Filmi

Filmi ("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.

Filmi music tends to have appeal across India, Nepal, Pakistan and overseas, especially among the Indian diaspora. Songs are often in different languages depending on the target audience, for example in Hindi or Tamil. 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."

Origins

In the earliest years, filmi music was generally Indian (classical Carnatic, Hindustani, and village folk) in inspiration; over the years, Western elements have increased significantly. However, film soundtracks continue to be very diverse, sometimes fusing genres or reverting to entirely classical music. Examples of this can be found throughout the history of filmi music.

Music directors

R. C. Boral, Harishchandra Bali, Pankaj Mullick, Anil Biswas, Naushad Ali, Khwaja Khurshid Anwar and S. Rajeswara Rao were noteworthy music directors of the 1940s. Rao, who scored the 1948 Tamil '' Chandralekha'', the first all-India hit, continued music directing in Chennai until the 1980s. The 1950s and 1960s, included music composers like Shankar Jaikishan, S. D. Burman, O. P. Nayyar, Madan Mohan, Hemant Kumar, C. Ramchandra, Roshan, Vasant Desai, Kalyanji–Anandji and Khayyam in Hindi film music. K. V. Mahadevan, Vishwanathan-Ramamoorthy, Laxmikant–Pyarelal, G. Devarajan, V. Dakshinamoorthy and M. S. Viswanathan were active music directors for more than 35 years from the 1950s.

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.

Major musical forces in the 1990s and 2000s have included A. R. Rahman, Nadeem–Shravan, Pritam, Himesh Reshammiya, Harris Jayaraj, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, Vishal–Shekhar, Vidyasagar, Ramesh Narayan, M. Jayachandran, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Deepak Dev, Johnson, Anu Malik, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Salim–Sulaiman, Devi Sri Prasad etc. A. R. Rahman, who was described by ''Time'' magazine as "India's most prominent movie songwriter", is widely accepted to be the most internationally recognized Indian musician.

Playback singers

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.

Kundan Lal Saigal was one of the earliest playback singers in the Indian music industry. Notable playback singers include Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, K. J. Yesudas, S. Janaki, P. Susheela, K. S. Chithra, MG Sreekumar, Udit Narayan, Alka Yagnik, Sujatha, Hemlata (singer), Kumar Sanu, Armaan Malik,
Sonu Nigam, Shaan, KK, Shreya Ghoshal, Arijit Singh, Mohit Chauhan, Javed Ali, Neha Kakkar, Priyadarshini and many others.

Lyricists

In the 1950s and 1960s, lyricists like Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Rajendra Krishan, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Bharat Vyas, Shakeel Badayuni, Qamar Jalalabadi, Anand Bakshi, Jan Nisar Akhtar and S. H. Bihari wrote lyrics of many classic filmi songs. Lyrics tended towards the literary and drew heavily on contemporary Urdu

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