Pop Music
in
Asia
The Visual & Dramatic
Dimensions of Hindi Film Songs
Since the talkies
began in India in 1931, all commercial Hindi films have contained songs.
The songs constitute the first and still the foremost genre of popular
music in India. Hindi film songs are linked to films not just by appearing
in them, but also through the film images to be found ubiquitously in
India on posters, cassette sleeves, television, and in magazines. But
can film songs be seen to be linked to films at the level of their musical
style?
* By ANNA MORCOM
From
popular song...
Film songs were initially based on Indian
classical music and genres of folk, devotional, and theatre music.
They soon separated from these traditional styles and developed an
exotic and eclectic hybrid style of their own, mixing Western instruments,
harmony and melody types with Indian musical features. The waltz,
rock and roll, Latin American dance tunes, disco, and reggae have
all been incorporated into film songs over the years (Arnold 1991).
The development of Hindi film music into a hybrid popular
style is certainly due to the fact that songs were a part of the new
and Western technological medium of films. This new context gave the
freedom to adapt and change traditional material extensively and to
introduce foreign styles and instruments in ways that would have been
inappropriate to traditional genres.
Other kinds of popular music began to emerge in the
1980s when cassette technology arrived in India, enabling smaller
groups to produce music (Manuel 1993), all heavily influenced by film
songs, some using actual film tunes, disco beats, and so on. Could
any kind of hybrid, Westernized, eclectic Indian song work as a film
song? Are film songs just popular songs in this sense? Or do they
have a more specific relationship to their cinematic context?
Pal do pal
ka saath hamara ('We have a few moments together'), a qawwali
Muslim devotional song from The
Burning Train (1979) is an informative example. Traditional
qawwali style
is hybridized here with various Western elements. The melodic and
vocal style, solo singing with chorus repetition, improvised syncopated
repetition of lines of text and virtuosic vocal flourishes, and the
prominent tabla
and harmonium accompaniment are all distinctive of traditional qawwali.
Hybrid and Western elements include the sitar
and the Afghan rabab
(not traditionally used in qawwali,
but commonly associated with classical music and Muslim culture respectively),
jazzy clarinet, guitar, and bass. The result is a 'popular' version
of qawwali. The
traditional idiom, however, is completely abandoned in three distinct
sections that sound like the 'action' music of 1950s Westerns. The
first features dramatic violin runs and a background of bass, strumming
guitar, and electric guitar. The bass line also changes from a syncopated
to a straight rhythm, and the percussion from tabla
to drum kit. The second section adds trumpets and trombones to the
violins, guitar, bass, and percussion, and the third a vibraphone,
electric guitar, wah-wah guitar, and the sound of a passing train
horn.
In another example, Jane
wo kaisa cor tha. ('Who knows what kind of a thief it was')
from Yaraana
(1995), a fast Western dance rhythm is mixed with an Indian non-diatonic
melody and vocal style to create a hybrid song. After the final chorus,
there is a sudden move to loud, dissonant brass, tremolo violins,
and then a crashing build up of strings and percussion to the end
of the song.
...to
cinematic situation
Both these songs mix traditional and modern, and Western
and Indian styles, as all Indian popular genres do to a certain extent.
Both abruptly hijack the popular song idiom during the song. The rather
bewildering stylistic juxtaposition of qawwali
and spaghetti Western in Pal
do pal, unknown in any other musical tradition in the world,
and the screeching, dissonant finale of Jane
wo kaisa cor that contrasts the otherwise musically engaging
song, stem from the cinematic sequences the songs accompany. In Pal
do pal, the cinematic sequence involves cuts between parallel
scenes, in one qawwali
is being performed on a train, and in the other the hero is chasing
after the train in a car to warn passengers there is a bomb on board.
In Jane wo kaisa cor,
the heroine, after singing and dancing, seizes an opportunity to stab
her evil and sadistic husband.
Whilst film songs are written in a popular song idiom,
the particular idiom a given film song adopts depends on the cinematic
situation. Music director Uttam Singh told me he sees film song as
an 'open' style, depending on the film rather than a preconceived
notion of what a film song should be (interview, 6 November 1998).
In order to compose a song appropriate to the situation, the director,
music director, and lyricist meet in 'sittings', where they discuss
particular song situations, characters, locations, mood, actions,
and details of timing and cinematography. A range of musical conventions
for expressing aspects of narrative have developed, drawing from Indian
and Western musical culture and from Hollywood. For example, according
to music director Khayyam, large-scale visuals and long shots often
involve a large symphonic ensemble and sweeping melodic phrases (interview,
7 April 2000). Rural or urban dwellers, or characters returning from
abroad, receive an appropriate mix of traditional, regional, and Western
music in their songs. Although other popular genres have much in common
with film song, it is not necessarily the case that any popular song
can be a film song; the cinematic situation determines the choice.
The expression of narrative in film song may result
in music that sounds eccentric. Music director Jatin Pandit described
film song as a style full of 'changes', as the music echoes changes
in location, point of view, or action (interview, 4 November 1998).
Utpal Biswas sees film songs as tending to have 'add-ons' that cater
for specific narrative aspects (interview, 3 March 2000). Nicholas
Cook introduces an equivalent concept of 'gapped' texts in his discussion
of musical multimedia (Cook 1998). 'Gapped' texts provide spaces to
allow for the assimilation of other media. He describes how composers
often select their texts for their 'musical' properties, in that they
are 'ready for music', and then states: '...one might speak of Hollywood
film music having 'diegesis-shaped gaps', in the sense of its lack
of thematic identity and structural autonomy'(p.105).
A uniquely
cinematic style
The 'changes', 'add-ons,' or 'gaps' form the clearest
links between film songs and the cinema. They turn songs into musical
shot sequences, like background scores, and as in the two examples
cited earlier, use many Hollywood backing score conventions. They
show film songs to be inherently cinematic and multimedia in style,
unlike other genres such as pop music albums and popular qawwali.
Utpal Biswas explained the difference to me: 'All the six or seven
songs you are planning for a pop album, they've got a definite flow,
because you are not working towards any situation or scene... What
happens is that you're composing a song, purely a song, and you know
your sounds, and there is nothing to interfere with your sounds...
For a film, the director will know that for this particular piece
there is some kind of storm coming in or some kind of an earthquake,
so as a trumpet piece is being played you have to give sounds and
darararararara dham,
you've got to give bass with the storm, and so the trumpet is drowned
out by all the extra effects. In that way you cater to film music...
That is film music, because film music is the director's conception
of the situation' (interview, 3 March 2000).
Although this 'gapped' style is unique to film songs,
not all film songs are 'gapped'. Everything depends on the demands
of the situation and, to a certain extent, how far the director and
music director choose to express narrative details through the music.
It is often considered possible to weave narrative demands into coherent
and consistent hybrid and eclectic idioms. In such cases, the visual
images complement the song and explain many of the choices made in
the musical and lyrical style, but the song still makes sense without
its visual dimension. To have a song that makes sense and sounds good
in its audio dimension is desirable, particularly because film songs
play a crucial role in promoting films. However, the dramatic role
of the song should not be compromised.
All film songs express the situation within the film,
but not all are distinguishable by their music from other popular
styles, styles that may in turn have been influenced by film songs.
However, the 'changes', 'add-ons' or 'gaps' of film songs, often featuring
musical conventions derived from Hollywood practices, are inherently
cinematic, and link film song firmly to the cinema. *
*
References
Arnold, Alison E., Hindi
filmi git: On the history of Indian popular music. PhD
dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1991);
Cook, Nicholas, Analysing
Musical Multimedia. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1998);
Manuel, Peter, Cassette
Culture: Popular music and technology in north India. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press (1993).
Filmography
The
Burning Train (1979), dir. B. R. Chopra, music R. D. Burman;
Yaarana
(1995), dir. David Dhawan, music Anu Malik.
Anna
Morcom is currently completing a PhD on Hindi film songs
at SOAS, London.
E-mail:
annamorcom@hotmail.com