Champ

Songs, which probably started as a ting of cultural flavour to Indian cinema, have become the driving force of Bollywood economics.

To make it simpler for non-Bollywood readers:

In west you have two sharply divided industries music and film.

In India there is a huge overlap. Both industries have co-existed and flourished riding on each others popularity. That is why India could never had a totally independent music industry. But it does not mean that India doesn’t have a strong music industry. It does. But it is just that it took a different rout to success.

So instead of making an audio album, and pumping of heaps of money in tis video and promotion, producers clubbed songs with films and tapped both markets at one go.

Probably culture of music videos’ started way before in India than anywhere else. The only difference was that instead of featuring the singer or a model in the video, Indian avtaar’s had top Bollywood stars dancing in them.

There are scores of movies in Indian cinema, which purely rode on its music to success.

And the idea of clubing two forms made huge business sense for the Bollywood producers. If the music of a film is good, producer’s can recover the entire cost of the film production just by selling music rights to audio companies.

Plus, songs smoothly integrates in the marketing plan of Bollywood films.

Producers normally launch the music a few months before the release of the movie. If the music is successful, there is a ready made hype for their film. Tapping the mood of the market, music videos will follow on the TV screens and once the hype reaches its pinnacle, film hits the theatre.

Many Indian producers/directors have mastered this craft. And their swelling bank balances prove that it is a hit formula.

Like many senior artists in the Indian film industry, I also despise the name Bollywood. I think the name, straight lift from Hollywood, trivialises the industry.

To the west, Bollywood only means a colourful cluttered screen with 100 dancers scampering for space. If I ask anyone here what do you like about Indian films, they can’t go beyond couple of words and the most common ones are: colour, dance, music, vibrant ambience etc.

HEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLOOOO

There are storylines, acting, cinematography, editing, sound, narration as well…look at them. Apart from a few of my professors, I couldn’t find anyone who would go beyond colour-dance cliché.

And the problem is, if you try to make them see something different like Black, most of them would say no to it, saying they want to see a regular Bollywood flick. It’s a double edged sword. So if a film offers a run-of-the-mill song-and-dance drama, the film fails to break colour-dance shackles. And if it tries something different, it is no more Bollywood!

I tried to find a parallel of Bollywood songs in Hollywood/western films. And I think it is “love making scene”. I think both forms have the similar frequency in respective industries.

If you want to understand Indian film industry, you have to understand the Indian culture as well. Songs and dance are part of Indian life. Everyone sings in India—good or bad. Every occasion has special songs for it.

Every traditional occupation had their songs. So every time a shepard, farmer, or a bullock-cart driver enters celluloid screen, most common occupation, apart from his job, would be singing.

Moreover, every occasion in India has its own song. So we have songs for harvesting, sowing, birth, marriage, morning, evening, night, sleeping, waking-up. You name it, we have it.

Plus, when there are festivals, what else can someone think of apart from singing and dancing. And above all we have Love. The eternal theme of cinema across the world. And love expresses itself most effectively through songs.

So what else do you expect from such country’s film industry…it has to be musical.

In the next entries I’ll talk about why colours are important to Bollywood and why it makes huge business sense to have songs in Cinema.