Let's say we want to know when was the piano used in a Hindi film song? The question is relevant because in the early days the movies were based on stage plays and they basically used harmonium, sarangi, dholak or tabla. Besides harmonium the other Western instruments were slowly introduced, for example, violin, piano. Now Gen Z might say, what's the problem, just watch all the movies from the beginning and listen to all the songs! Sadly vast majority of early movies are not available. The earliest movie that I have seen is Karma (1934), which is #114, according to the numbering scheme used by the legendary compiler, Har Mandir Singh 'Hamraaz'. OK, so records were issued, why don't we listen to the songs on the records. Here we run into a different problem. In the early days (even later) records were not issued for all the movies and not for all the songs.

So the only course of action left to us is just listen to all the available songs, then we can say that as far as we know et cetera.

After listening to the songs in my collection, I can say this. In a song from Romantic India (1933), sung by Noor Jehan (Sr) who later character-acted in such films as Anarkali (1953), after the dialogue I am hearing the Piano, the earliest song in which I clearly can recognize it. The link is given below the article.

Now You Know!