A New Genre Of Female Play Back Singers

 

Creativity has no bounds. Creativity brings freshness and adds an aura to otherwise dull and stoic life. Creativity aptly mirrors the changes occurring in our lives. Change is the order of the day. Artists, be it singers, dancers, painters, sculptors are in actively engaged in the pursuit of reinventing themselves. The transformations and the process of self-discovery is very often depicted eloquently in their art forms like music, dance, painting, literature.

 India has huge repertoire of traditional music forms, prominent among them are the Carnatic and the Hindustani. These have slowly evolved to move out of the traditional mould to become more popular among masses. For majority, music still is synonymous to film music. From the initial days of cinema woman play back singers are expected to don the role of the female protagonist. In those initial formative years of Indian Cinema when music was composed without synthesisers, software's and machines play back singers would go through hours of rigorous sadhana to record entire song in a single stretch with the existing orchestra. The voice quality and the depth of rendition were of a very good quality.

The prevalent practise from 50’s to 80’s has been that singers would take on the skin of the actress. So we always felt as if the actress was singing. Singers were well aware of the character, for which they are rendering the voice well in advance. Their singing would reflect the on-screen mannerisms and moods swings of the actress. They could easily take to particular actress and modulate their voice accordingly to match their performance on screen. This kind of singing culture was in vogue for several decades and was highly revered as voice of the virtuous Indian woman. The message has be more or less clear that the play back singers are supposed to have a gentle, sweet, melodious and trained voice to reflect the  traditionally feminine perceptions. Early 50’s were an ode to the Suraiyya and NoorJahan who were both singers and actors. From 1960’s to 1980’s the most decorated singers Lata Mangeskar and Asha Bhonsle dominated the playback singing whose voices were literally incorrigible. They took the play black singing to new heights and set high benchmarks.

The same trend followed till 90’s where play back singers Anuradha Paudwal, AlkaYagnik, Kavitha KrishnaMurthy, Sadhna Sargam followed the same sweet and steep notes. From the year 2000 new generation of music composers, directors have tried to bring a new change and made serious attempts to bring in some refreshing themes and treatments. Due to availability of new technology, programming software and growing western influence a new cult of music developed. The music which was not defined by set patterns have began to find new appreciation and applause from the younger generation. This resulted in the divergence of the scope of play back singing. Woman who found their voices to be too rustic, untrained, bright and naughty found a new lease for life. Their voices could find a new place in play back singing. They became the voices of new generation of woman.

The current generation of female play back singers are slowly shedding down the old traditionally feminine singing. The voices have become more dynamic and audacious. Further with women now being depicted in vividly different roles and characters on screen, there has been a greater scope for much variation in singing too. This resulted in a cognisable culmination of various music forms like songs with Sufi-influence Kavitha Seth’s Ik Tara (Wake Up Sid) or the Punjabi poetry Mahalaxmi Iyer’s Laung Da Lashkara (Patiala House)  have become very common. Though earlier musicians have tried all these kinds of combinations it couldn’t bring the real transformation. But the latest kind of music spread out with its different hues from being boisterous Harshdeep Kaur’s Jhak Maar De (Desi Boyz), rock-inspired Neha Bhasin’s Dhunki (My brother ki Dulhan), off-beat voice of Shalmali  Kholgade for Pareshaan (Ishaqzaade) have nurtured career of several singers. The people who never thought they could ever make a career in singing are now making remarkable stints and have become successful playback singers. Though the regular classical Shreya Ghosal’s Banarasiya (Raanjhanaa) and melodious renditions Kyon (Barfi) by Sunidhi Chauhan  haven’t totally disappeared, but the new style of music have paved a way for greater creativity and diversity. Most of these singers are versatile further pushing the music to dizzy heights, a music that is vibrant and exquisite.

The latest genre of woman singers  who made resplendent career advances are the ones who  have low, husky, raw, alto, voices and often influenced by their cultural backgrounds. This is in sharp contrast to the soprano voices of dominant playback singers of yester years. This kind of revamp has become a novel feature of the Bollywood, is now all set to change music industry in regional cinemas as well. Younger generation who wanted to sing at jazz festivals are now rocking the venerable Bollywood. These hot guns deserve three cheers for spearheading extraordinary changes in film music. Art forms become more appealing if they embrace new changes and encourage new experimentation.

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