Filmi (lit.'of films') music soundtracks are music produced for India's mainstream motion picture industry and written and performed for Indian cinema. In cinema, music directors make up the main body of composers; the songs are performed by playback singers and the genre represents 72% of the music sales market in India.[1]
Filmi music tends to have appeal across India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and overseas, especially among the Indian diaspora. Songs are often in different languages depending on the target audience, for example in Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Odia, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Assamese, etc. Playback singers are usually more noted for their ability to sing rather than their charisma as performers. Filmi playback singers' level of success and appeal is tied to their involvement with film soundtracks of cinema releases with the highest box office ratings.
At the "Filmi Melody: Song and Dance in Indian Cinema" archive presentation at UCLA, filmi was praised as a generally more fitting term for the tradition than "Bombay melody", "suggesting that the exuberant music and melodrama so closely identified with the Hindi commercial cinema produced in Bombay (Mumbai) is truly pan-Indian."[2]
In the earliest years of Indian cinema, film music was primarily influenced by Indian classical traditions, including Carnatic music and Hindustani classical music, as well as regional folk music. Over time, Western musical elements such as orchestration, harmony, and instrumentation became increasingly incorporated into film music, especially from the mid-20th century onward. Despite these changes, film soundtracks remain diverse, often blending multiple musical styles or returning to classical roots.[3]
As Indian cinema segued into the 1960s and 1970s, pop artists like R. D. Burman, Bappi Lahiri and duos like Nadeem–Shravan and Jatin–Lalit gave filmi a stronger western flavor with composers Ilaiyaraaja and Raveendran who rose to fame during the 1970s and 1980s in Tamil film music.
A playback singer is a singer who pre-records songs for use in films. The singer records the song and the actors or actresses lip-sync the song in front of the cameras, a form of singing that is characteristic of the Indian subcontinent. The songs of a film, the quality of the music and its music director (composer), lyricist and singer have often determined the success of a film. Film soundtracks are sometimes released before the film itself, resulting in a disparity between the soundtrack and the songs appearing in the film.
Binaca Geetmala, Ameen Sayani's popular Hindi language radio show before satellite television took over in India sometime in the 1990s, gave weekly popularity ratings of Hindi film songs (akin to the Billboard Hot 100 list of songs). It ran in various incarnations from 1952 to 1993, and annual lists of the most popular songs were played at year-end. The list was compiled on the basis of record sales in India.[6] Currently, Hindi filmi songs are sold on tape and CD compilations, played as promos and in programs on various television channels and radio stations, with different popularity ratings claiming different songs as being on the top. In an annual exercise, a net-based effort RMIM Puraskaar lists all important Hindi film songs of the year, in addition to awarding songs for various categories.
Accusations of plagiarism
Because popular music directors score a great many films over the course of a year, accusations of plagiarizing abound. For example, one production number in Dil (1990) is based on Carl Perkins' Blue Suede Shoes, sung with Hindi lyrics. Of late the Indian film industry has been gaining visibility outside India, and the legal risks of plagiarism have been gaining importance. Some producers have actually paid for the musical rights to popular Western songs, as in Kal Ho Naa Ho's (2003) song, "Oh, Pretty Woman". Plagiarism has also existed within India, with several music directors in Bombay cinema lifting tunes from other "regional" industries.
Filmi is also making exerting influence beyond the usual Desi audiences, with many Western music stores today carrying Indian music compilations. As early as 1978, the synthpop pioneers Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto of the Yellow Magic Orchestra produced an electronic album Cochin Moon based on an experimentalfusion between electronic music and Bollywood-inspired Indian music.[11] Later in 1988, Devo's hit song "Disco Dancer" was inspired by the song "I am a Disco Dancer" from the Bollywood film Disco Dancer (1982).[12]
A. R. Rahman rose to fame from the Kollywood film industry to become one of the most popular international music directors and has had a musicalBombay Dreams, playing in London and New York, and scored several projects outside India. He has won two Academy awards and two Grammy awards, even numerous international awards and accolades. The song "Chaiyya Chaiyya", originally composed by A. R. Rahman for Dil Se.. (1998), has also been well received around the world, making several top 10 world music lists and has even been featured in several American movies. The song was in both the opening scene and credits of Spike Lee's Inside Man. Rahman's earlier soundtrack for Roja (1991) was included in Time's 10 Best Soundtracks of all time in 2005. He has been regarded as the only composer from India to attain massive popularity and fame in the international arena.[14][15][16] Hindi filmi music has reached an even wider global audience due to the success of the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, also composed by Rahman. Singaporean-Indian singer Priyadarshini is regarded as the first Indian playback singer to carry out Ph.D.[17] research in film music and document 100 years of music in Tamil cinema and 90 years in Kannada cinema[17][18][19]
The first domain name ever registered related to filmi music and Indian entertainment media was indiamusic.com. The site further put filmi music on the map. Thereafter followed a flood of Indian and filmi music sites.
↑Reliving the Geetmala lore. S.K. Screen, Friday, 22 September 2000, transcript at "Ameen Sayani/Press Reviews". Archived from the original on 5 September 2005. Retrieved 31 July 2006., accessed 29 July 2006
