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Performing Bollywood Broadway: Shillong Chamber Choir as Bollywood’s Other
Abstract
This article attempts to explore the performativity that surrounds choral music in contemporary India. ¹ 1 Choral music was discovered in Western civilization and Christianity. As a starting point, it had the Gregorian reforms of the 6th century. Choir primarily refers to a vocal ensemble practising sacred music inside church settings as opposed to chorus which indicates vocal ensembles performing in secular environments. Multiple singers rendered sacred polyphony 1430 onwards. By the end of the century a standardized four-part range of three octaves or more became a feature. The vocal parts were called superius (later, soprano), altus, tenor (from its function of ‘holding’ the cantus-firmus) and bassus (Unger 2010, 2–3). Moving beyond its religious functions, the Shillong Chamber Choir locates itself within various sounds. Hailing from Meghalaya in the north- eastern part of India, the Shillong Chamber Choir has many folksy and original compositions in languages such as Khasi, Nagamese, Assamese and Malayalam. However, what brought them national fame was the Bollywoodisation ² 2 Bollywood refers to the South Asian film industry situated in Mumbai. The term also includes its film music and scores. of the choir.
With its win in the reality TV Show, India’s Got Talent ³ 3 India’s Got Talent is a reality TV series on Colors television network founded by Sakib Zakir Ahmed, part of Global British Got Talent franchise. in 2010, the Shillong Chamber Choir introduced two things to the Indian sound-scape—reproducing and inhabiting the Bollywood sound within a choral structure, and introducing to the Indian audience a medley of songs that could be termed ‘popular’, but which ultimately acquired a more eclectic framework. Medley is explored as a genre. The purpose of this article is to understand how ‘Bollywood Broadway’ is the mode through which choral renditions and more mainstream forms of entertainment are coming together.
... Chatterjee S (20) focuses on the significant role of the popular song genre that modern choral music authors turn to. Promising in this context is the medley genre, which brings the canons of academic classical music to the popular industry. ...
The relevance of the study of the chosen topic is conditioned by the fact that a wide panorama of compositions in the field of vocal and choral music appears, reflecting the modern process of reviving the national culture of Ukraine. The variety of their content, concepts, and structures contributes to the popularization of the spiritual and creative heritage of the Ukrainian people, which requires special research in modern conditions. The purpose of the study is to identify genre features and stylistic patterns that characterize the works of the vocal and choral branch of musical art. In the course of the study, methods of analysis, comparison, and synthesis were used. As a result, genre models of vocal and choral compositions of small (painting; prayer; monologue; song; arrangement) and large forms (cantata, choral concert suite, vocal and instrumental cycle, choral cycle) were discovered. The leading stylistic components of modern vocal and choral compositions were established, their content was emphasized (synthesis of elements of archaic play (action); folk songs; spiritual chant and modal, classical tonal, chromatic sound systems in small forms; a unique author’s idea, processing of primary sources from folk song art and church services based on a wide range of different fret and technical systems in large forms). The study's conclusions confirm the utilization of folk, church, and academic traditions, both past and present, alongside structural, compositional, technical, intonational, and rhythmic elements from various musical genres and cultures in vocal and choral compositions of the first quarter of the 21st century
"The relevance of the studied issue is the need to identify the main trends in choral performance, and determine the principles of the work of conductors and choral artists in the context of renewal of the components in this field. The aim of the research is to study the problem of current global trends in the development of choral performance as a complex multifaceted and integral phenomenon. Its practical methods (audio search; audio selection; audio analysis) were used in the research. The aspects of modern choral performance (interdisciplinary; socio-cultural; as well as artistic management; professional training; modern engineering technologies; information and communication space; technologies aimed at preserving human and professional resources) were identified. The current components of activity in the field of modern choral art were established. The directions of modern choral practice were identified (activation of the musical group in the life of society; expansion of traditional executive functions; growth of the genre stylistic palette of the choral repertoire). The system of key modernized methods of interpreting choral works of the 20th and 21st centuries was studied (principles of intonation; the principle of expanding the range; the principle of enriching the technical means of interpretation; the principles of forming the performance texture; the principle of interpreting the verbal text in the context of the choral score; the principle of creating different types of sound). The general features of modern choral performance in Ukraine and in the world were studied. The results can be applied in the process of researching future choral performing practice and preparing the relevant studies. The prospects of research in this field of musical culture are to enrich the theoretical and practical sectors of choral art as a complex system which is open for updates. Keywords: choral art, choir, choral work, performance interpretation, choral genre, choral style, timbre dramaturgy, performance analysis."
The Camera as Witness lifts the veil off the little known world of Mizoram and challenges - through unpublished photographs -core assumptions in the writing of India's national history. The pictures in the book establish the transformation of this society and the many forms of modernity that have emerged in it. It emphasises how 'indigenous people' in Mizoram used cameras to produce distinct modern identities and represent themselves to themselves, consistently contesting outsiders' imaginations of them as isolated, backward and in need of upliftment. The authors demonstrate how mostly amateur photographers used visual images to document a historical trajectory of heady change and continual reinvention, producing distinct modern identities. By virtue of its use of visual sources and its engagement with a wide range of important discourses, this book is relevant for students, historians, social scientists, political activists and general readers looking for a fresh approach to Northeast India.
'Nationalism' among the Nagas and the struggle for 'Nagalim' has, in the half-century since the 1951 Naga referendum witnessed several shifts and changing phases. While definitions of 'freedom' and 'self-determination' may differ, and there is at present a plethora of Naga representative bodies, there is nevertheless broad agreement among Nagas, like with other movements in the north-east, of the hegemonic power of the Indian state. Governments at the centre have, by turns, adopted a policy of militarisation and of extending grants to a small section of the local elite that it has co-opted in the task of governance. Any resolution of conflicts in the north-east, including the Naga one, could begin when both sides negotiate from a position of equals, and by an end to the process of militarisation that has tended to largely view dissent as a sign of subversion and anti-nationalism.
An analysis of conflicts in the north-east entails also a closer look at the wider debates on the issue of ethnicity. While official and administrative policies may generate impoverishment and ethnic conflict, ethnic claims of territorial integrity put forward by different groups are also often ranged against demands for a greater homeland demanded by others. This paper seeks to relate ethnic politics, to the growing importance of land relations and land use, by focusing on changes in land use patterns and social control over land in the North Cachar Hills.
This book explores the history and significance of the natural voice movement and its culture of open-access community choirs, weekend workshops, and summer camps. Founded on the premise that “everyone can sing”, the movement is distinguished from other choral movements by its emphasis on oral transmission and its eclectic repertoire of songs from across the globe. First, the book reveals how and why songs from non-Western and folk traditions inform the movement’s ideological, methodological, and ethical principles and contribute to the rewards—social, psychological, and existential, as well as musical—reported by participants. Second, it argues that the UK-based Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network, built on the pioneering work of English folksinger Frankie Armstrong, has become a major player in the democratisation of singing and represents a powerful force for community building and for facilitating intercultural understanding. Third, it suggests that the natural voice phenomenon poses a significant challenge to assumptions about musical competency and training that underpin music education in Britain and other Western societies. Among the book’s most striking revelations is the extent to which amateur and aspiring singers who are not musically literate, and who may belong to socially marginalised groups, become competent participants in a vibrant musical community and, in the process, find their voice metaphorically as well as literally. These trends are theorised in terms of the politics of participation, the transformative potential of performance, building social capital, the global village, and reclaiming the arts of celebration and conviviality.
Among the etymological legacies of the 1960s is the once ubiquitous family of musical categories distinguished by the word ‘rock’ somewhere within a compound name. Today one seldom hears such terms as ‘jazz rock’ or ‘symphonic rock’, but on Broadway the term ‘rock musical’ has retained currency, either as a show's formal subtitle or as an appellation casually used by critics and others to describe a particular work. Yet despite widespread use of the term over the past four decades, no scholarly or even semi-formal definition of the ‘rock musical’ has ever appeared in print. Instead, the ‘rock musical’ has remained an extremely pliable category, capable of embracing a wide range of characteristics. Despite the lack of rigour with which the term has been used through the years, a number of common features identify ‘rock musicals’. Virtually anyone who has written on the history of the musical has remarked – positively or negatively – on the first appearances of rock-influenced music on Broadway in the mid-1960s. Hair, subtitled ‘An American Tribal Love-Rock Musical’, has been universally accepted as the first example of the genre. Almost immediately after that landmark show, other works appeared with similar subtitles, but there were also shows with rock scores that were never identified as such by their producers. In fact the latter case soon predominated, and consequently, many New York critics began to employ the term ‘rock musical’ to identify any stage work with even the slightest hint of popular styles. © Cambridge University Press 2002, 2008 and Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Northeast India is in an apparent state of being marginalized, rediscovered and redefined. The region, it might be said, is a historical problem. This article explores ways in which India’s northeast is represented and experienced that signal deeply-rooted, contradictory and contested narratives of history, geography and identity. It further proposes an agenda for historicising the northeast by way of three interconnected strands of inquiry. First, it argues that an analysis of governance is essential to determine the ways in which the northeast frontier as British and Indian buffer zone has been shaped by the personnel, agencies and regulatory systems of imperial authority. Second, it proposes that a deeper study of Christianity and the ways in which particular experiences of belief, conversion and intimate cross-cultural encounter can exemplify tensions at the heart of colonial power and identity. Third, it turns attention to the ways in which ecological history can determine the extent to which the experience of colonialism as a political, economic and cultural regime thus conditioned local ecologies and socio-religious practices in forest and town. In this way, the article advances an understanding of the frontier as both a literal and imagined space, that is, at the same time locally and centrally produced and resisted.
Beginning in the 1930s, men, and a handful of women, came from India's many communities - Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others - to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, "the original fusion music". They worked 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, in their own words, "behind the curtain" - the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. This book offers an account of the Bollywood film-music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In an insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, the author explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film-music industry. On the basis of a set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creators and performers. The author also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s-90s, as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India.
This article proposes some analytical and methodological approaches to the urban ethnography of the human voice. Drawing on research among Protestant Christians in Seoul, South Korea, I consider the voice along three semiotic dimensions: the relationship between body and sound, the relationship between speech and song, and the relationship between the literal voice and more metaphorical understandings of voice (as perspective, political position, personhood, style, etc.). By focusing on Seoul’s rapid postwar urbanization, the growth of Protestant Christianity, and the intersection of these two phenomena in the suppression and erasure of signs of struggle and hardship by a certain population among the city’s Christians, I demonstrate how a focus on the human voice has the potential to illuminate important issues in the urban ethnography of newer Asian ‘megacities.’
Most famous city streets have a mythical quality and many have not been planned. The course of Broadway was the product of native preference and its greatest asset, the entertainment industry, was ever volatile. Its image spread worldwide from the 1920s thanks to Hollywood, over two thousand miles to the west. Rarely have the real and fantastic images of a street mingled in such profusion. However, it did not qualify easily as a model for architecture and planning.
As India entered the 1990s, a new form of national popular music, eventually known as Indipop, 1 emerged as a significant challenge to the hegemony of popular film songs. The enthusiasm surrounding this music paralleled urban India’s enthusiasm for economic liberalization and participation in the booming global economy. As the major players in the international recording industry —i ncluding Sony, Virgin, BMG, and Universal —d ove into the Indian market, the intensity of a global marketing strategy began to grow. While Indian films and film songs have been in a sense global for many decades, domestic markets and sensibilities were of greatest concern to most filmmakers. If their songs were appreciated in Russia, Africa, or the Middle East, so much the better. But commercial success was measured by popularity among “the masses” at home. With the emergence of Indipop, 2 performers, producers, and distributors of popular music began to focus on the potential of the export market. This influenced not only the structure of the Indian music industry, but also the sounds of the music produced, as well as the types of meanings ascribed to those sounds. In the first section of this paper, I will begin by discussing the context in which non-film-based Indipop music emerged, focusing on the sociological and technological changes in urban India that characterize Indian modernity. 3 Next, I will outline some of the key changes in the sound of Indian pop music initiated by Indipop artists and producers. Finally, I will speculate on some of the new meanings ascribed to Indipop by the producers and consumers I have gotten to know during the course of my research. The second section of the paper will include my thoughts on one specific event, the MTV —P lanet M Music Forum 2000, which encapsulates much of the local discourse surrounding Indipop music and globalization. Finally, I conclude by exploring some of the broader implications of this study for the area of music and globalization.
The role of civil society is vital for politicizing, contesting, and addressing human insecurity, yet there is very little analysis of the ability of civil society actors to do so. Recent critical approaches to the concept have questioned the tendency to view civil society as an unequivocal good, yet the majority of these critiques still focus on civil society at a global level or on the enabling and disabling capacity of the state at the national level. This paper argues that civil society is constrained not only by the state but by local government and other actors from within civil society. Identity politics, power relations, and existing inequalities between and within communities affect the ability of formal and informal organizations to contest the causes of insecurity. This paper examines the role of civil society in addressing gender-based insecurity in the Indian state of Meghalaya to demonstrate the influence of these factors on civil society and concludes by arguing that civil society is a much more dynamic and contradictory sphere than is often recognized by both advocates and critics. These dynamics must be understood if the constraints on civil society are to be transcended. © International Society for Third Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University 2007.
The popularity of the motion picture soundtrack O Brother, Where Art Thou? brought an extraordinary amount of attention to bluegrass, but it also drew its share of criticism from some aficionados who felt the albumâs inclusion of more modern tracks misrepresented the genre. This soundtrack, these purists argued, wasnât bluegrass, but âroots music,â a new and, indeed, more overarching category concocted by journalists and marketers. Why is it that popular music genres like these and others are so passionately contested? And how is it that these genres emerge, coalesce, change, and die out? In Genre in Popular Music, Fabian Holt provides new understanding as to why we debate music categories, and why those terms are unstable and always shifting. To tackle the full complexity of genres in popular music, Holt embarks on a wide-ranging and ambitious collection of case studies. Here he examines not only the different reactions to O Brother, but also the impact of rock and rollâs explosion in the 1950s and 1960s on country music and jazz, and how the jazz and indie music scenes in Chicago have intermingled to expand the borders of their respective genres. Throughout, Holt finds that genres are an integral part of musical cultureâfundamental both to musical practice and experience and to the social organization of musical life.
In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass mediumâthe portable cassette playerâcaused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption. Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism. Cassette Culture is the first scholarly account of Indian popular music and the first case study of a technological revolution now occurring throughout the world. It will be an essential resource for anyone interested in modern India, communications theory, world popular music, or contemporary global culture.
Film Song Other: Its Stylistic Mediation and the Hindi Film Song Genre
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Repetition and Improvisation Tradition – Deleuzian Themes in the Folk Art of Bengal’
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Mimesis and Authenticity: The Case of “Thanda Thanda Pani” and Questions of Versioning in North Indian Popular Music
- Peter Kvetko
Bollywood in the Era of Film Song Avatars: DJing, Remixing, and Change in the Film Music Industry of North India
- Paul D Greene
1837: Of the Refrain’
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On Soap Opera: What Kind of Anthropological Object Is It
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Taj Mahal Fox Trot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age
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Kollywood Goes Glocal: New Sounds and Contexts for Tamil Film Music in the 21st Century
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The Angel’s Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera. Translated by Arthur Denner
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Evans Robert (1849–1916)
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The Broadway Musical Crisis
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Historical Dictionary of Choral Music: Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts
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Welsh Presbyterian Mission and Protest Christianity in North East India with Special Reference to Khasi-Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya (1841–1900)’
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Global Masala: Digital Identities and Aesthetic Trajectories in Post-Liberalized Indian Film Music
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