Filmi (
Hindi: फ़िल्मी संगीत ) is
Indian
popular music as written and performed for
Indian cinema, mainly
Hindi.
Music directors make up the main body of composers; the songs are performed by
playback singers and it makes up 72% of the music sales in India.
Filmi music tends to have appeal across India and overseas, especially among the Indian diaspora. Songs are often in different languages depending on the industry, for example in Hindi or Tamil. Playback singers are usually more noted for their ability to sing rather than their charisma as performers. Though these singers may release solo albums, their performances in film soundtracks tend to be more noticed due to the widespread appeal of movies.
At the "Filmi Melody: Song and Dance in Indian Cinema" archive presentation at UCLA, filmi was praised as a generally more fitting term for the tradition than 'Bombay melody' "to suggest that the exuberant music and melodrama so closely identified with the Hindi commercial cinema produced in Bombay (Mumbai) are truly pan-Indian."
Origins
In the earliest years, filmi music was generally Indian (classical Carnatic, Hindustani, and village folk) in inspiration; over the years, Western elements have increased significantly. However, film soundtracks continue to be very diverse, sometimes fusing genres or reverting to entirely classical music. Examples of this can be found throughout the history of filmi music.
Music directors
R. C. Boral, Harishchandra Bali,
Pankaj Mullick, Anil Biswas,
Naushad,
Khawaja Khurshid Anwar and
S. Rajeswara Rao were noteworthy music directors of the 1940s. Rao, who scored the 1948 Tamil
Chandralekha, the first all-India hit, continued music directing in Chennai until the 1980s. The 1950s and 1960s, included music composers like
Shankar Jaikishan,
S.D. Burman,
O.P. Nayyar,
Madan Mohan,
C. Ramchandra,
Roshan,
Vasant Desai,
Kalyanji Anandji and
Khayyam in Hindi film music.
K. V. Mahadevan, Vishwanathan-Ramamoorthy,
Laxmikant-Pyarelal,
G. Devarajan,
V Dakshinamoorthy and
M. S. Viswanathan were active music directors for more than 35 years from the 1950s. As Indian cinema segued into the 1960s and 1970s, pop artists like
R.D. Burman and duos like
Nadeem-Shravan and
Jatin-Lalit gave filmi a stronger western flavor with composers
Ilaiyaraaja and
Raveendran who rose to fame during the 1970s and 1980s in Tamil film music. Major musical forces in the 1990s and 2000s have included
A. R. Rahman,
Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy,
Vishal-Shekhar,
Vidyasagar,
Harris Jayaraj,
M. Jayachandran,
Yuvan Shankar Raja,
Deepak Dev,
Johnson,
Anu Malik,
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,
Salim-Sulaiman etc. A. R. Rahman, who was described by
Time magazine as "India's most prominent movie songwriter", is widely accepted to be the most internationally recognized Indian musican.
Well-known music Composer/ music director include the following:
Kalyanji Anandji
Vishal Bhardwaj
Vanraj Bhatia
R.D. Burman
S.D. Burman
Pritam Chakraborty
Sandeep Chutta
Ismail Darbar
Harris Jayaraj
Kailash-Naresh-Paresh
Khayyam
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
M.M. Kreem
Hemant Kumar
Bappi Lahiri
Jatin Lalit
Madan-Mohan
Anu Malik
Anand Milind
Amar Mohile
Shantanu Moitra
Khawaja Khurshid Anwar
Naushad
O.P. Nayyar
Indian Ocan
Laxmikant Pyarelal
A.R. Rahman
Ananda Raj Ananda
Illayaraja
Ram-Lakhan
Himesh Reshammiya
Rajesh Roshan
Vidya Sagar
Sajid-Wajid
Salim-Sulaiman
Viju Shah
Sandesh Shandilya
Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
Shankar-Jaikisha
Mithoon Sharma
Monty Sharma
Nadeem Shravan
Siddharth-Suhas
Raju Singh
Ades Srivastav
Amit Trivedi
Vishal-Shekhar
Raveendran
Uttam Singh
Playback singer
Full article: Playback singer
A playback singer is a singer who pre-records songs for use in films. The singer records the song and the actors or actresses lip-sync the song in front of the cameras, a form of singing that is characteristic of the Indian subcontinent. The songs of a film, the quality of the music and its music director (composer), lyricist and singer have often determined the success of a film. Film soundtracks are sometimes released before the release of the film itself, resulting in a disparity between the soundtrack and the songs appearing in the film.
Well-known playback singers include the following:
Kundan Lal Saigal
Pankaj Mullick
Kanan Devi
Juthika Roy
Khurshid
Parul Ghosh
Amirbai Karnataki
Suraiya
Shamshad Begum
Lata Mangeshkar
P.Susheela
Mohammed Rafi
T. M. Soundararajan
Hemant Kumar
Asha Bhosle
Geeta Dutt
Suman Kalyanpur
Talat Mehmood
Mukesh
Manna Dey
Noor Jahan
Kishore Kumar
Yesudas
S. P. Balasubrahmanyam
Udit Narayan
Kavita Krishnamurthy
Alka Yagnik
Kumar Sanu
Shreya Ghoshal
Sunidhi Chauhan
Abhijeet Bhattacharya
M. G. Sreekumar
Shankar Mahadevan
Sonu Niigam
Hariharan
Chinmayi
Sukhwinder Singh
Shaan
Krishna Kumar Kunnath (K.K.)
Vishal Dadlani
Mohit Chauhan
Mahalakshmi Iyer
Anushka Mahadevan
Lucky Ali
Shaan
Udit Narayan
Lyricists
Full article: Hindi songs
In the 1950s and '60s, lyricists like Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Rajinder Krishan, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Bharat Vyas, Shakeel Badayuni, Qamar Jalalabadi, Anand Bakshi, Jan Nissar Akhtar and S.H. Bihari wrote lyrics of many classic filmi songs. Lyrics tended towards the literary and drew heavily on contemporary Urdu and Hindi poetry. The south has seen poets like Kannadasan, Vairamuthu and Vaali rise to prominence, in Tamil poetry and literature along side Vayalar Ramavarma , P. Bhaskaran, O. N. V. Kurup in Malayalam Music Industry
Popularity ratings
Binaca Geetmala,
Ameen Sayani's popular
Hindi language radio show before
satellite television took over in India sometime in the 1990s, gave weekly popularity ratings of Hindi film songs (akin to the
Billboard Hot 100 list of songs). It ran in various incarnations from 1952 to 1993, and annual lists of the most popular songs were played at year-end. The list was compiled on the basis of record sales in
India. Currently, Hindi filmi songs are sold on tape and CD compilations, played as promos and in programs on various television channels and radio stations, with different popularity ratings claiming different songs as being on the top.
Accusations of plagiarism
Because popular music directors score a great many films over the course of a year, accusations of plagiarizing abound. For example, one production number in
Dil (1990) is based on
Carl Perkins'
Blue Suede Shoes, sung with
Hindi lyrics. Of late the Indian film industry has been gaining visibility outside India, and the legal risks of plagiarism have been gaining importance. Some producers have actually paid for the musical rights to popular Western songs, as in
Kal Ho Naa Ho's song,
Pretty Woman. Plagiarism has also existed within India, with several music directors in Bombay cinema lifting tunes from other "regional" industries.
There have also been accusations of plagiarism against foreigner musicians borrowing from Hindi filmi songs. For example, "Don't Phunk with My Heart" by The Black Eyed Peas was largely based on two 1970s filmi songs: "Ye Mera Dil Yaar Ka Diwana" from Don (1978) and "Ae Nujawan Hai Sub" from Apradh (1972). Both songs were originally composed by Kalyanji Anandji and sung by Asha Bhosle. Another example is "Addictive" sung by Truth Hurts, which is lifted from Lata Mangeshkar's "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai" from Jyoti (1981). This led to the copyright holders of the original song filing a lawsuit against DJ Quik and Dr. Dre, the producers of "Addictive". Filmi music composed by A. R. Rahman (who would later win two Academy Awards for the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack) has frequently been sampled by musicians elsewhere in the world, including the Singaporean artist Kelly Poon, the Uzbek artist Iroda Dilroz, the French rap group La Caution, the American artist Ciara, and the German band Löwenherz, among others.
Wider success for filmi
Filmi is also making converts and exerting influence beyond the usual
Desi audiences. Western music stores carry Indian music compilations.
Baz Luhrmann showcases the song "Chamma Chamma" from
China Gate (1998) in his
2001 movie
Moulin Rouge. Another 2001 film
Ghost World featured
Mohammed Rafi's song "
Jaan Pehechan Ho" from the 1965 film
Gumnaam. Scores from
Chennai Tamil films have appeared in productions such as
Lord of War and
The Accidental Husband. A. R. Rahman rose from fame in the Chennai film industry to become one of the most popular current music directors and has had a musical
Bombay Dreams, playing in London and New York, and scored several projects outside India.
Ilaiyaraaja won the Gold Remi Award for Best Music Score jointly with film composer
M. S. Viswanathan at the
WorldFest-Houston Film Festival for the Tamil film
Vishwa Thulasi (2005).
The song "Chaiyya Chaiyya", originally composed by A. R. Rahman for Dil Se (1998), has also been well received around the world, making several top 10 world music lists and has even been featured in several American movies. The song was in both the opening scene and credits of Spike Lee's Inside Man. Rahman's earlier soundtrack for Roja (1991) was included in TIME's 10 Best Soundtracks of all time in 2005. Hindi filmi music has reached an even wider global audience due to the success of the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, also composed by Rahman.
See also
Indian film music directors
Playback singer
Tamil cinema
Telugu cinema
Bollywood songs
Bollywood
Cinema of India
Filmi qawwali
Balkan pop
Turbo-folk
Chalga
Manele
Skiladiko
Laïka
References
Category:Indian styles of music
Category:Popular music