Classical Music in Films – A Bit of History – Part 1 of 2

Let us start with a bit of history of Hindi film music and its relationship with classical music. First a
small caveat: This is intended to be a broad sweep of the history of Hindi film music through the
decades and is not meant to be comprehensive in terms of the film music personalities referred to. I
take responsibility for failing to talk about some names who made a significant impact on the Hindi
film music. And by the way, we will be taking examples of mostly Hindi film songs, though there have
always been extremely talented and prolific music directors, singers and musicians in other
languages, notably Marathi, Bengali, and South Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, etc.

The history of Indian film music is richly documented in a number of books and articles available in
the public domain, so we will not delve too deeply into it in this blog. Our main focus will be on how
composers and arrangers in the film industry adapted from Indian Classical Music for the melodies,
and on Indian and Western Classical Music as well as other genres for the harmony, rhythm and so
on.

It is interesting to note that most, though not all the composers had had formal training in Classical
Music under Pandits and Ustads before they started composing for films. Indeed, a few Classical
Musicians like Pt. Ravi Shankar and Shivkumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia (under the name
Shiv-Hari) even composed music for a few films. There were a number of classical vocalists like Ustad
Amir Khan and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Pt. Bhimsen Joshi and D.V.Paluskar to name some, who lent
their voices to films. Not many people may be aware that some of the greatest Classical musicians of
today and from the recent past like Ustad Abdul Halim Jaffar Khan, Pt. Shivkumar Sharma, Pannalal
Ghosh and Hariprasad Chaurasia in the initial years of their careers, were members of the orchestras
of film music composers and played memorable pieces in film songs. And finally, there were
playback singers like Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosale who had received formal
training in Indian Classical Music, and there were others like the great Kishore Kumar who had no
such formal training. Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosale were both daughters of the illustrious Pt.
Deenanath Mangeshkar, one of the greatest classical and semi-classical singers of his time.
Interestingly, Kishore Kumar, with no training in classical music was referred to as Pandit Kishore
Kumar of Khandwa gharana (he was born and brought up in Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh) by some
critics, because of his immense talent and perfectly sureela voice.

In this series of blog posts, we will take examples of the ethereal magic that the singers and
composers and their orchestras created through the numerous songs that they gave to the film
industry. It is fair to say that a large number of films became extremely popular not because of the
plots or the acting takent of the actors in the films, but because of the songs they had. In fact it
seems like some films had plot lines and actors merely as a canvas to embed the songs into.

The first Indian film ever to have sound was Alam Ara, made in 1931 by Ardeshir Irani. It can be said
to have created a sort of a template for Indian films because in addition to dialogs, it had seven
songs. Even today, almost all Hindi films have at least half a dozen songs in them, and films without
songs are very rare exceptions. Unfortunately none of the original songs from Alam Ara are available
today. The song, “De de khuda ke naam pe” sung by Wazir Mohammed Khan became extremely
popular, and a recording created later in his voice is available
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ0DHZng2DM). By the way, although Wazir Mohammed Khan
has a sort of a classical vocalist ustad ring to it, he was a stage actor from Bombay and was not a
classical singer as such.
As a typical example of film songs from the 1930s, the film Street Singer made in 1938 had music by
R.C. (Rai Chand) Boral, a composer trained in Indian Classical Music. His father Lal Chand Boral was
an exponent of dhrupad, a genre of Indian classical music that has ancient roots going back over two
thousand years. R.C. Boral was trained in classical music by stalwarts at the time like Ustad Mushtaq
Hussain Khan of Rampur-Sahaswan gharana (Ustad Rashid Khan belongs to this gharana), Masit
Khan (tabla player), and Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan (sarod player and father and guru of Ustad Amjad Ali
Khan). One of the songs from Street Singer, “Babul mora naihar chhuto hi jaye” based on a thumri in
raga Bhairavi was sung by the iconic K.L. Saigal, considered to be one of the most talented singers
ever to have sung for Indian films. Incidentally Saigal was not formally trained in Indian Classical
Music, but was a role model for singers and was imitated by singers like Mukesh in their formative
years.

Raga Bhairavi, which Babul Mora is based on, is by convention sung or played as the last piece in any
classical music concert and in fact signals the end of a concert. Even in a music festival featuring
multiple musicians in a session in the morning or evening, raga Bhairavi is performed only by the last
performer as the last piece in his or her performance, never in between. It is interesting that this
Bhiravi thumri, Babul Mora has been performed by many classical musicians including Pt. Bhimsen
Joshi and Begum Akhtar, arguably the greatest exponent of light classical music of all time. So it is a
bit ironic that I am beginning this series of blog posts with raga Bhairavi, but I will end this piece with
a recording of Babul Mora sung by Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, and then by K.L. Saigal’s Babul Mora from the
file Street Singer.

Pt. Bhimsen Joshi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5jUsz71fAU

K.L.Saigal in film Street Singer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouheLTzfeBc

A bit about Raga Bhairavi. As mentioned above, it is performed only as the last piece of a classical
music performance, never in between. It is generally performed in a light classical music genre like
thumri, tappa, gazal, hori, etc., though it has been rendered in the khayal and dhrupad forms as
well. It is made up of all komal or flat swaras (Sa, re, ga, ma, Pa, dha, ni) and I will delve deeper into
the technicalities of Bhairavi, its many variations and film songs based in Bhairavi in later posts.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post just as I enjoyed writing it, and I do hope that I have enticed you
to take a deeper dive into classical music in Hindi films, and into Classical Music in general.