Music
Film Music
Popular Hindi/Urdu film music is usually seen as adequately constituting the “essence” of commercial Sub-continental cinema. Since the advent of talkies in the early 1930s, almost all mainstream films made in South-Asian region (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) feature song and dance routines. For the last few decades, film music had undergone visible changes in the subcontinent by borrowing from all known styles and genres of music from Indian classical, folk, and devotional music to Japanese, Persian and Western music.
In the pre-independence period, film music drew its existence from the theatre music which later changed in content and form. While in India, music directors such as Master Ghulam Haider, Naushad, Anil Biswas, Khemchand Parkash, Master Sajjad and O.P. Nayyar produced some of the memorable tunes; in Pakistan Khurshid Anwar, G.A. Chishti, A. Hameed, Tasadduq Hussain, Robin Ghosh, Sohail Rana and Nisar Bazmi made outstanding contribution in the field of film music.
The western influence on film has been overly visible on film music in both India and Pakistan. During the 1950s, rock-n-roll, African and Latin American music was evident in compositions. Film directors used to make a conscious effort to create a situation wherein they could add at least one club song or dance for accommodating western tunes. This fusion tendency found instant popularity which continued for quite some years until it was overshadowed by other western influences – disco, pop and rap.
Film Singers and Music Directors
Bulo C. Rani (Music Director -India) – Zeenat Begum (Singer – India, Pakistan)
Folk Music
The folk tradition has been a great source of Indian-Subcontinent’s melodic culture, celebrated for its lyrical sweep and richness. Folk songs are inspired by the seasonal rhythms of nature and are inextricably linked to the day-to-day lives of farmers, cattle herders and camel drivers. They also celebrate heroic deeds and bemoan lost love. Because it is music that is close to the earth, it has great elemental power. It moves its listeners in strange ways. The authorship of folk songs is seldom known, but they often are the work of individual poets or performers or groups of musicians to which succeeding generations add new embellishments and melodic decorations.
The folk music of Indian-Subcontinent, as elsewhere, is of varying excellence. Its beauty is enhanced when it is heard at the time of the year to which it relates, for example, spring or the rainy season. Folk songs originating from different regions of Indian-Subcontinent represent different subcultures, but when they reach the general populace beyond their region or origin, they become part of the national musical and cultural mainstream.
Folk Singers
Ghazals
The ghazal has soared in popularity in the last 50 years, overtaking other musical forms, especially the more purely classical ones. Indian-Subcontinent has produced the most celebrated of ghazal singers, among them Mehdi Hasan, Farida Khanum, Iqbal Bano, Begum Akhtar and Ghulam Ali. All music, no matter what form it is presented in, flows from its great classical source, the ghazal being no exception. Some of the most popular ghazals, therefore, are based on classical raagas and raaganis. In that sense, the ghazal has improved and elevated popular taste, while at the same time inducting the common listener into the magical world of lyrical poetry. Often the popular following of a poet has been judged by the popularity of his ghazals. For bringing some of the finest poetry in the Urdu language to the people, the practitioners of the exquisite art of ghazal singing undoubtedly deserve great credit.
Classical
Classical music falls into two broad categories: the first constituted by durpad, khayal, tarana and tappa, the second by the lighter and more romantic thumri and dadra. There are hundreds of ragas and ragnis in the classical music family, subdivided into eight thaths or basic groups. A raga recital begins with an alap, the slow, rhythm-free elaboration that brings out the quintessential spirit and feeling of the raga. The tempo gradually quickens in the second and third movements when the melody gets knit into rhythm formed by a cyclical pattern of matras or beats which vary in number. The rhythmical patterns, called taals, can vary in duration when a composition is rendered in three phases. slow or bilampat, medium or madh and fast or drut. A raga is a melodic concept which is developed and refined during presentation by the vocalist or instrumentalist according to his creative approach and ability. The rich musical legacy inherited by Indian-Subcontinent is to be credited to the genius of musicians during the past thousand years. These masters built a formidable and sophisticated edifice on the music of ancient India. The onslaught of western music in recent years has failed to affect the purity of the classical tradition, though the number of its devotees may not be as large as it once was