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- Convenors:
-
Madhuja Mukherjee
(Jadavpur University)
Carlo Nardi (University of Northampton)
- Location:
- C408
- Start time:
- 27 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers, which tackle various aspects of sound in Indian cinema and examines sound technologies, histories, and cultures. Beyond the analysis of songs in Indian films, the panel seeks papers that study uses of sound in diverse contexts as well as its varied modes of reception.
Long Abstract:
Writings on the sound in Indian cinema have by and large dealt with the social history of the music industry, circulation of music, structures of compositions etc. Regula Qureshi (1986), and Bhaskar Chandavarkar, Ashok Ranade (1980) et al, have done considerable work on Hindi film music. In addition to this, Peter Manuel (1993), more recently Gregory Booth (2008), Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti (2008), and others have written about the industrial meaning and reception of film music. Moreover, Anna Morcom (2007), largely borrowing from Alison Arnold (1988) writes about the structures of film music. However, what remain somewhat unaddressed within this context are the thorough evaluation of sound cultures and the histories of Indian film music.
While the 'Journal of Moving Image' (2007) addressed the question of cultures and practices of sound in India, this panel invites papers, which tackle various aspects of sound in cinema, examine issues of technologies, its multifaceted history, the major breakthroughs in the Indian context, its connections with the mass media (like Radio or even gramophone), as well as the deployment of sound in narrative cinemas, popular perceptions and memory of sound and music. Beyond the analysis of 'song and dance' in films, this panel includes papers that study sound and music from diverse linguistic and industrial contexts as well as their varied modes of reception in India and outside. Papers that present primary research to problematize existing histories shall be encouraged.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Joppan George (Princeton University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper on early sound cinema in India brings together advertisements for film and film equipment, and various contemporary editorials and essays from film periodicals. It uses these materials to sketch key conflicts and discourses that surrounded the emergence of the talkies in India.
Paper long abstract:
This paper attempts a history of film sound technology transferred to the Indian studios in the 1930s. In the absence of indigenous technologies of sound for the production of talkies, machines were imported from the USA and Europe. Rather than being a receptacle of this transnational flow of technology, Indian talkie studios appropriated the imported technologies and charted a new course of transit by exporting the talkies. I argue that it was the functional-technological emphasis of the production of talkies that marked the precedence of technological appropriation over aesthetic excellence. In the infancy of Indian talkies, 'sound recording' was thus a technical prerogative than a creative or aesthetic business. By tracing the importation of technology and technical tutelage, the paper throws into relief the cultural negotiations that were underway in the Indian studios. Foreign technicians were on the payrolls of some Indian studios and together with the imported technical experts they lent a cosmopolitan dynamic to the Indian studios. Besides, as film sound technology disseminated in India through many channels, the 'agent/ distributor' networks emerged on the periphery of the studios and also in the small cities. The indigenous innovation of technology, though sporadic, needs to be situated in the context of increasing internationalism in the cinematic sphere and the simultaneous articulation of the anti-imperial movements. The paper engages in tracing an empirical-historical narrative of the sound film technology, primarily through an analysis of the film journals of the 1930s.
Madhuja Mukherjee (Jadavpur University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper studies the soundtrack of Hindi popular films between 1930s and 1960s. Moreover, it deals with film music’s connections with the gramophone industry and it’s the mass acceptance with the intervention of radio. Furthermore, I discuss the shifts in the patterns of consumption during 1970s and 1980s. Briefly, I produce morphology of film music.
Paper long abstract:
This paper studies the soundtrack of Hindi popular films between 1930s and 1960s. By 'soundtrack' I mean the use of songs, sound, and silence. The paper has an elaborate mapping, since it tries to locate the points of intersections between music in general and the sounds of popular cinemas. Moreover, it looks into the connections that cinema makes with the gramophone industry, and the mass acceptance of film music with the intervention of radio.
While the mise-en-scene of Indian melodramas has been studied at great length, not much reading of it has been done with reference to its soundscape. Thus, by and large, I analyse the dominant tendencies of the popular form, and explore how it deploys certain sounds and music to produce a typical recognizable design. Therefore, this paper primarily examines the popular melodramatic form as well as the role of music and songs in it.
Furthermore, I also discuss the shifts that occur in the patterns of consumption of music during 1970s and 1980s. Referring to M. Madhava Prasad's (1998) formulations where he theorises films of this period as the 'aesthetic of mobilisation', I re-read this problem of industrial and formal 'mobilisation' through the soundtrack. Briefly, I examine Hindi melodramas, popular music, and the contexts, in my attempt to produce morphology of sound and music.
Helen Kim
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between 'desi' urban music and the possibilities of making of a political, convivial space for Asian cultural production in London. More broadly, it asks whether popular music can still provide critique or 'resistance' to a dominant way of thinking or being and even whether that is still a relevant or right question to ask.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will discuss the production of specific 'desi' 'Asian' spaces through cultural production and how 'Asianness' is performed and produced within the Asian urban music scene by looking at particular artists, songs and music videos. The production of 'desi' spaces through the different styles and sensibilities of London's 'indie' underground urban cultures seek to disrupt dominant narratives of the Asian diaspora(s). I discuss how this space is not without conflict where cultural producers are also making claims to an anterior Asian 'authenticity'. I look at how scene members negotiate the complex relationship to a politics within the scene especially in looking at how varied the development of meaning around politics is construed and 'lived out' within this scene.
Carlo Nardi (University of Northampton)
Paper short abstract:
Indian popular cinema often reflects concerns for the moral boundaries, narrativizing situations of deviance and simulating either their sanctioning or their acceptance. This paper is aimed at analysing the role of music and sound in the cultural negotiation of deviance.
Paper long abstract:
Durkheim understood deviance as a normal, rather than pathological trait of sociality: a manageable amount of criminal or abnormal conducts serves to remind us of the existence of moral boundaries. Society, however, is in constant change so that when the level of crimes and misconducts threatens the moral function of deviance, either these behaviours will be normalised (society defines deviancy down, Moynihan 1993) or morality will sanction behaviours formerly accepted (society defines deviancy up, Krauthammer 1993).
Popular cinema often reflects concerns for moral boundaries, narrativizing situations of deviance and simulating either their sanctioning or their acceptance. Indian popular films, in particular, thematise deviance rather explicitly through stereotyped characters like drunkards, moneylenders or 'nautch' girls (cabaret dancers). Music and background sound contribute to this thematisation, while suggesting an ambivalent or alternative reading of the same situations. This paper is aimed at analysing the role of music and sound in the cultural negotiation of the symbolic meaning of deviance and, through this, of accepted moral principles: does music plays an antagonist role as compared to the more overt narrative stereotypes of deviancy? Or does it comply with these representations (Tagg 1989)? It goes without saying that such task requires a rigorous consideration of the particular historical, political and cultural conditions, in which a film has been conceived, distributed and consumed.