Hindi film songs are immensely popular throughout the length and breadth of the country and appeal to people of all age groups. Such was the popularity of Hindi film songs as far back as 1952 that when All India Radio (under B. V. Keskar) banned the airing of film music, ‘Binaca Geetmala’, which was broadcast from Radio Ceylon, became a major success across the country. This forced AIR to rethink its ban and, in 1957, it introduced ‘Vividh Bharati’ to cater to the tastes of the radio listeners. What makes Hindi film songs tick? How do they cut across all boundaries and appeal to such a wide variety of people from diverse backgrounds? These questions probe sociologists, musicologists, ethnomusicologists and scholars of popular culture and cinema studies to study this uniquely Indian phenomenon.
October 2006, volume 30, No 10