Abstract
Elaborate songs and dances are the distinct markers of Bollywood. Many cinematic songs dominate the musical landscape of the country. Ali Mir and Raza Mir investigate the deployment of songs in Bollywood, sometimes to propel the cinematic narrative and sometimes to interrupt it. They trace the trajectory of song lyrics in Bollywood films from the early days of anticolonial struggle, through the period of the hegemony of the Progressive Writers’ Association (i.e., a movement by lyricists to use popular music to effect social transformation), to the current period of neoliberalization, where lyrics are either fantastical or a form of depolitization.
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Notes
- 1.
We use the quotation marks around “Hindi” because the language of these films could more accurately be called Urdu or Hindustani.
- 2.
The movie has not survived, but historical accounts suggest that it had several songs. One account puts the number of songs at 55.
- 3.
Many Hindi film comedians often chose to take on Christian names such as Johnny Walker, Polson, Charlie, and Johnny Lever.
- 4.
Mukul Kesavan (1994) also talks about the influence of Hindi literary stalwarts such as Bharatendu Harishchandra, Pramath Nath Mitra, and Thibo Babu on Hindi writers in the domain of popular culture.
- 5.
The instructions given to these lyricists included this one: “Write this verse without using the ‘m’ sound” because saying anything with ‘m’ in it required the lips to come together, and this would interfere with the lip synchronization of the song.
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Mir, A., Mir, R. (2016). The Trajectory of Bollywood Lyrics. In: Lee, JH., Kolluri, S. (eds) Hong Kong and Bollywood. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94932-8_2
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