He was one of the supreme percussionists of Northern Indian music and like his sons, Zakir Hussain and Fazal Quereshi, he has given birth to a new style of tabla playing which has elevated the role of tabla player from the relatively lowly accompanist to soloist. Many listeners expect the flamboyance and panache of their cross-rhythms and compare other players' styles unfavorably to that of Alla Rakha and his sons. It is a relatively recent trend, fast becoming the norm.

In 1956, he founded the 1967 the Ali Akbar College of Music in Calcutta. In 1967, he founded another school of the same name in Berkeley, California; it moved to its present location in San Rafael, California a year later. In 1985 he founded another school in Basel, Switzerland.

In 1997 he received the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, the United States' highest honor in the traditional arts.

Asha Bhosle is considered as one of the most versatile of South Asian singers — her range of songs includes film music, pop, ghazals, bhajans, traditional Indian Classical music, folk songs, qawwalis, and Rabindra Sangeet. She has sung in over 14 languages including Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, English, Russian and Malay).

Bhimsen is a prodigy - unique - a divine miracle. He is admired his tremendous accomplishments in the realm of music, revel in the heavenly experience of his gayaki and pray to God Almighty to bless this musical genius with a long life. In the whole of India there is no one else who has atained so much and given so much to music lovers. Listeners in he U.S.A. and the U.K. love and admire him. It is a pity that our Govern- ment has only bestowed a mere Padmashri on him, instead of the higher honours deserved by an artist of Bhimsen's calibre who has received the greatest acclaim abroad.

In 1945, maestro Ghulam Haider took Lata to meet producer S.Mukherji who was planning to make a movie starring actress Kamini Kaushal. Today Lata Mangeshkar has broken all records of Success & she is contributing to music day by day.

Mohammed Rafi (December 24, 1924 - July 31, 1980) was arguably among the greatest of Hindi/Urdu playback singers in Bollywood. Rafi still remains popular in South Asia and in many other parts of the world such as the UK, Kenya, West Indies, etc. where South Asian immigrants have settled. He continues to inspire new Bollywood playback singers like Sonu Nigam, Mohammed Aziz, Shabbir Kumar and Anwar.