Bollywood songs, more formally known as Hindi film songs, or filmi songs are songs featured in Bollywood films. Derived from the song-and-dance routine in Western film circles, Bollywood songs, along with dance, are a characteristic motif of Hindi cinema which gives it enduring popular appeal, cultural value and context. Hindi film songs form a predominant component of Indian pop music, and derive their inspiration from both classical and modern sources. Hindi film songs are now firmly embedded in North India's popular culture and routinely encountered in North India in marketplaces, shops, during bus and train journeys and numerous other situations. Though Hindi films routinely contain many songs and some dance routines, they are not musicals in the Western theatrical sense; the music-song-dance aspect is an integral feature of the genre akin to plot, dialogue and other parameters.
Linguistically, Bollywood songs tend to use a colloquial dialect of Hindi-Urdu, or Hindustani, mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers, while modern Bollywood songs also increasingly incorporate elements of Hinglish. Urdu poetry has had a particularly strong impact on Bollywood songs, where the lyrics draw heavily from Urdu poetry and the ghazal tradition.
Video Music of Bollywood
History
Hindi film songs are present in Hindi cinema right from the first sound film Alam Ara (1931) by Ardeshir Irani which featured seven songs. This was closely followed by Shirheen Farhad (1931) by Jamshedji Framji Madan, also by Madan, which had as many as 42 song sequences strung together in the manner of an opera, and later by Indra Sabha which had as many as 69 song sequences. However, the practice subsided and subsequent films usually featured between six and ten songs in each production.
Right from the advent of Indian cinema in 1931, musicals with song numbers have been a regular feature in Indian cinema. In 1934 Hindi film songs began to be recorded on gramophones and later, played on radio channels, giving rise to a new form of mass entertainment in India which was responsive to popular demand. Within the first few years itself, Hindi cinema had produced a variety of films which easily categorised into genres such as "historicals", "mythologicals", "devotional, "fantasy" etc. but each having songs embedded in them such that it is incorrect to classify them as "musicals".
The Hindi song was such an integral features of Hindi mainstream cinema, besides other characteristics, that post-independence alternative cinema, of which the films of Satyajit Ray are an example, discarded the song and dance motif in its effort to stand apart from mainstream cinema.
The Hindi film song now began to make its presence felt as a predominating characteristic in the culture of the nation and began to assume roles beyond the limited purview of cinema. In multi-cultural India, as per film historian Partha Chatterjee, "the Hindi film song cut through all the language barriers in India, to engage in lively communication with the nation where more than twenty languages are spoken and ... scores of dialects exist". Bollywood music has drawn its inspiration from numerous traditional sources such as Ramleela, nautanki, tamasha and Parsi theatre, as well as from the West, Pakistan, and other Indic musical subcultures.
For over five decades, these songs formed the staple of popular music in South Asia and along with Hindi films, was an important cultural export to most countries around Asia and wherever the Indian diaspora had spread. The spread was galvanised by the advent of cheap plastic tape cassettes which were produced in the millions till the industry crashed in 2000. Even today Hindi film songs are available on radio, on television, as live music by performers, and on media, both old and new such as cassette tapes, compact disks and DVDs and are easily available, both legally and illegally, on the internet.
Maps Music of Bollywood
Style and format
The various use of languages in Bollywood songs can be complex. Most use variations of Hindi and Urdu, with some songs also including other languages such as Persian, and it is not uncommon to hear the use of English words in songs from modern Hindi movies. Besides Hindi, several other Indian languages have also been used including Braj, Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Bengali and Rajasthani.
In a film, music, both in itself and accompanied with dance, has been used for many purposes including "heightening a situation, accentuating a mood, commenting on theme and action, providing relief and serving as interior monologue."
Production
Songs in Bollywood movies are deliberately crafted with lyrics often written by distinguished poets or literati (often different from those who write the film script), and these lyrics are often then set to music, carefully choreographed to match the dance routine or script of the film. They are then sung by professional playback singers and lip-synched by the actors. Bollywood cinema is unique in that the majority of songs are seen to be sung by the characters themselves rather than being played in the background. In Western cinema, often a composer who specializes in film music is responsible for the bulk of music on the film's soundtrack, and while in some films songs may play an important part (and have direct relationship to the subject of the film), in Bollywood films, the songs often drive large-scale production numbers featuring elaborate choreography.
The key figure in Bollywood music production and composition is the music director. While in Western films, a "music director" or "music coordinator" is usually responsible for selecting existing recorded music to add to the soundtrack, typically during opening and closing credits, in Bollywood films, the "music director" often has a much broader role encompassing both composing music/songs specifically for the film and (if needed) securing additional (licensed) music. In this sense, a Bollywood music director also plays the role of a composer and music producer.
The lyricist of Bollywood songs is less likely to be the same composer or music director, as Bollywood films often go to great lengths to include lyrics of special significance and applicability to the film's plot and dialogue, and/or the words of highly regarded poets/lyricists set to music written specifically for such words in the film, as noted above.
Bollywood film songs have been described as eclectic both in instrumentation and style. They often employ foreign instruments and rework existing songs, showing remarkable inventiveness in the reinvention of melodies and instrumental techniques.
Genres
Filmi
Ghazal
Qawwali
Disco
In the Indian subcontinent of South Asia, disco peaked in popularity in the early 1980s, when a South Asian disco scene arose, popularized by filmi Bollywood music, at a time when disco's popularity had declined in North America. The South Asian disco scene was sparked by the success of Pakistani pop singer Nazia Hassan, working with Indian producer Biddu, with the hit Bollywood song "Aap Jaisa Koi" in 1980. Biddu himself previously had success in the Western world, where he was considered a pioneer, as one of the first successful disco producers in the early 1970s, with hits such as the hugely popular "Kung Fu Fighting" (1974), before the genre's Western decline at the end of the 1970s led to him shifting his focus to Asia. The success of "Aap Jaisa Koi" in 1980 was followed by Nazia Hassan's Disco Deewane, a 1981 album produced by Biddu, becoming Asia's best-selling pop album at the time.
In parallel to the Euro disco scene at the time, the continued relevance of disco in South Asia and the increasing reliance on synthesizers led to experiments in electronic disco, often combined with elements of Indian music. Biddu had already used electronic equipment such as synthesizers in some of his earlier disco work, including "Bionic Boogie" from Rain Forest (1976), "Soul Coaxing" (1977), Eastern Man and Futuristic Journey (recorded from 1976 to 1977), and "Phantasm" (1979), before using synthesizers for his later work with Nazia Hassan, including "Aap Jaisa Koi" (1980), Disco Deewane (1981) and "Boom Boom" (1982). Bollywood disco producers who used electronic equipment such as synthesizers include R.D. Burman, on songs such as "Dhanno Ki Aankhon Mein" (Kitaab, 1977) and "Pyaar Karne Waale" (Shaan, 1980); Laxmikant-Pyarelal, on songs such as "Om Shanti Om" (Karz, 1980); and Bappi Lahari, on songs such as "Ramba Ho" (Armaan, 1981). They also experimented with minimalist, high-tempo, electronic disco, including Burman's "Dil Lena Khel Hai Dildar Ka" (Zamane Ko Dikhana Hai, 1981), which had a "futuristic electro feel", and Lahiri's "Yaad Aa Raha Hai" (Disco Dancer, 1982).
Such experiments eventually culminated in the work of Charanjit Singh, whose 1982 record Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat anticipated the sound of acid house music, years before the genre arose in the Chicago house scene of the late 1980s. Using the Roland TR-808 drum machine, TB-303 bass synthesizer, and Jupiter-8 synthesizer, Singh increased the disco tempo up to a "techno wavelength" and made the sounds more minimalistic, while pairing them with "mystical, repetitive, instrumental Indian ragas", to produce a new sound, which resembled acid house. According to Singh: "There was lots of disco music in films back in 1982. So I thought why not do something different using disco music only. I got an idea to play all the Indian ragas and give the beat a disco beat - and turn off the tabla. And I did it. And it turned out good." The first track "Raga Bhairavi" also had a synthesised voice that says "Om Namah Shivaya" through a vocoder.
Along with experiments in electronic disco, another experimental trend in Indian disco music of the early 1980s was the fusion of disco and psychedelic music. Due to 1960s psychedelic rock, popularized by the Beatles' raga rock, borrowing heavily from Indian music, it began exerting a reverse influence and had blended with Bollywood music by the early 1970s. This led to Bollywood producers exploring a middle-ground between disco and psychedelia in the early 1980s. Producers who experimented with disco-psychedelic fusion included Laxmikant-Pyarelal, on songs such as "Om Shanti Om" (Karz, 1980), and R. D. Burman, on songs such as "Pyaar Karne Waale" (Shaan, 1980), along with the use of synthesizers.
Cultural impact
Indian cinema, with its characteristic film music, has not only spread all over Indian society, but also been on the forefront of the spread of India's culture around the world. In Britain, Hindi film songs are heard in restaurants and on radio channels dedicated to Asian music. The British dramatist Sudha Bhuchar converted a Hindi film hit Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! into a hit musical "Fourteen Songs" which was well received by the British audience. Film-maker Baz Luhrmann acknowledged the influence of Hindi cinema on his production Moulin Rouge by the inclusion of a number "Hindi Sad Diamonds" based on the filmi song "Chamma Chamma" which was composed by Anu Malik. In Greece the genre of indoprepi sprang from Hindi film music while in Indonesia dangdut singers like Ellya Khadam, Rhoma Irama and Mansyur S., have reworked Hindi songs for Indonesian audiences. In France, the band Les Rita Mitsouko used Bollywood influences in their music video for "Le petit train" and French singer Pascal of Bollywood popularised filmi music by covering songs such as "Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana". In Nigeria bandiri music--a combination of Sufi lyrics and Bollywood-style music--has become popular among Hausa youth. Hindi film music has also been combined with local styles in the Caribbean to form "chutney music".
Best-selling soundtrack albums
Top ten
By decade
By year
Most streamed soundtrack albums
See also
- Antakshari
- Bhajan
- Binaca Geetmala
- Filmfare Best Lyricist Award
- Filmi
- Filmi-ghazal
- Filmi qawwali
- Filmi Devotional songs
- List of Indian playback singers
- Babul (Hindi word)
- Hindi dance songs
- Hindi wedding songs
- Soundtrack album
References
Sources
- The Indian Diaspora: Dynamics of Migration edited by Narayana Jayaram, p. 164 (Trinidad)
- Echoes from Dharamsala: Music in the Life of a Tibetan Refugee Community by Keila Diehl (Tibetan refugees)
- Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the India Diaspora by Helen Myers
- Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India by Peter Manuel
- World Music Volume 2 Latin and North America Caribbean India Asia and: Latin and North America,...by Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham (History)
- Pandits in the Movies: Contesting the Identity of Hindustani Classical Music and Musicians in the Hindi Popular Cinema by Greg Booth
- Religion, gossip, narrative conventions and the construction of meaning in Hindi film songs by Greg Booth
- Behind the curtain: making music in Mumbai's film studios by Greg Booth
- Early Indian Talkies: Voice, Performance and Aura: by Madhuja Mukherjee
- The Cultural Economy of Sound: Reinventing Technology in Indian Popular Cinema by Carlo Nardi
- Hindi film songs and the cinema by Anna Morcom
- Film songs and the cultural synergies of Bollywood in and beyond South Asia by Anna Morcom
Dhunon ki Yatra-Hindi Filmon ke Sangeetkar 1931-2005 by Pankaj Rag
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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