The Evolution of Song and Dance in Hindi Cinema

Ajay Gehlawat, Rajinder Dudrah, Ajay Gehlawat, Rajinder Dudrah

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000448955
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

Exploring the evolution of song and dance in the popular Hindi film, this book examines how these quintessential elements have been and continue to be theorized.

As song 'picturizations', as they are frequently called, have evolved, shifting from little more than impromptu moves around tree trunks to highly choreographed affairs featuring scores of professional dancers and exotic backgrounds, their theorization has also developed beyond the initial, peremptory dismissals of earlier critics. Featuring a landmark collection of essays from leading theorists, as well as newer contributions from up-and-coming scholars, this book develops new and exciting ways of thinking about song and dance in Hindi cinema and, in turn, explores how these elements work to (re)define popular Hindi cinema in the twenty-first century.

This collection will be of interest to students and scholars of Hindi cinema, musicals, and global popular cultures. It was originally published as a special issue of South Asian Popular Culture.

Synchronicity and continuity of sound and image in early Indian cinema

Gregory D. Booth

ABSTRACT

This study examines a small sample of song scenes from Indian films produced between 1931 and 1935. It considers the impact of the technological constraints imposed by the absence of post-production technology for sound editing and for sound-image synchronization. That impact included the common practice of simultaneous sound and image recording (to ensure synchronization of sound and image) and of filming song scenes in single takes (to ensure musical continuity). The study traces the evidence available in cinematic texts suggesting that film-makers recognized the cinematic limitations of scenes filmed in these ways and sought technological solutions based on the use of the continuous sound track as the ‘master’ track for a song scene and other musically and technologically inventive ways to produce cinematically (as well as musically) interesting song scenes. The implications of early film production practices for the relationship of song scenes to the diegesis are also considered.

In most accounts of sound in the Indian cinema history, two dates and two films stand out in matters of first-ness: 1931’s Alam Ara and 1935’s Dhoop Chaon. As the first Indian film to have a sound track, the former’s first-ness is reasonably concrete, more so, in some ways, than the first-ness of Warner’s The Jazz Singer (1927) as Hollywood’s first sound film. Dhoop Chaon’s first-ness, however, is more complex. While it is also based on technological change, the film’s importance has been shaped by industrial practices and cultural developments that were unique to India. The mute or silent synchronizer – newly introduced in India in 1935 and first used in the production of Dhoop Chaon – allowed film-makers to merge two strips of celluloid, one carrying a sound track, the other an image track, on a new single strip on which the movements of the image track would appear (if proper care was taken) to be synchronous with the sounds of the sound track.

Synchronism and continuity

Synchronism – of limbs, bodies and lips with sound (and especially with words) – is an essential characteristic of all cinemas. From Alam Ara to Dhoop Chaon, in the absence of the technological means to ensure synchronicity of independently recorded sound and image, early Indian film-makers most commonly recorded sound and image simultaneously, with camera and microphone both sending signals to the same strip of film. To some extent, early Indian films were recordings of fully staged performances of scenes or parts of scenes and, of course, of song scenes. In the case of many song scenes of this period, actors were simultaneously acting and singing for the camera, in costume, on set and moving into and out of musical modes of expression sometimes with no break in the filming.

Naturally, the simultaneous recording process created challenges for both the actors (who were performing, in effect, as they might have done on stage: in costume, with appropriate actions and emotional expression) and for production staff who had to stage and film scenes that offered suitable perspectives of the actors and their settings, but that kept the microphone out of the scene and that located any accompanying musicians close enough to the microphone to be recorded, but also out of the camera’s view.

This dynamic is apparently responsible for one of the most widely reported characterizations of song scene production between 1931 and 1935, that of musicians lurking in the bushes or behind the sets to provide musical accompaniment while actors stood in fixed positions and sang into hidden microphones. Composer Naushad Ali invoked this image frequently in his accounts of early film making practice.

Song picturization … created problems. … Not only microphones, but musicians were also hidden from the camera view. On location … at Powai Lake, some musicians were perched on the trees with their instruments and some sat at the very edge of the lake. (Kinikar 56)

Beyond the demands for appropriate cinematography and staging, and for sound-image synchronism in general, filming staged performances carried an additional set of problems that emerged most clearly in the recording of song scenes. This second set of problems stemmed from the fundamental importance of both stable pitch or tuning and temporal regularity (or at least predictability) in the construction of musical meaning. When unplanned, even relatively small changes in these two, key music elements are perceptible to most listeners and have a negative impact on the musical-aesthetic experience. In a technological environment that permitted little or no post-recording sound editing and given the challenges of editing sound on optical film in any case, musical continuity was as much of a challenge as was synchronism.

Naturally, image sequences in the cinema also require a form of continuity; but the semiosis of a meaningful sequence of images depends on a series of iconic signs that are clearly referential (they are signs of something) in ways that the contingent, indexical signs of music are not. Image-track continuity can be maintained through more abstract or conceptual semiotic processes than can the continuity of a musical sound track.

Synchronism was most readily achieved through simultaneous sound/image recording, as I have noted, which acted as one kind of constraint on early Indian film making. That constraint lasted until 1935 and the appearance of the silent synchronizer in Indian studios, as I have noted. Musical continuity, however, imposed yet another constraint on recording, one that persisted much longer. The easiest way to produce a musically continuous sound track was to record each song scene or musical scene in a single, continuous take. In practice, it was almost impossible to stop filming at any point during a musical scene without leaving an audible (if not visual) trace, in either the pitch or melodic content or in the tempo or rhythm, or both. Musical continuity continued to be a challenge long after the problem of synchronism had been solved. Beginning-to-end song recording remained Indian filmmakers’ solution of choice through the 1980s (Booth 75).

The combined needs for synchronism and continuity in the technologically limited Indian cinema of 1931–1935 had aesthetic, cinematic, and musical outcomes that are visible and audible in the films, songs, and song scenes produced between 1931–1935; these scenes occupy an odd, liminal sort of space between India’s pre-1931 silent films and the films that came after Dhoop Chaon , in which Indian film-makers gradually institutionalized the production practice based on playing back songs that had been pre-recorded in order to film while actors mimed rather than sang. We know relatively little, and have relatively little familiarity, with the musical and cinematographic outcomes of this short, technologically defined and uniquely Indian interregnum. Given the brief period of time, the relatively few films (fewer still accessible), the increasingly remote history, and the enormous, prolonged impact of what came after, both Indian and Western writers have tended to ignore the 1931–1935 period or to treat these early songs as a primitive aberration. Morcom’s study of Hindi film song, largely contemporary, ignores the majority of the Hindi cinema’s past. Beaster-Jones’ explicitly chronological study begins the ‘at the end of the colonial era’ tracing the ‘emergence of filmi style’ with a study of the 1943 film, Kismet (25). Pandit Ashok Ranade, does refer to pre-1935 songs; but argues that ‘most, if not all of the early “songs” were in reality examples of verses, couplets or partial recitations’ and that they ‘stopped short of becoming “songs”!’ (110).

Method and sample

It is difficult and probably inappropriate to assess song scenes from 1931–1935 on the same basis as song scenes that were produced after the silent synchronizer’s arrival. It is important, however, to understand how the song scenes from these early years do and do not relate to the conventional song scenes that developed after 1936 and to ask what such scenes tell us about the aesthetic and cinematic goals of their producers. As I will show, some early song scenes represent distinct musical-cinematic forms that disappeared once synchronizers appeared in Indian studios. In other cases, the creators of these early scenes seem to have been pushing as hard as their technology allowed them towards post-1936 practice. In these examples, we can see how the dual needs for sound–image synchronism and sound continuity interactively constrained the development of film song and the filming of song scenes. This study is my quite basic attempt to contribute to that understanding. Simultaneous and continuous recording aside, how did early directors construct emotionally and cinematically successful song scenes? What strategies or techniques did they use in their attempts to stretch the limitations of technology? How do we, as scholars, connect the songs and aesthetics of the pre-synchronizer period with what came afterwards?

We have very few reliable resources that can help us answer such questions. No one living was on the sets when these scenes were filmed, and to the best of my knowledge, no one has taken the trouble to talk to those who were. Few of those working on those early films have left accounts for us to examine. To a large extent, we are reliant on what can be deduced from the texts themselves and an understanding of the available technology and film-making practice.

This study is not an attempt at a comprehensive survey of pre-synchronizer sound films. Instead, I explore the key technological, musical and cinematographic features of song-scene production in the first years of Indian cinema through the analysis of visible and audible evidence in the song scenes of a small selection of pre-1935 films. My conclusions are conclusions about practices that were possible and that were actually used in the production of these films. Although I use a small sample of the sound films made before 1935, the issues were the same for everyone. Given the limited number of variables, the technological ‘work-arounds’ that I discuss would have inevitably spread from film-maker to film-maker, either through explicit sharing or through imitation.

As this study will show, relatively static songs scenes, in which actors and cameras seemed to be literally tied to hidden microphones (as the cameras literally were in some cases), neither moving from their opening position, are readily found in Indian films. Such scenes are clearly the result of Indian film-makers’ acceptance of the easily discerned limits of pre-synchronizer technology. As will also be apparent, however, even in the earliest years of the Indian cinema, directors and cinematographers were manipulating sound and movement in creative ways, pushing the technological boundaries to produce scenes that were cinematographically quite complex. The song scenes of 1931–1935 show a group of film-makers moving as fast as (and sometimes faster than) technology would allow them toward the more sophisticated song scenes of the 1940s onward.

Finally, I have reported (Booth) that at least from the 1950s onwards, film musicians have generally spoken of film songs as having a mukhda, or refrain, in which the lyrics remain the same throughout the song and two or more antara(s), verses, in which the lyrics are different for each repetition. Although these terms are taken from traditional or classical musical terminology, the meanings of mukhda and antara as used in the film music industry are closer to the English refrain and verse than to their traditional meanings. North Indian classical songs, in contrast, are more commonly described in terms of an asthai (an initial melody, set in the lower half of the raga/scale) and an antara (a consequent melody set in the upper half of the raga/scale). Both have a single set of lyrics. Variety is most commonly produced through musical variation (composed or improvised) rather than through multiple sets of lyrics or verses. The songs in this study are more closely aligned to the asthai-antara model of traditional or classical music than they are to the mukhda-antara(s) model of post-1950 film song.

Immobilities: Microphones, cameras, actors

Pre-1935 film-making technology could only produce a truly synchronous recording by simultaneously recording sound and image. No system of editing existed that would allow a film-maker to match sound and image in post-production so that the recorded images of an actor’s bodily gestures, breathing and lip movements would appear to be synchronous with the recorded sounds. This was an especially crucial factor in the recording of song scenes as I have argued.

In most cases, movement by the actor during simultaneous sound and image recording was recorded not only on the image track but also on the sound track. Actors and directors had to manage, and in most cases limit, their movements; turning away from a microphone might result in changes in recorded sound and volume. The opening spectacle of Ayodyecha Raja (1932) features a chorus of courtiers whose voices move audibly closer to the microphone as their persons move visibly closer to the camera, as they proceed ritually onto the set. This early Prabhat film reflects the company’s well known connections to stage drama, in this use of sound in an ‘off-stage’ mode. That mode appears in the film again, more explicitly, when Narada – Hinduism’s messenger of the Gods – enters the court of the Gods (approximately 11 min into the film) singing ‘Aati sundar Narayana’, accompanied by paun pethi, or pedal harmonium, violin and tabla. Narada is waiting in the wings, so to speak, to make his entrance. He is not physically present in this part of the scene and is some distance from the microphone, which (we must assume) is located somewhere above the actors who are visible in the scene at this point. Narada’s voice on the sound track, therefore, carries all the perceptible, iconic signs of distance: increased reverberation, low volume and so on. Distance is clearly perceptible because the voices of the other actors – who are on the set and thus closer to the microphone – embody a near-ness that highlights Narada’s distance. Indeed, the King of the Gods and his courtier stare off into the distance (presumably in the direction from which the sound is coming) and the King asks, ‘What’s that?’ in response to the distant sounds. As Narada’s song continues, he enters the scene (in a very long shot); the volume of his voice continues to increase as he moves closer to the microphone. At this point, the ‘non-prose-item’, to use Ranade’s (110) term, develops into a full-blown song-scene (shot in largely static medium close-up).

Sounds of movement in a sound track are realistic in that such a sound track replicates the effect of distance in human hearing. Nevertheless, sounds of movement were not expected in recorded song; for the most part, such realism disappears from Hindi song scenes once the practice of pre-recording songs became established. The easiest way to avoid signs of movement on sound tracks was to ensure that the song scene was set up so as to demand little or no movement from the actor. The 1933 release by J.B. Wadia’s Wadia Movietone, Lal-e-Yaman, featured the child singing star, Feroze Dastur. In each of his three featured song scenes (‘Tasvir-e-gham bana hua’, ‘Torde hardam parwar aas’, and ‘Mashoor the jahaa mein jo ijjo shaan’) Dastur sits almost completely motionless.¹ His gaze is consistently directed upwards either in the philosophic contemplation of the fateful events about which he sings or with an eye on the microphone into which he is singing. The camera is equally motionless, so that the scenes are effectively devoid of nearly all interest other than that generated by Dastur’s voice.

Although these scenes offer excellent recordings of Dastur as a singer, the almost complete lack of movement makes them less visually engaging than they might be. In a medium that was fundamentally visual and that could record movement, directors did not consistently accept the technological limitations of simultaneous recording, even within the context of a single film.

Among other things, the cinematographic limitations of simultaneous recording only came into effect when a scene required visible synchronism. If there were no images of moving mouths, or if the images wer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: The evolution of song and dance in Hindi cinema
• 1 Synchronicity and continuity of sound and image in early Indian cinema
• 2 Two dances and a conference
• 3 Dance Musicalization: Proposing a choreomusicological approach to Hindi film song-and-dance sequences
• 4 Romance, piety, and fun: The transformation of qawwali and Islamicate culture in Hindi cinema
• 5 A.R. Rahman and the aesthetic transformation of Indian film scores
• 6 Bollywood’s variation on the firanginess theme: Song-and-dance sequences as heterotopic offbeats
• 7 Kehte Hain Humko Pyar Se Indiawaale: Shaping a contemporary diasporic Indianness in and through the Bollywood Song
• 8 The picture is not yet over!: The end credits song sequence in Bollywood
• Index