Songs in Hindi film:Cause and effect
iView Author:Pranay Jha
(India)
EMAIL: pranay20485 [at] gmail [dot] com
Title: Songs in Hindi film:Cause and effect
Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na,
Friday evening—
As “Pappu cant dance saala” starts barely 10 minutes after “Aditi” there are visible groans in the audience.”Phir se Gaana!”.
Love Story 2050,
Saturday evening—-
An incredulous second half has begun after a boring first.As Harman Baweja reaches a futuristic nightclub,a wave of anticipation sweeps through the audience.”Milo na Milo” has the people in rapt attention for the only time in the movie.
The two reactions shocked me due to the fact that Jtyjn has a music score not only better but also more popular.So were the groans directed at the placement of the songs rather than the songs themselves?Or was this simply an instance of different people reacting differentely?
The question that keeps coming back to my mind is why Hindi movies have songs in the first place.One of the answers I get from people is that our films are musicals.The fact is that our movies are nowhere close to being musicals.In a musical,most of the dialogues are through songs,creating a very powerful medium for expressing the emotions of the characters.A story like that of “Sweeny Todd:the Barber from Fleet street,an extemely violent story of retribution,is told in a very sensitive and engaging fashion.In Hindi movies on the other hand songs are stand-alone set-pieces,deterents to the flow of the story.
Another theory which is often floated says that our movies make up for a lack of intimate sex scenes through the presence of songs.In Hollywood movies,the sex scenes often release the tension of the plot,preventing the film from being too heavy.India being a much more coservative society cannot tolerate sex scenes,hence we have substituted them with song-and-dance routines.While its difficult to find fault with this theory,it hasnt stood the test of time.Now-a-days Hindi movies have intimate scenes as well,so what is the reason that they still have songs?
The reason is the extreme popularity Hindi film music has enjoyed among the public over the years.In the days when a movie was considered a success only after completing 25 weeks,the songs held immense recall value for the viewers.Those were the days before the advent of audio cassettes and only the very affluent could afford a gramophone.Thus the only way to hear ones favourite songs was to watch the movie again and again.Even as late as early 90’s,a movie like Aashiquie was success solely because of the music.And in current times,when one needs only one good weekend to be declared a hit,the songs are an important tool to create a pre-release hype.A popular song like “Dus bahaane” can deliver a decent opening to a pathetic movie.
Having established the reason for the existence of songs,lets examine how they have been used.The concept of the song as a set-piece within the plot of the movie is perhaps as old as the industry itself.Earlier,the film-makers used to identify apt situations in the screenplay for songs.The lyricist and the music directors would then come back with songs suiting the situations.Therefore the format was still somewhat close to a musical,the lyrics often substituting dialogues in communicating the emotions of the characters.An obvious example is a song like “Pyaar hua ikraar hua”, where the relationship between the lead characters grows to the next level through the song itself. This continued till about the 70’s.As the 80’s came upon us,Hindi films starting relying heavily on the “formula”.The music directors grew more powerful and the emergence of songbanks took place.One lovesong started to sound like the other irrespective of the characters mouthing them.Often situations were created for a particular song,like the hero stumbling into the nightclub to find the vamp singing.This was usually done just after the interval,so that the people coming back late missed nothing central to the movie plot.As the creative bankruptcy of the 80’s gave way to the financial opulence of 90’s, the visual component of the songs gained importance.This was the time when cable television emerged and for the first time viewers saw the trailers of upcoming films on television.The videos of upcoming songs started doing the rounds on channels and were crucial for making an impact on the viewers.The choreographer became an important person in the crew of the film and an actor like Prabhu Deva managed to develop a cult following solely on his dancing skills.Eventually a new trend emerged which came to be known as the item song.Usually this was a dance number picturised on a very glamorous actress/actor,solely for launching the movie.
However the late 90’s also saw people like Ram Gopal Verma seriously underminig the importance of the song.The number of songs was reduced to 4-5 a film from the usual 7-8.The songs were often used at the start of the movie along with the credits or at the end.There was also a shift towards the songs playing in the background with the actors not lip-syncing,which looked a lot more like the real world.
As the 00’s are about to end,we have seen a lot of experiments with the songs,like”Life in a Metro” where a group of musicians sing all the songs instead of the lead actors.Movies without songs are very commonplace now,depending solely on the background score for the touch of music.Although the traditional format of hero-heroine and background dancers is still very much alive.
It will be interesting to see where we go from here and if 10-20 years down the line any of the movies still have the hero gyrating and singing along a number.
Tags: Harman Baweja, Jane tu ya jane na, Love Story 2050, Ram Gopa VeRMA
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Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
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Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
i dont know how this came about but i am not from jaipur.
In fact i live from a place called ranchi in jharkhand.
One aspect that you seem to have missed is the fact that hindi film music industry is a stand alone entity in itself, and there are not much alternatives to it. The Indi-pop phenomenon seemed to work for a while, but fizzled away slowly.
Today there aren’t many artistes or bands operating successfully outside the industry, as far as hindi music is concerned. For this reason alone, the chances of music segregating from films looks implausible.
@avi I think that hindi music has infact cannibalised all the other forms of music,be it indi-pop or classical or folk.reason being the sheer association of hindi film music with stars..
@pranay:
Im not really sure if it has much to do with stars…..if you think about it, the only medium which connects people of this country culturally is hindi cinema, and herein lies the reason for the popularity of the music associated with it. Otherwise, regional music might have taken over with time…..
My point being, “hindi language based music” would have found it difficult to have the kind of pan India appeal it has, were it not for its association with movies…..so its not just the movies which need music, but the other way around seems to be equally true.
@avi..yeah movies have given a huge platform to hindi music.
songs are our way of doing things………please stop comparing everything with the west……..the west doesn’t have musical traditions like we do……even our great epics mahabharat and ramayan are told in the form of songs and dances……….be it kuchipudi ,kalaripayattu or any other art form they are all an extension of songs and dances ,I agree that songs should be more interwoven with the plot but please do not take music out of indian film industry ,they are the heart and soul of indian cinema …….
I completely agree with Vineet. Today we all have lost ourselves in world cinema so much that we have forgotten the real magic of Indian Cinema.
hmmmm after leaving my first two comments ever on PFC on posts different to this one as “Avi”, I realised there’s another Avi on PFC !!! guess it’s Av for me from now on
@Pranay
one more thing ,please do not compare the pre 70’s movies to hollywood musicals (it’s like an insult),though I have seen a lot of hollywood musicals none come close to the bollywood classics of 50’s ,60’s and 70’s….maybe I am biased because I am an Indian but yahan(PFC pe) kaun saala firangi baitha hai ?
Can you imagine a bollywood without the sahir ludhianwis ,majrooh sultanpuri’s ,lata ,asha and the mohd rafi’s……it’s impossible…..
good to know that u r from ranchi..me too from there…nice post…songs are always in our tradition…Amir khusro has written much before “babul mora naihar chhuto jaaye” and then it was sung by Bade Ghulam Ali khan much later… “ramcharit manas” has written in the form of “chaoupais” “geet govind” by jaidev..and tansen is always here …kabeer brought out poetries.. rahim done it much before when Ghalib came into the scene..subsequently the tradition of “ghazal” started and then songs using urdu words came in hindi cinema…they are always an integral part of our performing art. There are songs in our plays…we cannot imagine any street theatre without song and music..even revoltuion needs music and songs….like “wo subeh kabhi to aayegi” or “sarfaroshi ki tamanna”. So i don’t think songs should be eleminated from the movies..there should be an attempt to create good songs …
I think the point Pranay was making that now a days the songs do not carry the story forward unlike supposedly in the 50s or 60s.
Now a days there are just one more prop to market the movie and audio sales.
In Hollywood musicals, the songs were/are used to narrate the story, be it My Fair Lady of old days or Chicago in recent times.
All said and done, I want my share of Bollywood songs to continue.
Oops.. I meant “they are” instead of “there” in my post 11.
Sorry.
great post pranay. i have always thought that there is just not enough reflection on song/song-dance and the function of music. so, for instance, a big part of the popularity of hindi film in all parts of the world is linked to these songs. thus my colleague sujata moorti and i have recently edited a collection of essays entitled “GLOBAL BOLLYWOOD: THE TRANSNATIONAL TRAVELS OF HINDI FILM MUSIC” (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and here several scholars of Hindi cinema study the circulation of Hindi film music in various times and places — Egypt and Greece in the 1950s, Indonesia and Israel in the 1990s. if any PFC readers are interested the book is available on amazon.com. I am sorry, there is not Indian edition yet, but if it sells well, we will try to bring out an edition in India.
@Av:
My apologies buddy……its me who’s a first timer to PFC and joined after you, so please carry on with Avi, I was not aware there’s already one existing. I’ll do another namkaran
not for one moment had i thot of either demeanin or running down either hindi films or music.In fact I am a complete Bollywood buff.The whole point of the article was to see how
the music in hindi films has changed over the years.
And even you will have to agree its one thing to have sahir ludhayanvi.rafi,r.d etc and other to have niraj sridhar crooning pritam tunes.
Also the most memorable songs are those which create a proper impact on the movie itself.Any list of top 10 hindi movie songs will have songs which are linked to the movies.
@everyone:-This is my first contribution to a site which I have enjoyed enormously for the last year or so and its good to have such a response.Thanks all
ever will comprise of songs
the last line of the last comment is not meant to be there
@Pranay
yea man…..I over read your article….perhaps too much of analysis…now even I think you didn’t meant anything like that….
Hey Pranav… nice article, great way chronicle/summarize the changing role of hindi music plays in the film.
I had alluded to this earlier on in my of my posts, but Bharadwaj Rajnan wrote a great peice about this.
Here’s the link:
http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/2008/05/03/between-reviews-five-minutes-of-fun-and-nothing-else/
Pranay and all
I request you to kindly go through the first 100 pages of the book ( English language ) “Hindi Film Song” by Ashok Da Ranade. He has explained in “details” what songs mean to Hindi films, right from the beginning, drama-silentera-movies. Worth every penny man !!
KCP – cool man, I’ll be on the lookout for that