Behind the curtain : making music in Mumbai's film studios / Gregory D. Booth.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Booth, Gregory D.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion picture music--Production and direction--India--Mumbai--History.

Motion picture music.

India.

History.

India--Mumbai.

Motion picture music--India--Mumbai--History and criticism.

Motion picture industry--India--Mumbai--History.

Motion picture industry.

Physical Description:

viii, 321 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Summary:

Beginning in the 1930s, men and a handful of women came from India's many communities to Mumbai to work as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name "Bollywood," but the musicians themselves remain "behind the curtain"-the anonymous, unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres.

Now, Gregory D. Booth offers a compelling account of the Bollywood film music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In a rare insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, Booth explains who these unknown musicians were, how they came to join the film music industry, and how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both their careers and their songs. Booth also unfolds the cultural and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s-90s as well as the factors that led to their demise in contemporary India.

Featuring an extensive companion Web site with video interviews with the musicians themselves, Behind the Curtain offers a powerful, ground-level view of this globally important music industry.

Contents:

History, technology, and a determinist milieu for Hindi film song. Popular music as film music ; Musicians and technology in the Mumbai film-music industry ; Changing structures in the Mumbai film industry

The life of music in the Mumbai film industry. Origins, training, and "joining the line" ; Roles, relations, and the creative process ; Rehearsals, recordings, and economics

Music, instruments, and meaning from musicians' perspectives. Orchestras and orchestral procedures, instrumental change, arranging, and programming ; Issues of style, genre, and value in Mumbai film music

Conclusion : oral history, change, and accounts of human agency.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-303) and index.

ISBN:

9780195327632

0195327632

9780195327649

0195327640

OCLC:

193910626