The Indian film industry has undergone a revolution since the development of playback in the year 1935. It was the first instance when a song could be recorded in voice of a different singer while picturizing it on a totally different artiste thus being a boon in disguise to those artistes who could not sing.
Ever since then singers flooded the film industry and gave the music directors to experiment in the new spectrum. Thus new sounds, newer innovations found their way into Hindi Film music.
With his exposure to Western orchestras accompanying silent films, Keshavrao Bhole at Prabhat was the first to use instruments such as the piano, the Hawaiian guitar and the violin in his compositions. In fact in Prabhat’s Duniya Na Mane (1937), he even got its lead actress Shanta Apte to sing an entire song in English!
Right from Indian classical, the step moved forward towards Indian folk. Folk songs began to be utilized in Hindi Films mainly when scenes were shown of people in their routine life where they are either drawing water from the well or working in the fields. The song of the Bengali boatman by composer Ramchandra Pal in Bombay Talkies’ Kangan (1939) was probably the first track in Indian folk music.
Soon after that, combining popular ragas with the rich verve and rhythm of Punjabi folk music, ensured that the Indian film song would never be the same again. While Folk music from all over India began being used in Indian Film music, surprisingly contribution from Maharashtra and Gujarat and till recently Rajashtan, was negligible. Marathi folk form did not so much succeed in reaching out to Hindi films largely because it stuck to the language. Gujarati music in Hindi Films has largely been confined to either the Devotional song or the Garba song.
Then a revolution took place when the studio system and the freelance system took over to the conventional style. And as the technique of filmmaking grew so did the concept of film music. The days when an exhibitor feared he would not have films to show were gone. Fear had shifted to the producer. Would he now have an outlet for his product? Thus power shifted from the producer to distributor and exhibitor. And they knew exactly what they wanted - big stars and eight to nine hit songs!
Even as music began to undergo changes for the better the quality of films underwent changes for the worse. The story was now of declining importance. It was conceived and developed towards exploitation of the star and due to the importance of music the subject with increasing concentration was romance and boy meets girl stories. Dance and songs provided substitutes for lovemaking and emotional crisis.
The Indian film Song was by now rapidly on its way to becoming an extremely important art form with every new innovation bringing its share of joy and excitement.
Hanumant Bhansali