Focus: Popular Music in Contemporary India

Natalie Sarrazin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138585461
• eBook ISBN: 9780429999314
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

Focus: Popular Music in Contemporary India examines India's musical soundscape beyond the classical and folk traditions of old to consider the culturally, socially, and politically rich contemporary music that is defining and energizing an Indian youth culture on the precipice of a major identity shift. From Bollywood film songs and Indo-jazz to bhangra hip-hop and Indian death metal, the book situates Indian popular music within critical and historical frameworks, highlighting the unprecedented changes the region's music has undergone in recent decades. This critical approach provides readers with a foundation for understanding an Indian musical culture that is as diverse and complex as the region itself.

Included are case studies featuring song notations, first-person narratives, and interviews of well-known artists and emerging musicians alike. Illuminated are issues of great import in India today—as reflected through its music—addressing questions of a "national" aesthetic, the effects of Western music, and identity politics as they relate to class, caste, LGBTQ perspectives, and other marginalized voices. Presented through a global lens, Focus: Popular Music in Contemporary India contextualizes the dynamic popular music of India and its vast cultural impact.

PART I

Understanding Indian Music

Part I, “Understanding Indian Music” reviews the history and fundamental aesthetics of India’s music traditions, particularly the elements that inform India’s contemporary genres. This section stresses Indian music’s indigenous traditional forms: classical, semi-classical, religious, and folk styles, instruments, timbres, practice and theory. It also highlights India’s cultural and musical identity, making note of its cosmopolitan nature and outside influences as varied and fluid rather than entrenched in isolated traditions. These forms present strong cross- and inter-cultural elements, as they celebrate poetic traditions, sacred sounds of the divine, and a wide range of regional and local identities and sentiments. Vignettes address significant musical elements and performance practices of each genre, and their relationship to their ongoing popularity, influence, and cultural consumption in the contemporary music soundscape. Along the way, the reader is introduced to Indian vocabulary and concepts to help navigate the complexities of Indian music as it evolves into modernity and westernizes.

CHAPTER1

India in Musical and Cultural Perspective

A. R. Rahman’s 2011 world tour “Jai Ho: The Journey Home” opens with a musical and metaphorical “journey” obliquely related to the Oscar-winning Indian composer’s life. A spotlight finds a young boy named Malachi in the middle of the audience, and follows him as he runs hither and thither searching for someone or something. Backed by a cacophony of world percussion, drum set, voices, a drone, and a flute frenetically improvising in a South Indian style, Malachi reaches the stage to find a Rahman lookalike who is running in place. All the while, an orchestral arrangement of the song “The Journey Home” emerges from the sonic chaos – a number from Rahman’s score for Bombay Dreams, which was a Bollywood-themed musical produced in London in 2002. Highlights from A. R. Rahman’s entire life are flashed across the stage backdrop in the manner of illuminated train windows passing by. The A. R. R. lookalike is lifted up in the air as the real Rahman descends from a white staircase, centerstage, surrounded by dancers sporting Indian garb representing various groups from around the country.

Directed by Amy Tinkham, the tour featured a panoply of styles, images, and messages, including a tribute to Michael Jackson (“Black or White”) and Indian “patriotic” numbers replete with visuals of Gandhi and Independence freedom fighters. Rahman sings a moving duet, “Luka Chuppi” (“Hide and Seek”) from the 2006 film Rang de Basanti with a 30-foot hologram of 81-year-old Lata Mangeshkar, India’s most revered film playback singer. Song lyrics in the show are in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Urdu, and English representing India’s varied but collective culture. Buried amidst Rahman’s pop- and techno-based film songs are his hip-hop numbers, sung by the Chennai-born rap artist Blaaze, as well as North and South Indian classical numbers composed by Rahman. Religious representations of both Islam and Hinduism are depicted in the scenic design – one of the most obvious being a giant Ganesh (the elephant God that removes obstacles from people’s paths), which accompanied a number from Bombay Dreams.

While critics have questioned the cohesiveness of the production, there is no denying that the wide range of sources, sounds, and images in the Jai Ho Tour represent not only A. R. Rahman the musician, but also India in the early 21st century. The tour is emblematic of India’s internal diversity as well as its globalized influences. Midway through the production, for example, Rahman pays tribute to Michael Jackson by singing “Black or White,” while the young Malachi¹ imitates Jackson’s dance moves. Michael Jackson remains highly popular in India and was one of Rahman’s musical inspirations. Rahman’s pop influences are prominently displayed in this homage while he also honors his more traditional folk and classical Indian influences.

The tour production is also representative of global India. The themes of victory and journey are indicative of two of Rahman’s highly successful international collaborative productions – one with Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and the other with Andrew Lloyd Webber of Bombay Dreams (2002). The title of the tour, Jai Ho: The Journey Home, is an amalgam of two different song titles from those productions. “Jai Ho” (“May Victory Be Yours”) is Rahman’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning song from Slumdog Millionaire that depicts the struggles of a Mumbai teen growing up in the slums who has a shot at becoming a millionaire on a game show. The second part of the title, “The Journey Home,” is a song from the musical production Bombay Dreams, about a boy from the Bombay slums who has a shot to make it big in the Bollywood film industry. “The Journey Home,” sung by the hero as he returns home, is filled with longing for his family as he realizes his heart had always remained in the slums. One could speculate in the choice of title, of course, that Rahman identifies with the slum boy in some way, and that his own success of “making it big” in Mumbai² parallels the journeys of the two boys.

An analysis of the title “The Journey Home” reveals several interpretations that speak to both Rahman in particular and Indians in general. “Home” could refer to Rahman’s arrival on the global scene as a world phenomenon, or it could refer to the idea that he is bringing the concert “home” to Indians in the world diaspora for nostalgic consumption. One other possibility is that “home” refers to Rahman’s return to India, where the final tour dates occurred after his global triumph. In any case, Rahman’s life is representative of the style of popular music that has captured the Indian imagination – a conglomeration of global sounds immersed within a quintessential “Indianness”. No other composer captures this as well as Rahman in the late 20th and early 21st centuries – we will revisit his work later on.

Identity and Indian Music

In India, music is a part of life – from birth to death.

(Raj Kapoor, Filmmaker, There’ll Always Be Stars in the Sky)

The quote above by famous Bollywood film actor, producer, and director Raj Kapoor, reveals a certain truth about India – that life is accompanied by music and song. As is the case with any statement about India, not everything holds true in all places. What is true for one section, region, or demographic (e.g. northern, southern, eastern, western, urban, rural, Hindu, Islamic, Christian) may not true of other parts of the country. Larger song repertoires are more likely to be found in more traditional areas of the country, and mostly in the rural north. The same goes for any of the hundreds of song genres that accompany daily life events and religious rituals. The vernacular is critical in both lyrics and music, and more importantly, the predominance of the local – both geographically and in terms of community, drives India’s musical engine as well as the reaction to it. Throughout these chapters, we’ll explore the ways in which Indian music is particular to the culturally diverse nature of the Indian experience. The following are examples of music marking different stages of the Indian life cycle.

One cultural concern affecting musical choice is a child’s gender. Folk songs such as Sohar or Badhai, genres found in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, are sung to celebrate the birth of a male child with lyrics that equate his birth to that of Lord Krishna. Then there are songs accompanying ceremonies for the baby’s first day, sixth day, first haircut, and many more occasions – genres of songs that are mostly non-existent in other cultures.

When thinking of a lullaby, we might envision a mother holding her baby and singing a Hindi equivalent of “Baa, Baa Black Sheep” or “Lullaby and Goodnight” all across the country as we do in the US or UK. However, this is not indicative of the Indian musical experience, which is much more regionally dependent. Except for a few imported English songs or popular Bollywood film songs, there is no unified, national song repertoire in India. A mother (or grandmother, or anyone in an extended family) for example, is just as likely to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Understanding Indian Music
• PART II Popular Music in India
• PART III Focusing In: Youth and Music in India Today
• Index