The Demise of Melody in Bollywood Songs

Syed Ibrahim Rizvi

Professor, University of Allahabad

Of all things Indian, perhaps the influence of Bollywood is beyond compare. Indian films and their music have not only played a major role in bridging the diversity of languages, cultures, and customs within India but have also become a unique selling commodity in the world. Given its vast influence on almost half of the world’s population, Bollywood films and its music always create a niche for itself transcending the barriers of cultures, race, and gender.

Music has always been an integral part of Bollywood films. In the era between the 1950s and to 1980s music composers burnt the midnight oil to create melodies that made the nation go wild listening to the tunes. Since there was no television, songs were listened to on the radio.  It was much later starting from the 1980s that the era of television started and music transformed itself from a listening experience to visual content. The Directors and Producers of films started creating songs that had voyeuristic content exciting the imagination of viewers. The melody in the songs took a back seat. This was also the time when Western influence started creeping into Indian music. The ‘raag’ based songs slowly started giving space to Western-influenced music relying more on fast, jerky, and sometimes jarring sequences of notes.

Music is found in all parts of the world and therefore scientists believe that music has some kind of evolutionary importance. It is also a universal fact that good music gives a profound pleasure which is incomparable. It is thus significant here to define what is ‘pleasure’. Pleasure is a state of feeling when a person experiences happiness. Happiness is achieved when an area of the brain, known as the reward center gets activated, the activation of the reward center releases certain chemicals which then act on other areas of the brain. The series of events that follow once the ‘reward center’ is activated culminates into the feeling of happiness leading to a state of pleasure.

Scientists believe that all those activities that are important for the sustenance of life are linked to the activation of the ‘reward center’ of the brain and somehow give us pleasure. Good food, sex, money, and good health are a few glaring examples that give us pleasure. And each one of these is important for life. Since music also gives us pleasure, it is thought that music has also a role to play in making our life good.

It is now becoming clear that music and language evolved separately in the course of human evolution in the last two lac years. Scientists believe that music evolved because it helped early humans to synchronize and to harmonize. This happened probably at a time when humans had not developed the ability to communicate and language had not evolved.

With the above scientific evidence in sight, it is easier to understand the effects of Bollywood music in the first half-century of its existence. Great music composers such as Naushad, Madan Mohan, Shankar-Jaikishan, Ravi, and many others of the same era composed lilting melodies between the 1950s to 1980s. The imaginative poetry of equally great poets who poured their hearts out to create the lyrics created musical numbers that have become immortal. The tunes composed between the 1950s to 1980s were soul-stirring. Such was the melody of those times that even after seventy years the same tunes are being copied, remixed, and repackaged. A classic example is the 1954 released song ‘Mera dil ye pukare aaja’ from the film Nagin. Even after seventy-four years it is being repacked and released not only within India but in other countries as well. Similarly, the romantic emotions of the 1947 song ‘Afsana like rahi hoon’ from the film Dard are unparalleled even after almost seventy-five years.

Behold the sight of an adolescent Sadhna lip-syncing the song ‘Jhumka gira re bareli ke bazzar me’ in the 1966 movie Mera Saaya. It is a fact that there is no comparison of any musical score post-year 2000 that has ruled the imagination of a teenage girl’s fantasy for a jhumka, even though it may have been lost in the bazaars of Bareli!

With primitive recording technology, human-choreographed orchestras, and no computers, the musical score of Bollywood films continued to belt out songs that not only hypnotized Indians but also became a rage in most nations. ‘Awara hoon’ and ‘Mera joota hai japani’ were perhaps more popular in the USSR than in India. Films like Mughle Azam, Guide, Safar, and many more stood out not only for their stories but also for their immortal music.

However, by the 1980s Western influence started coming to Bollywood. In the era when patents and copyrights had no teeth, many music directors found it easy to copy Western tunes. The highly acclaimed Hindi song   Sachi Yeh Kahani Hai from the film Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na was a direct lift of the 1978 released Boney M song, Rasputin. Many of the subsequent hit Indian songs had tunes copied from Western numbers.

By the year 2000, the age of computers had arrived in Bollywood. Gone were the days of the background music being created by a hundred musicians comprising the orchestra. The computer became the new violin, sitar, and tabla. The rapid evolution of visual media gave Directors and Producers a new target to capture the imagination of the film-loving public. The melody in music was replaced by something that was anything but music. Scientifically, researchers have found three worldwide trends in songs, songs tend to be slower than speech with higher and slightly more stable pitches. The slower nature of words in a song helps our ears to distinguish a song (or melodious tune) from a normal speech. Unfortunately, the new range of songs that have fast repetition of words cannot be classified as a musical score.

The noted English poet Alfred Tennyson wrote these iconic lines in his poem ‘Morte d’Arthur”  “The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world”. So true was Tennyson when he wrote these lines in 1848. Almost all aspects of life change over some time yielding place to new versions which are invariably better. This change has been the basis of human evolution. However, some changes do not conform to Tennyson’s law. The eclipse of Bollywood’s melody to rap, jazz, pop, and hip-hop is a change Tennyson himself may not agree with!

(The writer is Professor of Biochemistry at University of Allahabad)