Bollywood song and dance

Bollywood song and dance

Bollywood film music is called filmi music (from Hindi, meaning "of films"). Songs from Bollywood movies are generally pre-recorded by professional playback singers, with the actors then lip synching the words to the song on-screen, often while dancing. While most actors, especially today, are excellent dancers, few are also singers. One notable exception was Kishore Kumar, who starred in several major films in the 1950s while also having a stellar career as a playback singer. K. L. Saigal, Suraiyya, and Noor Jehan were also known as both singers and actors. Some actors in the last thirty years have sung one or more songs themselves; for a list, see Singing actors and actresses in Indian cinema.Further information: Hindi dance songs, Filmi, and Music of Bollywood

Songs are what make and break the movie; they determine if it is going to be a flop or a hit: "Few films without successful musical tracks, and even fewer without any songs and dances, succeed"  With the increase of globalization, there has also been a change in the type of music that Bollywood films entail; the lyrics of the songs have increasingly been a mix of Hindi and English languages, as opposed to the strict Hindi prior to Globalization. Also, with the inspiration of global trends, such as Salsa, Pop and Hip Hop, there has been a modification of the type of music heard in Bollywood films.

Playback singers are prominently featured in the opening credits and have their own fans who will go to an otherwise lackluster movie just to hear their favourites. Going by the quality as well as the quantity of the songs they rendered, most notable singers of Bollywood are Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Sadhana Sargam and Alka Yagnik among female playback singers; and K. L. Saigal, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan and Sonu Nigam among male playback singers. Kishore Kumar and Mohammed Rafi are often considered arguably the finest of the singers that have lent their voice to Bollywood songs, followed by Lata Mangeshkar, who, through the course of a career spanning over six decades, has recorded thousands of songs for Indian movies. The composers of film music, known as music directors, are also well-known. Their songs can make or break a film and usually do. Remixing of film songs with modern beats and rhythms is a common occurrence today, and producers may even release remixed versions of some of their films' songs along with the films' regular soundtrack albums.

The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily modelled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is usual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers. Many song-and-dance routines in Indian films feature unrealistically instantaneous shifts of location or changes of costume between verses of a song. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a duet, it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is 

referred to as a "picturisation".

Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in several ways. Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot, so that a character has a reason to sing. Other times, a song is an externalisation of a character's thoughts, or presages an event that has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. In this case, the event is often two characters falling in love. The songs are also often referred to as a "dream sequence", and anything can happen that would not normally happen in the 

real world.

Previously song and dance scenes often used to be shot in Kashmir, but due to political unrest in Kashmir since the end of the 1980s, those scenes have since then often been shot in Western Europe, particularly in Switzerland and Austria.

Renowned contemporary Bollywood dancers include Madhuri Dixit, Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sridevi, Meenakshi Seshadri, Malaika Arora Khan, Shahid Kapoor and Tiger Shroff. Older Bollywood dancers are people such as Helen, known for her cabaret numbers, Madhubala, Vyjanthimala, Padmini, Hema Malini, Mumtaz, Cuckoo Moray,Parveen BabiWaheeda Rahman,Meena Kumari, and Shammi Kapoor.

Dialogues and lyrics

The film script or lines of dialogue (called "dialogues" in Indian English) and the song lyrics are often written by different people.

Dialogues are usually written in an unadorned Hindi that would be understood by the largest possible audience. Some movies, however, have used regional dialects to evoke a village setting, or old-fashioned, courtly, formal Urdu in medieval era historical films. Jyotika Virdi, in her book The cinematic imagiNation [sic], wrote about the presence of Urdu in Hindi films: "Urdu is often used in film titles, screenplay, lyrics, the language of love, war, and martyrdom." However, she further discussed its decline over the years: "The extent of Urdu used in commercial Hindi cinema has not been stable ... the decline of Urdu is mirrored in Hindi films ... It is true that many Urdu words have survived and have become part of Hindi cinema's popular vocabulary. But that is as far as it goes." Contemporary mainstream movies also make great use of English. According to Bollywood Audiences Editorial, "English has begun to challenge the ideological work done by Urdu." Some movie scripts are first written in Latin script. Characters may shift from one language to the other to express a certain atmosphere (for example, English in a business setting and Hindi in an informal one).

Cinematic language, whether in dialogues or lyrics, is often melodramatic and invokes God, family, mother, duty, and self-sacrifice liberally. Song lyrics are often about love. Bollywood song lyrics, especially in the old movies, frequently use the poetic vocabulary of court Urdu, with many Persian loanwords. Another source for love lyrics is the long Hindu tradition of poetry about the amours of Krishna, Radha, and the gopis, as referenced in films such as Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje and Lagaan.

Music directors often prefer working with certain lyricists, to the point that the lyricist and composer are seen as a team. This phenomenon is compared to the pairings of American composers and songwriters that created old-time Broadway musicals.