One thing that always mystifies us is the interplay of the
triumvirate of Film, Sound, and Music- which is largely a technical matter. We were trying to figure out how and why
Sound becomes Music (posts like Remembering Nobody and Discord over Harmony)
and found Cinema becoming an inextricable part of the study, presumably because
the auditory and visual senses are lasting companions in man’s aesthetic journey.
To elaborate, while
reviewing various posts in the blog IK
we were startled to discover a thread running in such a manner that the whole
blog takes the form of the Ariadne’s Thread. This, in formal Logic, is an
algorithm for solving a problem with multiple routes of proceeding, wherein the
records created at each stage allow for backtracking and adopting an
alternative route towards the solution…the starting point could be Charanjit Singh’s experimentation with the Roland TB 303 which led to a revolution in
dance music…it could start with our discussion on chhand (*) where we probed Pta. Kishoritai’s theories regarding chhand-swara kinship…or we could start
with Satyajit Ray’s skepticism about the capability of Indian Music to support
emotional content in Cinema..or the phenomenon of Playback Singing in Indian
Cinema vs Hollywood…or we could tee off with Ritwik Ghatak’s experimentation
with cinematic sound…it’s a richh topic germane to an endless series of
exciting intellectual eddies..
Since the issues
are related rather loosely, we shall write this as a series of short posts, to
spare readers and the writer of information overload.
It transpires
that good old Schrodinger’s Cat is our hamsafar
on this terrain too. In our post Universe and Three Blind Men, we talked
about quantum mechanics and how the state or position of a fundamental particle
changes in the very process of measuring or assessing the same. The same thing
happened in the evolution of Cinema. To the world’s surprise, in the process of
experimenting with sounds and music, seeking enrichment of the Movie, all the
three underwent unexpected and revolutionary changes, leaving them
unrecognizable from what they initially were…
Our first silent
movie, Raja Harishchandra was
released in 1913, and it took 18 years for cinema to spout words, which
happened in
the shape of Alam Ara of
Ardeshir Irani ('all talking, singing, dancing'). In between, the silent movie being screened would be
accompanied by an impromptu background sound created by a small band of
musicians sitting in the orchestral pit, equipped with maybe a harmonium, a tabla, cymbals and at times served by a
good singer who’d be prepared with traditional bandishein like Raghupati
Raghav (Gulzar writing in Encyclopedia
of Hindi Cinema). Cinema pioneer Edison always saw ‘sound and vision as a
pair’ (American musicologist Myrna J Layton in her doctoral thesis “Illusion and Reality..Playback Music …”,
quoting Altman) …It is said that when Edison released his silent movie Martha, he made some very sage
observations in the flyer, instructing the user to procure a church quartette
‘to remain behind the scenes and sing the parts and produce a very fine
entertainment, besides giving a local interest to the same by utilizing a local
talent’ (ibid)
 |
| ALAM ARA POSTER EMPHASIZES THE SONG |
Cine enthusiast
Ashish Rajyadhyaksha once wrote on the views of two eminent Indian personalities
who had reservations about Indian Music taking over as the ‘sound’ of any
cinema. Pt. B.R Deodhar (Kumar Gandharva’s guru)
believed, and AR explains “..as long as we could not produce, say, the rumble
of thunder through our music, we
could never produce useful sound..” Likewise Satyajit Ray rued absence of an Indian
Musical tradition that could illustrate as background score, the length and
breadth of audience emotion. An obvious illustration from Western Classical is
the Beethoven’s 5th symphony, the 4 dramatic initial notes of which
formed the life and soul of the background score in so many WW2 movies, that
the symphony itself came to be known, by and by, as the Victory Symphony.
If that piece
does not give the listener goose-bumps, nothing will…There is no equivalent misaal in Indian Music is what’s meant
by Ray and Deodhar. But we shall see as we go along, the best Indian
directors work their way around, creating all to the better, musical paradigms
that would render deadly emotional support to poignant cinema situations. For
instance in Ray’s Jalsaghar, the
death of Biswambhar Ray in the final scene is accompanied, very effectively so,
merely by the anguished neigh from his beloved horse Toofan. Similarly, the auditory background in Sita’s suicide scene
in Ghatak’s Subarnarekha is an
indeterminate sound, but very telling.
Contd…
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* (छंद)
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