[From my DNA column]
The use of the song in popular Hindi cinema – its disruption of narrative, its apparent lack of “logic” – often invites snobbery from those who have a narrowly defined view of realism in art. But a great song – combining rhythm, lyrics and singing to optimum effect – can reach emotional depths and express poetic truths in ways that conventional narrative cannot. Similarly, a well-filmed musical sequence can work within the context of a movie to deepen our attitudes to the characters and situations. And an advantage of being a movie buff in the YouTube age is being able to watch old song sequences almost on demand – to view them either as short films in their own right (much like MTV videos) or as part of the larger work.
The vitality of some of these scenes – even in generally mediocre movies – is remarkable. At times it is like the film has entered a magical realm, the music inspiring the unit to transcend their own efforts and move beyond the commonplace of standard, plot-oriented storytelling. Little wonder that even Satyajit Ray, who was famously snarky about many aspects of popular cinema, wrote in an essay: “It is surprising how much thought goes into the cinematic handling (‘picturisation’, as the term goes) of these numbers […] Songs are now choreographed. It is not uncommon these days to have each line of a lyric sung against a different scenic background. This is – and I am not being facetious – a daring innovation, wholly cinematic and entirely valid if it is related in style to the rest of the film.”
In 1968, the year of Ray's Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, the man who played the delightfully goggle-eyed magician Borfi in that film also appeared in - and sang in - the Hindi movie Aashirwad. Harindranath Chattopadhyay (credited here simply as Harindranath) is the genial old musician Baiju, who becomes guru to the protagonist Jogi Thakur (Ashok Kumar), and one of the film’s highlights is the long, teasing song sequence “Saaf Karo Insaaf Karo”, where Jogi and Baiju watch a performance by a Lavani dance troupe, answering riddles and posing their own. This is an energetic, innuendo-laden jugalbandhi between women and men, superbly acted by Kumar and Chattopadhyaya – who are palpably enjoying themselves – as well as by the dancers. (That’s another thing: we sometimes take our song 
sequences so much for granted that we overlook the amount of performing skill that can go into them.) Incidentally Jogi’s final question, which stumps the women, has a minor thematic link to what happens later in the film – an example of an apparently superfluous musical sequence being organic to the story.
Harindranath also wrote the words for the most famous song in Aashirwad, one that trivia buffs – even those who haven’t seen the film – know well. This is the “Rail Gaadi” number, sung by Ashok Kumar in his own voice for a group of little children. Rooted though it is in the cadences of semi-classical Indian music, the song’s rapid-fire style has won it a reputation as a precursor to modern rap and hip-hop; among cineastes, “Hindi cinema gave the world its first rap song” is a proclamation made with nearly as much pride as “India gave the world the concept of Zero”.
But what I was unprepared for when I watched “Rail Gaadi” on YouTube recently was its visual language. Around the one-minute mark, as Kumar launches into the song’s fastest movement, racing through the names of train stations (“Mangalore Bangalore / Talegaon Malegaon / Khandwa Mandwa”), the camera begins a series of super-fast zoom ins and zoom outs – going from a medium shot of the actor to an extreme close up and back in the time it takes to snap your fingers; the visuals are mimicking, or trying to keep pace with, the music. There were many creative song sequences in 1960s Hindi cinema, but offhand I can’t think of another one that employs this effect to the same degree. (Even the vibrant “Yahoo!” sequence in the Shammi Kapoor-starrer Junglee feels a little staid in comparison.) The quick zooms are like an anticipation of similar techniques in such MTV videos as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ “Give it Away” more than 20 years later.
This is particularly notable because the film’s director, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, was hardly a major stylist at this point in his career. In his earliest films in the late 50s, Mukherjee (perhaps influenced by his association with Bimal Roy) did show a certain visual flair, but by the time Aashirwad was made he had settled into the more functional, character-oriented storytelling that would make him such an endearing figure in the “Middle Cinema” of the 1970s. Yet here he and his lensman T B Seetharam are, using an unusual cinematic language – positively avant-garde by the standards of the time – to match a song’s energy.
It is the sort of scene that can make you rethink your ideas about cinematic form. After watching it, I revisited a markedly different type of song sequence, the gentle “Kuch Dil ne Kaha”, from another Mukherjee film of the time, the 1966 Anupama. In this scene, Anupama (Sharmila Tagore) – a reticent, emotionally repressed girl – is singing to herself, unaware that she is being watched by the film’s hero Ashok (or by us). Accordingly the camera is respectful of her shyness and her need for solitude. It maintains a decent distance, there are many long takes and slow tracking shots as we are put in the position of the watching Ashok: intrigued, paying attention, but taking care not to be intrusive. This sequence is just as placid and sober as “Rail Gaadi” is vigorous, but in both cases the stylistic choice is apt for the character and the mood – and these are just two among countless examples of how songs can be enriching presences in the unique storytelling engine that is the mainstream Hindi film.
[An earlier post about visual language in another Hindi-film song sequence, “Bachpan ke Din” from Sujata. More on song sequences soon]
The use of the song in popular Hindi cinema – its disruption of narrative, its apparent lack of “logic” – often invites snobbery from those who have a narrowly defined view of realism in art. But a great song – combining rhythm, lyrics and singing to optimum effect – can reach emotional depths and express poetic truths in ways that conventional narrative cannot. Similarly, a well-filmed musical sequence can work within the context of a movie to deepen our attitudes to the characters and situations. And an advantage of being a movie buff in the YouTube age is being able to watch old song sequences almost on demand – to view them either as short films in their own right (much like MTV videos) or as part of the larger work.
The vitality of some of these scenes – even in generally mediocre movies – is remarkable. At times it is like the film has entered a magical realm, the music inspiring the unit to transcend their own efforts and move beyond the commonplace of standard, plot-oriented storytelling. Little wonder that even Satyajit Ray, who was famously snarky about many aspects of popular cinema, wrote in an essay: “It is surprising how much thought goes into the cinematic handling (‘picturisation’, as the term goes) of these numbers […] Songs are now choreographed. It is not uncommon these days to have each line of a lyric sung against a different scenic background. This is – and I am not being facetious – a daring innovation, wholly cinematic and entirely valid if it is related in style to the rest of the film.”
In 1968, the year of Ray's Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, the man who played the delightfully goggle-eyed magician Borfi in that film also appeared in - and sang in - the Hindi movie Aashirwad. Harindranath Chattopadhyay (credited here simply as Harindranath) is the genial old musician Baiju, who becomes guru to the protagonist Jogi Thakur (Ashok Kumar), and one of the film’s highlights is the long, teasing song sequence “Saaf Karo Insaaf Karo”, where Jogi and Baiju watch a performance by a Lavani dance troupe, answering riddles and posing their own. This is an energetic, innuendo-laden jugalbandhi between women and men, superbly acted by Kumar and Chattopadhyaya – who are palpably enjoying themselves – as well as by the dancers. (That’s another thing: we sometimes take our song 
sequences so much for granted that we overlook the amount of performing skill that can go into them.) Incidentally Jogi’s final question, which stumps the women, has a minor thematic link to what happens later in the film – an example of an apparently superfluous musical sequence being organic to the story.Harindranath also wrote the words for the most famous song in Aashirwad, one that trivia buffs – even those who haven’t seen the film – know well. This is the “Rail Gaadi” number, sung by Ashok Kumar in his own voice for a group of little children. Rooted though it is in the cadences of semi-classical Indian music, the song’s rapid-fire style has won it a reputation as a precursor to modern rap and hip-hop; among cineastes, “Hindi cinema gave the world its first rap song” is a proclamation made with nearly as much pride as “India gave the world the concept of Zero”.
But what I was unprepared for when I watched “Rail Gaadi” on YouTube recently was its visual language. Around the one-minute mark, as Kumar launches into the song’s fastest movement, racing through the names of train stations (“Mangalore Bangalore / Talegaon Malegaon / Khandwa Mandwa”), the camera begins a series of super-fast zoom ins and zoom outs – going from a medium shot of the actor to an extreme close up and back in the time it takes to snap your fingers; the visuals are mimicking, or trying to keep pace with, the music. There were many creative song sequences in 1960s Hindi cinema, but offhand I can’t think of another one that employs this effect to the same degree. (Even the vibrant “Yahoo!” sequence in the Shammi Kapoor-starrer Junglee feels a little staid in comparison.) The quick zooms are like an anticipation of similar techniques in such MTV videos as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ “Give it Away” more than 20 years later.This is particularly notable because the film’s director, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, was hardly a major stylist at this point in his career. In his earliest films in the late 50s, Mukherjee (perhaps influenced by his association with Bimal Roy) did show a certain visual flair, but by the time Aashirwad was made he had settled into the more functional, character-oriented storytelling that would make him such an endearing figure in the “Middle Cinema” of the 1970s. Yet here he and his lensman T B Seetharam are, using an unusual cinematic language – positively avant-garde by the standards of the time – to match a song’s energy.
It is the sort of scene that can make you rethink your ideas about cinematic form. After watching it, I revisited a markedly different type of song sequence, the gentle “Kuch Dil ne Kaha”, from another Mukherjee film of the time, the 1966 Anupama. In this scene, Anupama (Sharmila Tagore) – a reticent, emotionally repressed girl – is singing to herself, unaware that she is being watched by the film’s hero Ashok (or by us). Accordingly the camera is respectful of her shyness and her need for solitude. It maintains a decent distance, there are many long takes and slow tracking shots as we are put in the position of the watching Ashok: intrigued, paying attention, but taking care not to be intrusive. This sequence is just as placid and sober as “Rail Gaadi” is vigorous, but in both cases the stylistic choice is apt for the character and the mood – and these are just two among countless examples of how songs can be enriching presences in the unique storytelling engine that is the mainstream Hindi film.
[An earlier post about visual language in another Hindi-film song sequence, “Bachpan ke Din” from Sujata. More on song sequences soon]
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