Bollywood Music

            Bollywood originates from the Mumbai film industry.  Bollywood film music is called filmi music.  Filmi being Hindi for “of films”.  In 1912 the industry launched its first silent film.  By 1930 the first film with sound was developed. 1935 was the magical year of the playback song.  From 1940 to 1960 Bollywood saw its Golden Age.  After the Golden Age Bollywood transitioned into the age of Modern Cinema. The name Bollywood was crafted after "Hollywood" yet located in Bombay as pictured below.  This name originated in the 1970s.  

    

Here is the 1912 silent film called Raja Harishchandra. 

Fast forward to 1931, the first film with sound, Alam Ara.  

This clip from 1976 gives insight to the way in which playback songs are prioritized.  From its conception in 1935, playback songs has opened the door for a unique "dual stardom" system in Bollywood.  Both the singer and the actor are made famous in the stretch of producing a movie.  Often, people will attend an otherwise terrible movie purely because they enjoy the singer or vise versa.  It is incredibly common for the same singer (male or female) to sing for multiple characters in one film.  Producers regularly release the music to a film before the premiere in order to attract a larger crowd.       

            The instrumental qualities of Bollywood music are quite vast.  Instruments from Hindustani to Western to everything in-between is used in filmi music.  String instruments such as the sitar, sarangi, sarod, as well as the banjo, cello, guitar, mandolin are heard.  Wind instruments such as the bansuri, harmonica, saxophone, shehnai, and trumpet can be identified.  Percussive elements include the bango-conga, ghatam, table, madal, and the snare drum.  Bollywood music can be identified as world music due to the number of different genres that influence the sound. The two clips below exemplify the way in which Bollywood music has westernized throughout the years.  The first clip is from 1965 and the second from 2003. Listen to the instrumental and vocal differences.

   
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Hindi film industry produces more movies per year than any other country.  On average, there is a movie album released every two weeks.  Each album will have five to eleven songs and will often include remixes.  In 2011, over 3.5 billion tickets to Bollywood movies were sold across the world.  Almost a million more tickets than Hollywood!  The popularity of this music is slowly becoming international.  Bollywood has become one of the largest centers of film production and continues to grow in its popularity.  

Resources:

http://thebells.umhb.edu/2012/04/24/bollywood-a-genre-of-music-growing-in-popularity/

https://www.justlanded.com/english/India/India-Guide/Culture/Bollywood 

https://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/music_hist.html

https://jillbrary.wordpress.com/bollywood-and-libraries/brief-history-of-bollywood/

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-Bollywood-Music

http://worldmusic.about.com/od/asianmiddleeastern/p/BollywoodMusic.htm