COME TOGETHER

The world of Bollywood music is as cosmopolitan as it gets, Edo Bouman tells Amit Gurbaxani . 

Time-Out Mumbai, sept. 2006

When Dutch DJ and record dealer Edo Bouman chanced upon an instrumental version of RD Burman's "Dum Maro Dum" in a second-hand record store in Amsterdam in 1996, it set him off on a journey that's lasted the better part of a decade.

"I never heard anything of the kind," Bouman told Time Out in an interview published in our inaugural issue two years ago. "It was James Bond. it was rock and roll, it was funky kinds of beats, it was also filmic, with horror stuff. It was also tablas with Indian flutes and was combined in a way with ten seconds and bass, ten seconds of tabla beats, ten seconds of horns, changing all the time."

Bouman has spent eight years researching Hindi film music, interviewing studio musicians, reading extensively and scouring the archives of record companies. The world will now be able to share the excitement Bouman felt when he discovered that Hindi film music contains a whole range of Western music influences, from jazz, swing and rock 'n' roll to funk and disco. Next month music stores in India. Europe, the UK and the US will carry two compilation CDs he's made under his newly formed music label, Bollywood Connection.

"When I went back to Holland, I decided that there wasn't a good compilation of Indian fusion music so [I thought] why not issue them myself because it's very much needed." said Bouman. "The music deserves it."

While The Bombay Connection features “funk from Bollvwood action thrillers” from • films released between 1977 and 1984, Bombshell Baby of Bombay culls "nightclub jazz, surf and rock 'n' roll" from films released between 1959 and 1972. Although the sonic journey on which Bouman takes the listener begins in 1959, he said that Hindi films have fused Indian and Western music almost from the time Bollywood was born.

A few years after the release of Alma Ara, the first Indian talkie in 1931, music directors started incorporating elements of Western music into their compositions. Among the earliest pioneers was Keshavrao Bhole. a music director at Brabhat Film Company, who uses the piano, the Hawaiian guitar and the violin in his compositions. By the end of the decade, songs were being arranged for small orchestras that featured Indian and Western instruments.

But it was the pair of Shankar and Jaikishan, who had earlier seized as assistant music directors for Raj Kapoor's Aag (1948). who explored fully the possibilities of a western orchestra in their soundtrack for the director's Barsaat1949), Bouman said.

The soundscape of Hindi film music was expanded by music director C Ramchandra, who in addition to being one of the first composers to use the alto sax in Hindi film music. was the first to incorporate Latin music in the genre, with his soundtrack for Albela (1951). Equal credit for the experiment belonged to percussionist Cawas Lord, one of Ramchandra's session musicians, who used Iatin instruments such as the Bongos that he had bought from a touring Latin dance band before they left Mumbai. Over the next three decades, other studio musicians would help introduce composers to a number of Western instruments. Kalyanji would introduce the clavioline in the mid-1950s while working on Hemant Kumar's Nagin (1954), Charanjit Singh would introduce the electric bass in the late 1960s, and Kersi Lord would introduce the Moog synthesiser in the early 1970s,

But it wasn't just musical instruments from other cultures that found new use in the Hindi films: Bollywood also harnessed styles from around the world. In 1956. Ramchandra acquainted Hindi film music fans with jazz-influenced scat-singing in "Eena Meena Deeka" from Asha. The Benny Goodman fan was not the only music director with an affinity for jazz. Five years earlier. Shankar-Jaikishan had showcased swing in the soundtrack for Nagina (1951) while Roshan brought in boogie-woogie with the song "Boogie Boogie" in Humlog (1951). During these early days of Western-Indian fusion, Bouman said, the melding of the Indian and Western sounds took one of two forms, either straight jazz or swing (as heard in C. Ramachandra’s "Mr John Baba Khan" from Baarish in 1957), or music that switched between swing and Indian melodies and instrumentation (as heard in OP Nayyar's "Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu" from Howrah Bridge in 1958).

Towards the end of the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll arrived and shook up innumerable film scores courtesy Shankar-Jaikishan and their trusted arranger, Sebastian D'Souza. Throughout the '60s. the sound could be heard in many of the duo's songs, including "Jaan Pehchaan Ho" from Gumnaam (1965) and "Kis Kis Ko Pyaar Karoon” from Tumse Achcha Kmm Hal (1969). In 1965. the pair refashioned the melody of Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand" into "Dekho Ab Toh" In Janwar. However, it was RD Burman's soundtrack for 1966's Teesri Manzil in which Shammi Kapoor played a drummer, which is often referred to as Bollywood's first rock 'n’ roll film. "Teesri Manzil was a landmark film because all its rock and roll songs were hits." said Bouman- "But the genre had been around for years."

Bouman suggests two theories to explain how swing and rock 'n’ roll became integral to Hindi film soundtracks. "One was that many of the arrangers and musicians were Goan and East Indians who had trained as jazz musicians who performed in the orchestras in Mumbai's five-star hotels and the jazz clubs on the erstwhile Churchgate Street," he said. They revved up Hindi film music the way they knew best. The second theory is that Hindi film producers were simply attempting to replicate the euphoria generated by the music heard in Hollywood films. "Scripts were written with nightclub scenes in them," said Bouman. "Apparently, some producers had gone abroad or seen Western films in Bombay cinemas, heard Western music either in India or abroad, and got examples of Jazz and rock 'n’ roll used in films such as Rock Around The Clock".

 The cabaret scenes provided the outlet for what Bouman believes was RD Burman's most creative phase that began in 1970 and continued till the middle of the decade. "In 1970, he came up with this entirely new nightclub song sound, which you can hear in Caravan's 'Piya Tu Ab To Aaja’ and Kati Patang’s ‘Mera Naam Shabnam', said Bouman. "Both in an Indian and a Western context, it was unheard of, something which never existed before. It had a very percussive base - often a mix between Indian and Latin percussion instruments but it’s not really an Indian rhythm or a Latin rhythm or a jazz rhythm. [Even] the singing is very rhythmic, very percussive. Burman himself would pant and growl like Louis Armstrong in the songs."

Apart from "nightclub" songs, "title music" (the music one hears alongside opening credits) and chase sequences often featured Western sounds. 'The chase scene came from Western action films so it was logical to put Western music there."

During the 1970s, background music came into focus owing to the increasing popularity of action films. Funk became the chosen sound with which to sonically embellish adrenaline-filled scenes. "Funk, as a genre, doesn't have a huge sing-along potential. This probably explains why funk never became a standardized genre in India. However, the mainstay of funk was the background instrumental score," wrote Bouman in the liner notes of The Bombay Connection, which refers to the period from the late 70s to the early '80s as "the golden era of Indian funk".

The inventor of Indian funk, he said, was Anandji V. Shah, one half of Kalyanji-Anandji the duo whose songs. "Ae Naujawan" from Apradh (1972) and "Yeh Mera Dil Pyaar Ka Deewana" from Don (1978), were sampled by American hip hop group Black Eyed Peas in their 2004 hit "Don't Phunk With My Heart". A lot of the most inventive funk was also heard in B-grade productions such as Habari (1978) and Heeron Ka Chor (1981) whose music was scored by lesser-known music directors such as Sapan-Jagmohan and Sonik-Omi.

 As the 1980s rolled by, Bappi Lahiri became the undisputed king of disco - even though his music was not true fusion but merely Hindi lyrics set to Western music. "When Bappi and his musicians play disco, it's something else," Bouman argued. "So even if it’s a straight lift of a Western song with Hindi lyrics-for example, Lahiri's *Nache Nache' from Disco Dancer (1982) which is a copy of the Buggles 'Video Killed The Radio Star’, it's very Bollywood, it's very Indian. Even if the song was sung in English, it would still be fusion because the musicians are Indian. they have been trained in India and have an Indian ear and the song has an Indian groove."

While composers such as A.R. Rahman, Shankar, Ehsaan and Ley. Vishal-Shekhar and Himesh Reshammiya have successfully blended hip hop into their sound-tracks during the past decade. Bouman, who "navigates the world of music through vinyl." said that of the limited amount of past-1980s music that he has heard, there's very little of it that he finds interesting. "Production wise, the '80s sound was the worst sound. It came to India later, so till the mid-80s, much of it is digestible. The Bappi Lahiri stuff is very straight, dryly produced and I love that," he said. "As soon as the music starts to have a lot of echoes and effects, it becomes a kind of overproduced cheese and I am not into that."

The Bombay Connection and Bombshell Baby of Bombay are available at www.bombay-connection.com and at select music stores in Mumbai