Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film StudiosBeginning in the 1930s, men and a handful of women came from India's many communities-Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others--to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, "the original fusion music." They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name "Bollywood," but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, "behind the curtain"--the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. Now, Gregory D. Booth offers a compelling account of the Bollywood film music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In a rare insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, Booth explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film music industry. On the basis of a fascinating set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creator and performers. Booth also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s-90s as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India. Featuring an extensive companion website with video interviews with the musicians themselves, Behind the Curtain is a powerful, ground-level view of this globally important music industry. |
Contents
Who Is Anthony Gonsalves? | 3 |
History Technology and a Determinist | 25 |
The Life of Music in the Mumbai Film Industry | 119 |
Copyright | |
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actors Anil Biswas Anthony Gonsalves arranger background music Bappi Lahiri began Bombay called career Chakravarty chapter Chatterjee cians classical music composers creative cultural dance Dattaram Waadkar early electronic keyboards Ernest Menezes Film Centre film line film musicians film-music industry film's Filmistan filmmaking freelance Goan Hindi cinema Hindi film song instruments jazz JERRY FERNANDES JOE MONSORATE Kalyanji-Anandji Kersi Lord keyboards Khan Kolkata Kumar late Laxmikant-Pyarelal Mehboob melody Mumbai film industry musi music directors music drama music room musical style Naushad Naushad Ali O. P. Nayyar Old Bollywood oral history orchestra playback singers played player popular music practice producers Pyarelal Sharma R. D. Burman recording sessions recording studio recordist rehearsals rhythm role rupees salaried scene Shankar-Jaikishan singing sitting musicians sometimes staff notation stylistic SUMIT MITRA tabla tape TAUFIQ QURESHI things tion tracks VIJU SHAH violinist violins VISTASP BALSARA Western music