5 - Cabaret Sequences in Hindi Films

Summary

This chapter focuses on songs from a select cross section of cabaret scenes in Hindi cinema between 1943 and 1951, when a stylistic continuity in film music called filmi, or “film-style,” took shape. It will concentrate on the work of four composers—Naushad Ali, C. Ramchandra, and the composer duo commonly referred to as Shankar-Jaikishan—and explore their compositional approach to cabaret song-dance sequences, especially their exploration of Hollywood film music. It is well-known that Hollywood influenced some early composers working in Hindi films. Thus, rather than contextualize a broad relationship between the music of Indian and American cinema, this chapter analyzes the stylistic approach to sixteen songs from twelve Hindi films and focuses specifically on elements whose origins probably come from commercialized American music. Here it suggests that much of the acclimatization of Hollywood film music into these songs involved musical exchange between composers, composers and producers, and composers and local jazz musicians—an ongoing process in which these and other stakeholders in Hindi cinema borrowed identifiable musical material from each other, not just from Hollywood. In this process, it briefly explores the character of live cabarets in Bombay and details a correlation between their overarching thematic structure and the development and originality of on-screen cabaret productions. The chapter focuses on cabaret segments in films with a separate performance area and audience, typically in a club or other formal venue with food, drink, or dance. It does not address symphonic-style music heard outside of these cabaret scenes.

Before beginning, it is important to note that the film song industry has long been translocally oriented, embracing material from the subcontinent and beyond. I follow Hindi film music scholar Jayson Beaster- Jones's suggestion that film songs are cosmopolitan in nature, rather than ostensibly Westernized, and I support his argument that film songs embody “mediated musical material within and beyond the local, in whatever way the local is constituted by producers and audiences.” Media, technologies, and other commercial and noncommercial resources that supported the proliferation of American music that I have discussed in previous chapters constituted at least a small part of the historical development of cabaret song-dance sequences in Hindi films, especially Hollywood's film industry and Bombay's jazz economy.