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BBC Proms - 17 July - 12 September 2009 - The World's Greatest Classical Music Festival
All Proms are broadcast live on Radio 3
What's On / Programme Notes
Bombay Dreams
Sangeeta Datta traces the development of
Bollywood’s thriving musical scene, whose appeal is
gathering momentum in the West
In tonight’s climax to the BBC Proms
Indian Voices day, Shaan presents some popular Bollywood hits
originally sung by him as playback tracks. They represent the
wide musical spectrum of the present decade and mark how
globalisation has brought in a clever mix of Indian and Western
traditions to the Bollywood song. Shaan has established himself
as the voice of the young generation that has already made its
mark on the 21st century. Bearing the legacy of musical giants
such as Mohammed Rafi (1924–80) and Kishore Kumar
(1929–87) and brushing shoulders with contemporary
artists, Shaan has, with his impressive voice and charismatic
personality, positioned himself as a very popular youth icon.
The term Bollywood represents Indian cinema
across the world. In reality it stands for the Mumbai (Bombay)
film industry, which produces around 700 films a year. An even
more prolific industry throbs in the city of Chennai – the
home of Tamil cinema. Then there are smaller regional cinemas
from every state – of which the films from Bengal and
Kerala are known to international cinema audiences. Bollywood
enjoys a sizable market and is indisputably the strongest
influence on Indian popular culture.
Cinema in India has its roots in the
performing art traditions – theatre, music and dance. The
strong tradition of oral history, folk theatre and storytelling
has always incorporated music within an organic structure. The
1930s saw the advent of the talkies in India. Singing stars
such as K. L. Saigal were all the rage, and music from films
such as Devdas (1955) caught the public imagination in a phenomenal
manner. Drama, as we understand the term, does not define
Indian films. Mainstream cinema verges on the border of the
musical, where song and dance are showcased as a spectacle – often
in stand-alone pieces highlighting the music and dance talent
of the stars. Or the song could offer the pleasure of beautiful
locations.
When playback music was introduced, actors
would lip-sync to pre-recorded songs. An amazing wealth of
composers and writers came together to create memorable tunes
and poetry. In the golden era of the 1950s there were two
theories about the film song. Director Guru Dutt defined the
song as an extension of the narrative, as a moment that carried
the action forwards. Consider the psychological space given to
songs in his classics – Pyaasa (‘Thirsty’) and Kagaz ke phool (‘Paper
Flowers’). The great showman Raj Kapoor, by contrast,
constructed the song-and-dance moment as spectacle, mounting it
on a larger scale than ever before. For him, songs occupied an
imaginary space outside the narrative logic of the storyline. Thus,
dream sequences and love songs offered the pleasure of
imaginative realms transcending the realistic world of drama.
Drawing on the Chaplinesque tramp, Raj Kapoor’s
protagonist Raju travelled across the globe through the song
‘Mera joota hai japani’ (‘My shoes are from
Japan/My trousers from England/My red cap is from China/But my
heart is Indian’).
The 1950s also brought a diverse wealth of
talent to Hindi films. Film-makers as wide-ranging as Raj
Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt and Dev Anand used music and songs
that have now attained classic status. Composers such as
Shankar Jaikishan, Sachin Dev Burman, Madan Mohan and Naushad
Ali created everlasting tunes still played as perennial
favourites on radio and television music channels. The
lyricists Shankardas Kesarilal Shailendra, Shakeel Badayuni,
Majrooh Sultanpuri and Kaifi Azmi were recognised poets and
literary figures in their own right. Songs have become iconic
for many reasons – the monsoon love song from Awara (‘The
Tramp’, 1950), sung by the hero Raj Kapoor and the
heroine Nargis under an umbrella, was a model often replicated
in later years, most memorably in 1942:
A Love Story.
The Hindi film song is a veritable
melting-pot. The compositions can be inspired by traditional
Indian classical or folk music. Western influences have ranged
from Mozart and Beethoven to waltz, pop, rock, jazz, disco and
lounge music. Indian film music has moved, and morphed, with
the times. In fact, the growing urbanisation of society was
reflected in the vast Western influence on the music of the
1960s and 1970s: one classic setting in Hindi film melodramas
was a grand piano in a grand drawing room. The hero or the
heroine would play and sing amorous songs with strong dramatic
conflict compressed into the moment. In much the same way, the
‘suspense’ moment was also constructed. At the
point of grave danger or in the middle of a chase, the cabaret
dancer would burst into song. The ‘other’ space of
the Westernised dancer worked in opposition to the
‘pure’ space of the heroine – singing of her
dreams in verdant gardens or praying to the gods at her altar.
The love song – which became the
hallmark of the Hindi film – allowed the hero and heroine
to frolic in open spaces, gardens and valleys, across rivers
and mountains. The lyrics evoked passion, desire, beauty,
madness – emotions of excess that could go beyond the
rational space of dialogue or everyday conversation. The love
song and its setting became the poetic and imaginative space to
which the viewer was transported – the valleys of
Kashmir, the Swiss Alps, the tulip fields of in Holland, the
streets of London. The film song offered the pleasure of
spectacle. It condensed in a brief span of three to four
minutes, beautiful melody and poetry, sung by the best playback
singers India has known. What an array of legendary artistes – Lata
Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh Chand Mathur,
Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle.
Film music has its own sub-industry. The
playback music and score are presold and popular music often
contributes to the success of a film. The magnificent 1970s
offered a another treasure- trove of music. This decade is
identified with the iconic Rahul Dev Burman – who changed
the face of film music, his radical contributions triggering
modernity in many ways. Trained in Indian classical music and
well versed in Western music traditions, he signalled a new era
in film music. His contribution includes unforgettable melodies
inspired by traditional Indian music. He introduced the hippie
movement in Hare Rama Hare Krishna, creating new sounds and beats that went beyond
the traditional string-heavy orchestra.
The 1970s presented a magical combination
of stars, singers, composers and song-writers that left an
incredible legacy. Following the deathly lull of good music in
the 1980s, the phoenix rose from the ashes again. The turn of
the 1990s was marked by new sounds and the young composer A. R.
Rahman (nicknamed ‘the Mozart of Madras’) blazed
like a meteor. In fact songs from Roja and Bombay
revolutionised Bollywood music once again. Armed with a degree
from London’s Trinity College of Music and steeped in the
music traditions of South India, Rahman defined contemporary
Indian techno music. The computer and electronics replaced the
traditional recording room with its 60-strong orchestras.
Rahman, the true global Indian, cut across time and space to
bring in new artistes and cutting-edge music.
The Academy Award for Slumdog Millionaire came
to Rahman in recognition of his vast corpus of work and for
transporting Bollywood song to other popular cultures of the
world. It also established that the Hindi film song had become
a global cultural phenomenon. Travelling from India across the
Middle East, Africa, Europe, North America, China and
Australia, the Bollywood song is here to stay and to offer us
its diversionary pleasure.
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2009 Calendar
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July | ||||||
| 17 | 18 | |||||
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
| August | ||||||
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | |||||
| September | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
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