Songs in Hindi Films – S D Burman
Here is Sachin Dev Burman – the grand young man – the Dada of the industry, talking about films, the importance of story/script/direction/photography and how can songs compliment or destroy the films. I feel these views show what a keen observer Sachinda is, and how much dedicated he is towards the art of Hindi Film Music. No wonder his music is evergreen. I have quite a few interviews of his, explaining in depth about each “pehlu” of his life and career. Also innumerable articles from the yesteryear magazines. I feel that this is one of his best and most important ( fortunately found it when I was scanning on the weekend, some old CD’s of mine ). It is valid, especially for the Hindi Film Industry, even today ! Kaash there was internet and strong-media in the 60’s and 70’s, we could have saved on the onslaught later. I think these great views could have prevented the current downgrading in the Industry. These views of the great people should be taken positively and imbibed in their psyche by the current film makers. Do give importance to music in films and dont create a tamasha please….the music is already to the pits…you can save it !!
Filmakers, do take note if it !
Dada of music ( pic from the original article of 1966 )
Source : CineAdvance 1966
Quote
Songless Indian Films :
The main factor in the film is its story. Everything else, including songs and background music, serve only as a fine embroidery to improve and enhance the impact and beauty of the story content. Hence it is a logical arguement that if the film has a powerful and gripping script that holds the audience interest from beginning to end, then I agree that the other paraphernalia like songs, dances and even other allied embelishments are not a must.
While songless films are a rarity in Hindi, they are common on Bengali screen. For the reason I enumerated above and because being regional films with limited markets which stands in the way of their affording costly production values, they give powerful story content instead, which balances the absence of songs in those films. There is also a case of Satyajit Ray who makes internationally acclaimed films, and most of his films don’t carry songs. As I said he compensates this with his camera-work and engrossing direction.
In action on stage
But songs are very necessary in musical films. Even here care has to be taken in their use. If songs are not properly utilized and merged with the film as a whole, they create the hinderance which affects the continuity of the story.
It is this aspect which causes all these complaints in Hindi films. it is not that the people don’t like and enjoy songs as such; its how they are presented in the film which matters to them while witnessing a film.
Many a time even best songs are wasted either by placing them in odd situations or by picturizing them badly. People get disgusted with the results and they adopt the surgical course of saving themselves from this evil – they walk out of the auditorium and have a quick cup of tea or their puffs of smoke.
The fault in this case doesn’t lie with the music director. The matter is out of his hands the moment a song is properly recorded. But even before that it is the director who decides the necessity of a song in a particular sequence. And what type or kind of songs it should be. Its also left to him wether he gets the required results after picturization.
I personally believe that instead of putting a song in an unwanted position, it should be removed entirely. An out-of-place song is the most horrible thing imaginable in a movie.
Interested in every department
Finally the question of having songless films as a regular feature in India is a very risky proposition. In fact its the songs which are the main prop of an ordinary film with a weak story and inefficient direction.
Even in the case of films having powerful themes, should direction lack deftness, the characters do not register properly, the sequences lack the easy flow of continuous motion; and at the same time – summose by a stroke of luck or by calculations – the songs prove popular. They become the sole saving grace of the movie. It may save it from becoming a fantastic flop. This is the silver-lining which will make songs a ‘must’in Indian films for years to come
Unquote
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Wow- kcp,good one,I really envy you for the ‘pitara’ of these memorabilia that you have with you.And its amazing to read about S.D.Burman one of the all time great music directors in Indian cinema, talking with so much of clarity on other aspects of cinema.How many other music directors would discuss on need of songs, songless movies etc? keep the flow on kcp!!!
So long back Kcp, SDB got it all right…man, what a creative era that must have been.
Thanks, Kcp for all this, truly!!!
Yes Indraneel !! Look at the “last” line !!!
Fantastic KCP. I had seen this interview before when Dr Channiga sent it to us for SDB.Net but the photographs are totally fresh.
And what a great man. It takes a lot of maturity and stability for a man to confess the very thing that is his passion and bread and butter is actually redundant!.
Ohh was it on the website Ritu ? I had not realized it ! sorry !
Anyways the first photo was from the “original article” of the magazine and the next 2 were from , iirc, a marathi magazine
to make up for my blunder of posting what is already there, I will search one big heap of CDs of mine next week and promise to share one long interview of SDB, which I had already typed, where he is talking about music in Indian Films. IIRC it is from 1965. I find that article to be very engrossing. Hold your breath and watch the sapace of PFC :-)
kcp… you have to send me a copy too
Great interview, and I am so glad you (and maybe others) are finding these things in old print material and putting them online for all of us and for posterity – stuff like this, on old paper, can vanish and what a loss it would be. And I know that people wanting to do research on historical Indian movie topics are already running into trouble finding the old movie magazines that are often the only source of precious information.
I often run into people expressing concern about Indian movies becoming westernized, or about Indian movies being evaluated, even by Indians, from a westernized perspective. SD in this interview gives us the opposite, he has both feet planted in the Indian movie-story-telling tradition. This part I will not forget, where he says that Bengali films of his era, because they are regional and low-budget, compensate with their scripts for what would ordinarily be provided by the music in a film.
Yeh dil maange more….Please …more from this great music director who gave us gems like Bandini,Guide,Pyaasa,Abhimaan and many more.