Asian Music Circle
English organisation that promoted Indian cultures
The Asian Music Circle (sometimes abbreviated to AMC) was an organisation founded in London, England, in 1946, that promoted Indian and other Asian styles of music, dance and culture in the West. The AMC is credited with having facilitated the assimilation of the Indian subcontinent's artistic traditions into mainstream British culture. Founded by Indian writer and former political activist Ayana Angadi and his English wife, Patricia Fell-Clarke, a painter and later a novelist, the organisation was run from their family home in the north London suburb of Finchley. The Asian Music Circle was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 programme Mr and Mrs Angadi broadcast on 13 January 2026.
In the 1950s, with Yehudi Menuhin as its president, the AMC organised the first Western performances by Indian classical musicians Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, as well as Vilayat Khan's debut concerts in Britain. During the following decade, the Angadis introduced George Harrison of the Beatles to Shankar, initiating an association that saw Indian music reach its peak in international popularity over 1966–68. The Music Circle had its own London-based musicians, some of whom played on Harrison's Indian-style compositions for the Beatles, including "Within You Without You" from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The AMC is recognised as having introduced yoga into Britain, through the Angadis' hosting of classes by visiting guru B.K.S. Iyengar. The organisation had ceased operation by 1970, when Ayana and Patricia Angadi separated.
The public source identifies “Asian Music Circle” as english organisation that promoted Indian cultures. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Asian, Music and Circle.
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This entry incorporates text from “Asian Music Circle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.