfield, Gerry Farrell and Nicholas Cook.

Curated by Joep Bor and Philippe Bruguière, an exhibition of portraits of celebrated Hindustani musicians was part of Peter Pannke’s grand Parampara! festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, between 5 and 21 March 1992. The catalogue of the exhibition Masters of Raga/Die Meister des Raga/Les Maitres du Raga was compiled by the curators.

One of the images in the catalogue is the photographic portrait of Zohrabai Agrewali (of 1902) by Arthur Clarke, which I had discovered in the London edition of Fred W. Gaisberg’s Music on Record.

On 3 December 1994, I presented Inayat Khan: The Complete Recordings of 1909, a double CD of the recordings by the founder of the Sufi Movement, at the Sufi Temple, Katwijk, in the presence of his son Hidayat Inayat Khan, economist Johan Witteveen and Dutch writer Simon Vinkenoog. The 78-rpm records of Inayat Khan were rediscovered by Michael Kinnear at the EMI Archives, London.

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At the end of 1996 a major event took place at the NCPA: the ITC-Sangeet Research Academy seminar on Indian Music and the West, in which Gerry Farrell and I delivered keynotes. It was organized by Arvind Parikh’s Music Forum with the support of the Rotterdam World music department. More than 45 overseas musicians and scholars participated in this event and 27 of them presented papers; 23 Indian panelists discussed relevant topics with their colleagues from abroad, and many concerts took place by ‘Indian’ musicians from the West. The seminar ended with a splendid party at the house of the Dutch consul.

Organized by the Indian music program and supported by grants from the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) and Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (KNAW), an international symposium on The History of North Indian Music took place in Rotterdam between 17 and 20 December 1997, with contributions by more than twenty scholars.

Thirteen years later a 736-page book titled Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries, with twenty-five chapters by the leading scholars in the field, was published by Manohar, New Delhi.

Subsequently, Philippe Bruguière and I were involved in another exciting project: the exhibition at the Musée de la Musique, Paris, in which historical musical instruments from India and paintings depicting musical scenes were exhibited. Ravi Shankar visited the exhibition which attracted about 75,000 visitors between 18 March and 23 June 2003. The beautiful exhibition catalogue titled Gloire des princes, louange des dieux was edited by the curators.