Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T18:51:16.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Popular film song in India: a case of mass-market musical eclecticism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Alison Arnold
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The ubiquitous songs in India's commercial feature films play a dual role in Indian society: they serve as both film songs and pop songs for India's 800 million people. India is the largest film-producing country in the world and one fifth of its current annual production of approximately 750 films is made in Hindi, each film having an average of five to six songs (Dharap 1985). As the major form of mass entertainment available on a national scale, rivalled only by the government-run television network, Hindi cinema plays a prominent and influential role in Indian society. Yet its songs, which represent India's most popular music in the twentieth century, are relatively little known to non-Indians, either to scholars or to the general public. Musicologists and anthropologists have for the most part focused their attention on Indian classical and folk traditions to the neglect of film song. To counteract this imbalance I propose here to examine one important aspect of Hindi film song – its peculiarly eclectic nature – which plays a major role in the nationwide appeal of this popular music. I look at some of the ways in which these film songs are eclectic and possible reasons why they are so. Such a study provides insights into the role of this popular music in Indian society and culture and can thereby contribute to an understanding of the role of popular music generally in non-Western and developing countries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , May 1988 , pp. 177 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnold, Alison (in progress) ‘An Ethnomusicological Study of Hindi Film Song from 1931 to the mid 1960s’. PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana–ChampaignGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Alison 1986. ‘“New” Music for a new medium: the emergence of an Indian film song genre, 1930s–1950s’. Unpublished paper presented at the Symposium on Current Research in the Musical Cultures of South Asia,University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign,20 March)Google Scholar
Barnouw, Eric and Krishnaswamy, S. 1980. Indian Film (New York and London: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Beeman, William O. 1981. ‘The use of music in popular film: east and west’, India International Centre Quarterly, 8(1), pp. 77–87Google Scholar
Bharatan, Raju. 1967. ‘Hindi film music today’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 31 12, p. 49Google Scholar
Bharatan, Raju. 1974. ‘New voices for old’, Illustrated Weekly of India, 28 04, pp. 16–19Google Scholar
Burra, Rani (ed.) 1981. Film India: Looking Back, 1896–1960 (New Delhi: The Directorate of Film Festivals)Google Scholar
Da Cunha, Uma. 1980. ‘Jairaj’, Cinema Vision India, I(1), pp. 81–4Google Scholar
Dharap, B. V. 1985. ‘Facts and figures about the industry’, in 70 Years of Indian Cinema (1913–1983), ed. Ramachandran, T. M. (Bombay: Cinema India-International), p. 626Google Scholar
Ellis, Jack C. 1979. A History of Film (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall)Google Scholar
Jain, Rikhab Dass. 1960. The Economic Aspects of the Film Industry in India (Delhi: Atma Ram and Sons)Google Scholar
Mahmood, Hameeduddin. 1974. The Kaleidoscope of Indian Cinema (New Delhi: Affiliated East–West Press)Google Scholar
Marks, Martin. 1979. ‘Film music: the material, literature, and present state of research’, MLA Notes, 36(2), pp. 282–325CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mullick, K. S. 1974. Tangled Tapes: The Inside Story of Indian Broadcasting (New Delhi: Sterling)Google Scholar
Ranga Rao, V. A. K. 1983. Personal interview (Indian film-music scholar and critic)Google Scholar
Sayani, Amin. 1982. Personal interview (radio broadcaster and director of Radio Ceylon's Geet Mala, film-song hit parade programme, from its inception in 09 1952)Google Scholar
Sharma, Pandit Narendra. 1980. ‘Half a century of song’, Cinema Vision India I(4), pp. 57–61Google Scholar
Vasudev, Aruna. 1978. Liberty and Licence in the Indian Cinema (New Delhi: Vikas)Google Scholar