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Popular Music In India

Implies music which is closely grouped (in evolution, marketing and distribution) with mass media; which is produced and spread on a mass basis.

Film Music: Northern Area

Peter Manuel

Introduction to article

Ghazals to Pop Ghazals

Great Traditions

  • Hindustani (north indian)
  • Karnatak (south indian)

•The market gradually developed for ghazals and dadras with improvised version yet limited to ornamentation.

•Ghazals became more like a song- catchy, singable piece.

•Begum Akhtar, Gulam Ali got famous for their improvised ghazals.

•The mid-1980s was a boom of the pop ghazals

Arnold

-These two elements contributed in evolution and were incorporated latter

•Indian film industries produce more feature films than any other country.

•Indian film songs have their own place within Indian popular music.

•Film production in the 1950’s and 60’s grew in Pakistan and Bangladesh, following the model of Indian dance and music forms.

•Indian film songs were the first songs to be mass-produced and mass-marketed in India.

Linguistic Diversity

Popular Music Outside Cinema

Main barrier in south asia

-Over 15 major languages spoken

-Each having its own poeitc and musical idioms

With the dramatic spread of cassette technology, the amount of popular music, independent of the film world is increasing exponentially

Hindi

  • North India and Pakistan share sister languages : hindi and urdu

Styles of Folk Music

-These two languages now exist throughout north india and understood

-Pop music made using these languages

Film Music in late 20th century

•Folk and film music was brought out in different styles

–Biraha–narrative tale sung to long suite of melodies

–Nautanki–music drama sung with hamonium and naggara

–Nats –muslim devotional songs sung by males on Mohammad’s birthday

–Bhajans – hindu devotional songs and qawwalis

  • The decline in film production
  • Western music was added to the background of traditional melodies in south asia

  • Instruments (tabla, dholak) often combined with western ones (congas and orchestral violins)

Filmi Music

  • Film music also dominates the collection of most courtesans

  • Filmi geet, became international phenomenon throughout East and Southeast Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe.
  • In south asia, film music dominates all popular music
  • Factors that contribute to the decline

Early Films Songs

  • Recorded film music often replaced performance of live music

  • However, top vocalists like Lata occasionally perform in large public halls, whereas other formal concerts were performed by 'orchestras', which reproduce the orchestral timbres of the original recordings.

-High taxes

-High ticket prices

-Competition of cable TV

-High fees

-Etc.

Urban vs Village

  • In urban environments, film music has always been blaring from overloaded speakers in tea stalls, shopping malls, homes, restaurants, buses, taxis, etc.

  • In the villages dissemination was still limited to a few radios or one or two local shops which have cassette players.
  • Attraction for young MD, lyricists, playback singers, and singers

•The first film in India with sound was Alam Ara by Ardeshir Irani in 1931; released by Imperial film company in Bombay

•The first “hit” song was Dede khuda ke namse sung by the singer/actor W.M. Khan in Alam Ara

•Early Indian films consisted of mythological, historical and devotional themes, the songs were used to embellish and increase the emotional appeal of the film.

•Early film female singers generally had low husky voices but some did have the lighter, more natural voices.

•Male singers generally had strong, full voices but with the introduction of Kundan Lal Saigal a softer male voice was introduced.

  • The influence of media on Indian Cinema

Five Categories of Indian Films

  • Western music influence Indian songs but still maintain tradition

Film Music Outside Cinema

-Ex. Chico Chico from Puerto Rico (Latin)

-Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Call to Say I Love You” (English)

•Film music started getting spread by radio and recordings

–Under the direction of Dr. B.V. Keskar, All-India Radio has offered a steady fare of film music on selected stations, alongside channels promoting art and folk music.

  • East-West connection not strange for Indian Cinema
  • Mythological stories ( Ramayana, Mahabharata, purnas, etc)

  • Family melodramas (showing domestic complications)

  • Costume dramas (lives of saints, princesses, etc)

  • Indian equivalents of western spy films (action rater than sentiment or character development)

  • Social films (melodrama around some contemporary public issue)
  • Blend of new and old music

Film Music until 1940

•1899:

– few short films had been produced

•1912:

-first feature film appeared was called Pundalik.

–Films in the first decades were mostly historical and mythological. (Ramayan and Mahabharat)

•1920:

–Contemprary melodrama

•1931:

–207 silent films produced

–First sound film appeared

–Known as the era of ‘Talkie’

–Decline of silent film

–By the end of the year 27 talkies in 4 other languages had succeeded

Recent Developments

•Degree of blurring between the commercial profiteering films and the art films

•Art films are films where there is no relevance to see that the movie achieves fame.

•Shyam Benegal has made an attempt to produce movies which combine box-office appeal with artistic integrity.

•Govind Nihalani, Mani Kaul and Mrinal Sen have produced art films in regional languages

•Commercial Bombay formula have more masala (“spice”) in increasing the amount of violence and eroticism

•Modern Indian film music continues to incorporate elements from contemporary western popular music.

Social films

•Larger number of films are in form of social films

–Problems relating to prostitution, arranged marrages, crime and corruption, and most commonly hte conflicts between rich and poor.

–Social films are stereotypic like romantic love is superior than matters like cast, dowry, parental preferences, etc

•Rich are shown to be corrupt while poor are as moral and good

•Music is essential to Indian cinema – commercial films without songs are very rare

-Music directors and composers are better paid than actors or film directors

–Film singers are as famous as actors themselves

Singers

Film-Song Genres

•In early stages, songs were sung on screen by actors who were also vocalists such as K.L.saigal

•Song were convenient vehicles for expression - to show “falling in love”

–Typical song scene occured in garden, mansion, cabaret, and nightclubs.

•Film songs are usually grouped according to language

•In the late 1940’s the mainstream format for film songs was introduced and this format still remains.

•Filmi bhajans were very common and included in commercial films up to the 1950’s-1960 (golden age of melody).

•Film ghazals were popular romantic songs before film trends moved towards the action packed thrillers of the 70’s.

•Film qawwalis mostly appeared in Muslim social and historical films, and they tend to not improvise and include non-traditional instruments.

•Film folk songs are inspired by many of India’s regional music traditions and tend to have medium to fast tempos.

QAWWALI

Film Qawwali

Traditional Qawwali

  • Erotic rather than devotional
  • Usually on personal love relationship
  • Female singers are common
  • Accompanying instruments include western string and wind instrument
  • Devotional

  • Performed by one or two lead singers with accompanying singers and instrumentalists

Indian Film Music From 1940

QAWWALI

  • Traditionally performed at Muslim shrines

  • Text in Urdu

•Fear of box-office failiure, producers sticked tp “star” system

– A star

– 6 songs

– 3 dances

REGIONAL CINEMA

GHAZALS

•Primarily poetic form

•Consists of rhymed Urdu couplets

•Set strophically to music in different styles

•Often used in qawwali

•Has been an important feature of Indian Film since its conception

•Cinema production came to be dominated by Bombay and Madras by late 1940s

•Consists of imitations of glittery Bombay films

•Local culture are promoted by state governments

•Examples:

1)Gujarat government provides tax subsidies to films highlighting Gujarati culture.

Two traditional dance forms: garba and ras

(put clips of garba and/or ras)

2)Bhangra in Punjabi cinema

3)Lavani in Marathi films

Traditional Ghazals

FilmGhazals

•Sophisticated light classical genre.

•Solo singer accompanied by tabla and harmonium or sarangi

•Performs interpretative improvisations on the first line of each couplet, returning to a melodic refrain with the subsequent rhyming line

•Each couplet is followed by a short laggi section, where the tabla player improvises in fast tempo.

•Bears some resemblances to the light classical ghazal

•Male and female singers might alternate singing successive couplets and join on the final verse.

•Laggi sections between couplets are replaced by orchestrated instrumental passages, which are generally distinct from one another in melody and instrumentation.

Songs

1946

•Incline more towards Urdu than Hindi

•Content generally amatory

•More sentimental in character than classical genre.

•Solo singer accompanied by tabla and harmonium or sarangi

•Ghazals are the extremely common

Hindi

• Written in the Devnagari script

• Literary vocabulary derived from Sanskrit

• Dialect of Hindi used as a lingua franca (khari boli, based on the dialect originally spoken in Delhi) has a limited tradition

URDU

•“Playback System”

–Actors lip-synced already recorded songs by playback singers

-Demand for star vocalist and music directors still important to this date

•Language of the Muslims of North India and Pakistan

•Uses variety of the Arabic script

•Vocabulary borrows heavily from Persian and Arabic

•Preference for Urdu derived from the rich poetic tradition of that language and its subsequent reputation as ‘sweet’ and romantic tongue..

Playback Singers

MODERN FILM MUSIC STYLE AND STRUCTURE

Studio Musicians and Orchestras

Lata Mangeshker

  • Playback singers and their roles

  • Introduction of technology in 1930s

  • Lata Mangeshkar in the Guinness Book of Records

  • Popular male singers in 1950s-1970s

•Majority of the North Indian films are in Hindi and Urdu

–Widely understood by educated and uneducated speakers of regional languages

Popular Directors and Singers

  • Made over 30,000 reocordings for more than 2,000 films

  • In guniess book of records for most-recorded voice worldwide

Post-war

•All musicians are freelance and are a part of the Cine Musicians Association

•C.M.A. rank their musicians, which than determines the pay and opportunities received by the musicians

•Musicians for virtually every type of instrument (both Indian and western) are available for music directors

•Studio orchestras grew from two or three musicians to hundreds of musicians in the 1950’s and 60’s.

•After the 1940’s the size of music directors orchestra became a measure of prestige and success

• Post-war period had increase in western musical elements

–Instrument like violin, clarinet, conga and saxophone

–Rhythms like foxtrot and polka; and chordal harmony.

•Most popular music directors

–Naushad and S.D. Burman

•Major male singers

–Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, and Talat Mahumoud

•Major female singers

–Lata Mangeshker and Asha Bhosle

Film Music Directors

  • What roles to film music directors conduct?

  • Within the Film Industry, men dominated most, if not all roles in the 1930s and continue to be the most prominent to present day

  • Film music directors had a background of either being trained musicians or singers

  • Saraswati Devi joined Bombay Talkies in 1935

  • Social stigma towards Cinema

  • Most successful music director (MD) was Rahul Dev Burman (R.D)

-Western Influence

The Music of Bollywood Films

2011-2012

Group members

Rupal Malhotra,

Harpreet Mall, Pamela Dinshaw,

Bansari Acharya, Gurkiran Chouhan,

Saleena Sarah Sukhram, Shabnam,

Riddhi Chaudhari

A Song Travels

Gulzar

Post-Independence Despondency

The 1950s is referred to the “golden era”

Remembering Lyrics and Lyricists

Sahir Ludhianvi wrote lyrics for films

Kavi Pradeep’s poetry was used for patriotic songs

1903 – Indian cinema is born

Shailendra covered a long distance

In the silent era, the cinema acquired the basic shape and form that survives today

Kaifi Azmi, from Urdu literature, joined rising lyricists

The best lyrics of Sahir, Shailendra, and Kaifi Azmi was when they teamed up with S.D. Burman

Musicians were the film’s music directors and munshis (dialogue writers)

Prem Dhawan started his career in 1948 with Ziddi

In more sophisticated films, a piano and violin were used

He learn music from Pandit Ravi Shankar

The orchestra consisted of a harmonium and tabla

He was honoured with a Padma Shri in 1970

In the 1960s, a new phase of lyrics and lyricists started

Same song compositions were not always used

Verses were written based on situations

Talkies and Lyrics

Aga Hashr Kashmiri was hailed as the “Indian Shakespeare”

Songs were picturized in a single shot

Musicians were not seen in the shots but were there during the recording

Post-Independence Despondency

The year 1947 brought about changes in the industry and the country

The success of a song was determined by the quality of the tune and melody

The Playback Era

The most important lyricist was Rajinder Krishen

The system of playback arrived in 1935

The lyrics changed in terms of language in the mid-1940s

Music became an important factor

The number of songs per film rose from 10 to 20 or more

After 1947. Bombay became the biggest centre for Hindi films

Poets began to migrate to the film industry

There were teams of music directors and lyricists

Madhok was responsible for the fold song image in film music

Sahir Ludhianvi joined the industry in 1948

1940s – the tradition of music and songs had already gripped films

In 1948, Lata Mangeshkar sang her first solo song

Saraswati Devi was probably the first music director of the industry

Soon afull-fledged lady lyricist made her presence felt – Miss Komal B.A.

Raj Kapoor made his directorial debut with the film Aag

There has been no trend setting lyricist

C. Ramchandra created the culture of the “beat” or rhythm

World War II and Independence

By 1945, film lyrics started reflecting the changing mood of the country and a new group or lyricists came along

Noorjehan and K.L. Saigal were the ruling voices at the time

Madhok was the most prominent lyricist

Sachin Dev Burman made his independent debut as a composer in 1946

In 1946-47, independence was imminent

Thankyou

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