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ENTERTAINMENT “Bollywood
is incomplete without folk music,” asserts Gurdas Mann, the father of Bhangra pop, and he’s certainly not exaggerating about the pivotal part folk music has played in the popularity of Hindi films. If you were to run a mental check on the most-popular item numbers of any era — you will discover that most of them have a folk base. Whether it was “Shola jo bhadke” from Albela, “Choli ke peeche kya hai” from Khalnayak or “Ek do teen, char paanch” from Tezaab, the folk element in them is undeniable. And these three songs were named as the most popular songs of all times till 1990, according to a survey. S. D. Burman introduced soul-stirring maajhi music “O mere maajhi”, O. P. Nayyar brought in rugged beats of bhangra (“Reshami salwaar kurta jaali da”), C. Ramchandra infused it with Marathi lavni and koligeet (“Bholi surat dil ke khotey”) Shanker-Jaikishan brought in Bhojpuri flavour (“Chalat musafir moh liya re”), R. D. Burman experimented with Tamil folk (“Muthu kodi kaawari hada”) while Laxmikant-Pyarelal favoured Rajasthani tunes (“Choli ke peechhe”), while today’s Himesh Reshammiya, Sajid-Wajid and Kailash Kher distilled Sufi folk into popular Bollywood chartbusters. Conversely, film music has also been educating the viewers across India about its rich folk music heritage. Like Bhojpuri music became synonymous with “Nain lad jayiye hai” from Ganga Jamuna, fisherman’s koligeet with “Jhooth bole kauwa kaate” from Bobby, Gujarati garba with “Main to chali bhool babul ka des”, Bangla folk with “Wahan kaun hai tera”, Assamese Bihu with “Chadh gayo paapi bichua” from Madhumati, Rajasthani maand with “Kesariya baalam padhaaro mhare des”, pahadi melody with “Sun sahiba sun pyar ki dhun” from Ram teri Ganga maili, Kashmiri folk with “Bhumro” in Mission Kashmir and Chhattisgarhi folk with “Sasural genda phool” from Delhi 6. Vishal Bhardwaj’s Ishqiya and Omkara gave added fillip to folk music in Hindi films.
Such is the popularity of folk music that in the recently released Cocktail, Pritam liberally used Punjabi folk totally out of context of the anglicised script, and yet it has worked wonders
Music critic Rajiv Vijaykar analyses, “Trends come and go, but folk music has been a constant feature of our films. It took a backseat briefly for a couple of years from 2008-2010, during which the fusion brigade comprising A. R. Rahman, Salim Sulaiman, Amit Trivedi and Vishal Shekhar produced experimental sounds. But folk music came back with a bang in Wanted and Dabangg.” “Chinta ta chita ta” from Rowdy Rathore, “Mala jau de” from Ferrari Ki Sawari, “Chikni chameli” from Agneepath, “Munni badnam hui” from Dabangg and “Tose pyar kare hai” from Wanted further consolidated the position of folk. But it Sneha Khanwalkar with her rustic Bihari-Jharkhandi ditties in Gangs of Wasseypur, who truly scaled a new high for folk music. “Folk music has an instant connect with the audience because it is rooted in our culture,” reasons Vijaykar. Such is the popularity of folk music that in Cocktail, Pritam has liberally used Punjabi folk totally out of context of the anglicised script and yet it is working wonders! “Pakistani Punjabi folk singer Arif Lohar and composer-singer Sahir Ali Bagga have rendered rare Punjabi folk bhau, which is a very heart-rending form of music. Tappe, Jindwa and Mahiya are the popular forms that have been used in films so far. But this new wave of folk music is revealing some hidden nuggets of folk music,” opines Manjit Mann, wife and business manager of Gurdas Mann. Mann had sung memorable folk numbers for Veer-Zaara and folk has been his forte. “Dil da mamla” fame Mann is now headed for a month-long tour of 10 cities in the US. Folk singers like Ila Arun, Shubha Mudgal, Mamta Sharma, Gurdas Mann, Kailash Kher, Hans Raj Hans and Vaishali Samant have made a smooth transition to mainstream Bollywood. Going by the escalating preference for the rooted melody in films, folk is here is to stay.
Nandita unplugged How difficult was it settling into a government-mandated job? Was the Children’s Film Society India (CFSI) post a natural fit for you?
It is an honorary position. You can get away by doing the bare minimum —attending four official meetings a year. But I did everything I could to make the stint count. When I took over, CFSI accepted only 35 mm films. The organisation had an annual budget of only `4 crore. Even that amount could not be exhausted. The budget has now gone up to `13 crore, which also covers expenses for festivals and programmes and staff salaries. Now CFSI spares `2 crore annually to fund children’s films. What have been your principal contributions as CFSI chairperson? I would like to think that I have left the organisation in better health than it was when I took over. I went in for systemic changes. The idea was to bolster the process of selecting screenplays so that the quality of the films produced could improve. Why do you think CFSI does not attract good scripts? The perception of the CFSI has been a problem. And there is some truth in the perception. Why would a filmmaker come to the CFSI and make a film when he knows that it is not going to be seen? But the perception has definitely started changing. By the second year, we began to get better projects. Many of the screenplays were promising, capable of yielding good films. One of them was Rajan Khosa's Gattu. What steps did you take to improve the screenplay selection process?
I inducted Gulzar saab, Vishal Bhardwaj and Mohan Agashe, among others, into an advisory panel. I also set up a script committee so that a single person’s view, even the chairperson’s, wouldn’t determine what projects would be approved. The committee has educators, animators, filmmakers, writers and others. I also took CFSI films to every corner of India — to the North-East, Kashmir, all around Kerala. Gattu is the first-ever CFSI film to be commercially released. Was it easy getting it into the theatres? It wasn’t. Gattu had no marketing budget. No CFSI film has ever had a marketing budget. We allocated a small amount for Gattu but still could not find a distributor. We showed the film to many distributors. Most of them liked the film but they said it would not work commercially. The film went to many festivals, won awards and critical accolades. It was the opening film of the Hyderabad Children’s Film Festival in November 2011 and was well received. CFSI has a large number of films that have never been released. What happens to those titles? Since it is extremely difficult to get a children’s film out into the mainstream market, these are shown in schools and festivals and through district education officers and voluntary organisations. Has becoming a mother impacted your work? Being a mother does impact how one looks at life. But it is not conscious process but an organic one. One’s perspective on life does indeed change. Some people argue that motherhood is at odds with feminism. I don’t agree. One can be an effective mother and an active feminist at the same time without undermining either role. But isn’t it difficult striking a balance between professional commitments and one’s personal needs? When I made Firaaq, everything else took a backseat. Now it is my son, Vihaan, who matters the most. My pregnancy and the CFSI job happened almost simultaneously. So the first nine months in the job were difficult. I grew up with a mother who was a working woman. I respect what my mother stood for. It is not necessary for a parent to be constantly with the children. What lies ahead for Nandita Das? I am writing a play. I thought it would be easy to do. But I haven’t been able to wrap it up yet. My husband (entrepreneur Subodh Maskara) even booked a theatre so that I would work to a deadline. I direct the play as well as act in it. You’ve generally had an uneasy relationship with the mainstream Mumbai movie industry. Have things been sorted out on that front? I never looked for work in Mumbai’s mainstream cinema. I moved to this city because of matters of the heart. I did 30 films in 10 languages. I shot more in Kerala and Bengal than in Mumbai. Do you still receive acting offers? I do. I had initially agreed to do Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children. I was advised that it would be all right to work in a film when Vihaan was six months old. But I realised it would be impossible, so I bailed out of the film. My son is now two years old and I have accepted two new film projects, in which I play small but pivotal roles. One is a Tamil film about a village of fishermen and cross-border water crossings. The other one is an Oriya-Hindi film set in a tribal village. I am busy with my play until January. After that I would like to explore a new film as a director. What do you feel about contemporary Mumbai cinema? India is such a vast and varied country. There are many stories that remain untold. The new Mumbai film has a particular sensibility. It is very urban and fixated on a set number of things. It is rather insular. Regional cinema in Malayalam, Tamil and Marathi is where interesting work is happening today.
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As young melody maker Khanwalkar relates that only after she travelled to Punjab and Haryana (for Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye) that she realised the vastness of Indian folk music. For Gangs of Wasseypur too, she took a musical pilgrimage to Bihar, “I went to Patna, Darbhanga, Muzzafarpur and down to Gaya and then to Ranchi and Dhanbad. To record the high-pitch, rustic-beat heavy song Womaniya, I took Rekha Jha from Patna with Benarasi local singer Khushboo Raj. We recorded the chorus with a group of farmers and teachers, who sing during their spare time,” she said in an interview. Her experiments have paid off well and GenNext is suddenly waking up to folk sounds. The indigenous music scores again.
