Unless you are B.V. Keskar, the Information and Broadcasting Minister who got film songs banned from All India Radio as he considered them crass, it is unlikely that you have not been moved by popular film music of some kind. However, often, writing on film music, especially Hindi film music, tends to veer off towards trivia. But not the book I came across recently, Light of the Universe: Essays on Hindustani Film Music by Ashraf Aziz, which proved revelatory. An American of Indo-Pakistani descent who lives in Tanzania, Aziz aims to demolish the hierarchy that forces the purist in us to place Hindustani classical music on a higher pedestal than film music, which is considered its vulgar cousin.
He links the origin of Hindustani film music with that of India’s Independence struggle and says the breaking away from the classical mould began with Ghulam Haider who gave the film song its “rhythmic grounding”.
Aziz takes three themes: the voice of Noor Jehan, the poetry of Shailendra, and the music by Naushad in Baiju Bawra . Each theme is examined through a sociopolitical lens; the songs of the period are linked with the predominant mood in the nation. He calls Noor Jehan the voice of progressive women — those who aspired to achieve equality in the post-Independence era but were suppressed. He analyses Shailendra’s poetry of suicide through the poet-lyricist’s vocabulary from his early days and feels it was a premonition of early mortality that gave the poet the real succour for his work.
The pièce de résistance is Aziz’s essay on Baiju Bawra. Hesays that the revolutionary Baiju’s battle against musical censorship imposed by Tansen mirrored the battle for freedom of expression and social mobility in newly independent India. He presents Baiju as the reformist boatman who, through his mixing of ragas with folk, aims to challenge the puritanism of the Sangeeth Samraat and bring music to the masses. It is implied that music needs to be freed from the clutches of the elite who consider it their exclusive privilege.
In this regard, there is also a dig at the Keskars of the era who considered film music the lowbrow variant of the sophisticated Hindustani classical.
In a rather interesting parallel, Naushad, considered among the most classical of the early composers, is presented as the original enfant terrible who rebelled against puritans like his own mentor, Khemchand Prakash, to blend folk, classical and Western, giving Indian music a new syntax and grammar.
narayanan.g@thehindu.co.in
