Indian Music
1) Music is the organisation of sounds with some degree of rhythm, melody, and
harmony. 2) Popular Music is music produced for and sold to a broad audience.
Indian popular music, which is most strongly influenced by Indian folk music is
shaped by social, economic, and technological forces. Popular music is closely
linked to the social identity of its performers and audiences. 3) Indian Popular
Music has one of the world’s most extensive popular music industries. Most
Indian popular music is associated with the commercial film industry, centred on
Mumbai, in which song-and-dance scenes are inserted into plots. 4) Film songs
are heard all over India, in city streets and even in remote villages, and have
also become one of the country’s major cultural exports. It is a remarkably
eclectic genre, borrowing freely from other Indian musics and popular music’s
from around the world, including some Western harmonic procedures. 5) Both
Indian cinema and its film music are widely popular elsewhere in the developing
world, from Africa and the Middle East to Eastern Europe and other parts of
Asia. 6) While it is difficult to generalize about such a vast and diverse
entity, certain observations can be made about Indian popular music. Like
classical Indian music and Indian folk music, it is overwhelmingly monophonic:
melodies are sung or played solo, rather than in harmony with another singer. 7)
The Indian music industry got off to an early start with the production of local
recordings in 1901. By the 1950s the film industry had grown phenomenally, and
soon became the largest in the world, producing some 700-feature films annually.
Music directors like Naushad and S. D. Burman composed scores for hundreds of
films, while top singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi, and
Kishore Kumar have each recorded several thousand film songs. Most were
sentimental love songs designed to fit the romantic and often escapist cinematic
melodramas. 8) In the late 1970s and early 1980s the spread of cheap audio
cassette players dramatically restructured the popular music industry. Since
cassettes and cassette players are so cheap, portable, and durable, many
millions of poorer rural consumers could afford them and thus enter the popular
music market. As a result the popular music industry has become much more
decentralized, and its products much more diverse in terms of style, language,
and subject matter. 9) Indian popular music has continued to evolve and thrive.
Western influence remains strong, and many film music composers borrow pop
melodies from the West. Nevertheless, the thriving cottage-industry cassette
producers still rely heavily on regional folk music for inspiration and ideas.
In the United Kingdom, South Asians of Punjabi descent have popularized a
dynamic hybrid style called bhangra, which typically combines Punjabi folk
melodies with elements of disco, techno-pop, and dance-hall reggae. 10) I made a
survey in which I found out that 90 % of the people whether they are of the new
generation or the old say that music has lost its sentimental values. It is no
longer made the way it used to be. These days the focus is not in giving a
message but just to give some typical masala or dance sequence in the film.
Where as the remaining 10 % say that the trends and traditional values are
changing and in this ever changing world one must keep up to date. 11) I am in
favour of both the groups because I think that Song like “jab tak rahe ga
samse main aloo” or “dil ke gate ki name plate per likha hai tera nam”
are degrading the Indian music industry. But these are the exceptions people
like Javed Akhter,A.R. Rehman Yash Chopra and so many others are still there who
respect the values of Indian music and cenima and make movies like dil se kuch
kuch hota hai dil to pagal hai hum apke hai kaun. These are only a few of the
indian movies which depict the actual Indian sentiments.
