FREE ESSAY ON INDIAN MUSIC

INDIAN MUSIC

1) Music is the organisation of sounds with some degree of rhythm, melody, and harmony. 
2) Popular Music is music produced for and sold to a broad audience. Indian popular
music, which is most strongly influenced by Indian folk music is shaped by social,
economic, and technological forces. Popular music is closely linked to the social
identity of its performers and audiences.
3) Indian Popular Music has one of the world's most extensive popular music industries.
Most Indian popular music is associated with the commercial film industry, centred on
Mumbai, in which song-and-dance scenes are inserted into plots.
4) Film songs are heard all over India, in city streets and even in remote villages, and
have also become one of the country's major cultural exports. It is a remarkably eclectic
genre, borrowing freely from other Indian musics and popular music's from around the
world, including some Western harmonic procedures.
5) Both Indian cinema and its film music are widely popular elsewhere in the developing
world, from Africa and the Middle East to Eastern Europe and other parts of Asia.
6) While it is difficult to generalize about such a vast and diverse entity, certain
observations can be made about Indian popular music. Like classical Indian music and
Indian folk music, it is overwhelmingly monophonic: melodies are sung or played solo,
rather than in harmony with another singer. 
7) The Indian music industry got off to an early start with the production of local
recordings in 1901. By the 1950s the film industry had grown phenomenally, and soon
became the largest in the world, producing some 700-feature films annually. Music
directors like Naushad and S. D. Burman composed scores for hundreds of films, while top
singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi, and Kishore Kumar have each
recorded several thousand film songs. Most were sentimental love songs designed to fit
the romantic and often escapist cinematic melodramas.
8) In the late 1970s and early 1980s the spread of cheap audio cassette players
dramatically restructured the popular music industry. Since cassettes and cassette
players are so cheap, portable, and durable, many millions of poorer rural consumers
could afford them and thus enter the popular music market. As a result the popular music
industry has become much more decentralized, and its products much more diverse in terms
of style, language, and subject matter. 
9) Indian popular music has continued to evolve and thrive. Western influence remains
strong, and many film music composers borrow pop melodies from the West. Nevertheless,
the thriving cottage-industry cassette producers still rely heavily on regional folk
music for inspiration and ideas. In the United Kingdom, South Asians of Punjabi descent
have popularized a dynamic hybrid style called bhangra, which typically combines Punjabi
folk melodies with elements of disco, techno-pop, and dance-hall reggae. 
10) I made a survey in which I found out that 90 % of the people whether they are of the
new generation or the old say that music has lost its sentimental values. It is no longer
made the way it used to be. These days the focus is not in giving a message but just to
give some typical masala or dance sequence in the film. Where as the remaining 10 % say
that the trends and traditional values are changing and in this ever changing world one
must keep up to date. 
11) I am in favour of both the groups because I think that Song like jab tak rahe ga
samse main aloo or dil ke gate ki name plate per likha hai tera nam are degrading the
Indian music industry. But these are the exceptions people like Javed Akhter,A.R. Rehman
Yash Chopra and so many others are still there who respect the values of Indian music and
cenima and make movies like dil se kuch kuch hota hai dil to pagal hai hum apke hai kaun.
These are only a few of the indian movies which depict the actual Indian sentiments.