Professor Uma Vangal, dean at the International Institute of Film and Culture, said the song sequence has evolved as an integral part of Indian cinema because it was viewed as an extension of existing oral and performing traditions. “Song and dance played a very crucial role in these arts narratively to bridge gaps in time and space, introduce characters and so on. So, when cinema came in and we wanted to subsume all of our performing traditions under a new and larger format, the song and dance travelled to this medium too,” she said, pointing out that music has always played a key role in the Indian way of life.
The first Indian film with sound, Alam Ara (1931), featured as many as seven songs. In a country of such complex diversity, Indian film music has often demonstrated the ability to cross linguistic barriers. The lyrics might be occasionally massacred — netizens are still what the Malayalam words in ‘Jiya Jale’ from Dil Se (1998) mean — but the beat stays in people’s hearts. Singer Srinivas, who has sung over 2,000 songs in various languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, noted that very often, the songs of a film outlast the relevance of its story. “In Rajkumar Hirani’s Sanju (2018), watch how Sunil Dutt (Paresh Rawal) uses old Hindi songs to motivate his son (Ranbir Kapoor). The songs are still able to strike a chord with audiences watching the film decades after they came out,” he said.
The Tamil romance film 96 (2018) is another film where an old song plays an important role in the plot. Ram (Vijay Sethupathi) is forever trying to get his childhood sweetheart Janaki (Trisha) to sing ‘Yamunai Aatrile’ from Thalapathi (1991) but she never obliges him – not until a power cut, when she suddenly decides to sing it in the darkness. The effect is immense because along with Ram, the audience too has been waiting eagerly for Janaki to sing the old favourite.