New Delhi: A road in Mumbai has acquired its own playlist. A 500-metre stretch from Nariman Point to Worli will be humming to the tunes of the Academy Award-winning song ‘Jai Ho’ as vehicles pass over it. With this, India marks its entry into the world of musical roads.
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on 11 February inaugurated the country’s first-ever musical road on the Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Coastal Road. Commuters can only hear the melody when they drive as per the speed limit between 60 and 80 kmph.
The musical road in Mumbai was inaugurated in February 2026 as India’s first “melody road”, conceptualised by former Member of Parliament Rahul Shewale. It was commissioned by the BMC with technical assistance from Hungarian experts.
The Mumbai coastal road arrived a little late; the world has been enjoying the grooves of melody roads, colloquially known as musical roads, for a few decades now.
The first-ever musical road was built in October 1995 in Denmark’s Gylling by artists Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus. But back then, it had an unlikely name, Asphaltophone.
Rumble strips or grooves are placed at calculated intervals to create melody through the vibration created by the friction between the tyre and the road. The tune plays when a vehicle drives at a specific speed.
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A musical journey
After the breakthrough in Denmark, the concept of melody roads was further expanded by Japan. Japanese engineer Shizuo Shinoda accidentally scraped the road with a bulldozer before driving over it, eventually leading to the county’s first musical road in 2007.
The second musical road was made in 2000 in France. It was followed by Lancaster in California in 2008, a stretch between 60th Street West and 70th Street West was named Civic Musical Road. It was named after the Honda Civic promotion, of which it was a part. The road would play the finale of ‘William Tell Overture’ composed by Gioachino Rossini.
The California road, however, didn’t last long as the residents started complaining about the noise created by the road, and it was moved “two miles out of town”. It is reported that the strips of music-making sound were extremely loud and had turned unpleasant for the neighbours, leading to its ouster. Despite that, musical roads have become quite popular.
In 2014, New Mexico had its musical road playing the patriotic hymn ‘America the Beautiful’ built by the National Geographic Channel along with the New Mexico Department of Transportation.
The intention, however, is not only promotion or music but to provide an incentive for the drivers to stick to the fixed speed limit. New Mexico adopted this idea and encouraged drivers to stick to 45 mph, which is when they can hear the music beneath the tyres. Over the years, more and more countries have started incorporating musical roads not just as an experience but also for safety purposes.
South Korea played ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ in 2007, followed by the Netherlands in 2018.
But no country has come closer to Japan, with the country touting as many as 30 musical roads. From Japanese folk songs to John Denver’s iconic ‘Take me Home, Country Roads’ — Japan has tried it all.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)