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Indian film music refers to the music produced for India's mainstream motion picture industry and written and performed for Indian cinema. In cinema, music directors make up the m…
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Investigate this subjectIndian film music refers to the music produced for India's mainstream motion picture industry and written and performed for Indian cinema. In cinema, music directors make up the main body of composers; the songs are performed by playback singers and the genre represents 72% of the music sales market in India.
Indian film music refers to the music produced for India's mainstream motion picture industry and written and performed for Indian cinema. In cinema, music directors make up the main body of composers; the songs are performed by playback singers and the genre represents 72% of the music sales market in India.
Indian film music tends to have appeal across India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and overseas, especially among the Indian diaspora. Songs are often in different languages depending on the target audience, for example in Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Odia, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Assamese, etc. Playback singers are usually more noted for their ability to sing rather than their charisma as performers. Their level of success and appeal is tied to their involvement with film soundtracks of cinema releases with the highest box office ratings.
In the earliest years of Indian cinema, film music was primarily influenced by Indian classical traditions, including Carnatic music and Hindustani classical music, as well as regional folk music. Over time, Western musical elements such as orchestration, harmony, and instrumentation became increasingly incorporated into film music, especially from the mid-20th century onward. Despite these changes, film soundtracks remain diverse, often blending multiple musical styles or returning to classical roots.
R. C. Boral, Harishchandra Bali, Pankaj Mullick, Anil Biswas, Naushad Ali, Khwaja 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, Hemant Kumar, 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, Bappi Lahiri and duos like Nadeem–Shravan and Jatin–Lalit gave Indian film music 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, Nadeem–Shravan, Pritam, Himesh Reshammiya, Harris Jayaraj, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, Vishal–Shekhar, Vidyasagar, Ramesh Narayan, M. Jayachandran, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Deepak Dev, Johnson, Anu Malik, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Salim–Sulaiman, Devi Sri Prasad 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 musician.
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 film itself, resulting in a disparity between the soundtrack and the songs appearing in the film.
Kundan Lal Saigal was one of the earliest playback singers in the Indian music industry. Notable playback singers include Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Talat Mahmood, Mahendra Kapoor, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, K. J. Yesudas, S. Janaki, P. Susheela, K. S. Chithra, MG Sreekumar, Udit Narayan, Amit Kumar, Alka Yagnik, Sujatha, Hemlata (singer), Kumar Sanu, Armaan Malik,
Sonu Nigam, Shaan, KK, Shreya Ghoshal, Arijit Singh, Mohit Chauhan, Javed Ali, Neha Kakkar, Priyadarshini and many others.
In the 1950s and 1960s, lyricists like Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Rajendra Krishan, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Bharat Vyas, Shakeel Badayuni, Qamar Jalalabadi, Anand Bakshi, Jan Nisar Akhtar and S. H. Bihari wrote lyrics of many classic film 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 alongside Vayalar Ramavarma, P. Bhaskaran, O. N. V. Kurup in the Malayalam music industry.
Nowadays, some famous lyricists are Rashmi Virag, Kunaal Vermaa, Manoj Muntashir, Rakesh Kumar, Irshad Kamil, Sayeed Quadri, Armaan Malik etc.
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 film music 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. In an annual exercise, a net-based effort RMIM Puraskaar lists all important Hindi film songs of the year, in addition to awarding songs for various categories.
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 (2003) song, "Oh, Pretty Woman". Plagiarism
Source: Indian film music (CC BY-SA)
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