Voices in the Box

For the years she has spent in studios and recording rooms,Pant has one song to show,which she sings for us — Aye dil dil ki duniya mein from Subhash Ghai’s 2001 film Yaadein. Anu Malik,the composer for the film,remembers her as a “brilliant singer who sounded perfect for that song.” But,as Hindi film music has opened itself to newer voices and unconventional timbres and textures,singers like Pant,identified with an older tradition of playback singing,have found it difficult to make a mark.

“Playback singers were,at one time,the superstars of the industry. Songs were tailormade for them. Their names were a prominent part of a film’s credits,sometimes even the posters. Today,I don’t know who is singing for whom,” says Pyarelal Sharma,who with Laxmikant Kudalkar,composed music for three decades from the 1960s.

If Hindi films are the opiate to India’s masses,the soundtrack to their lives was its music. The audience formed an emotional connection with the singers: you were either a Rafi believer or a Kishore Kumar acolyte,and who did not fall into worshipful silence while listening to Lata Mangeshkar? Even before her,Suraiya, famous for songs like Tu mera chand,main teri chandni (Dillagi,1949) and Dil-e-nadaan in Mirza Ghalib (1954),had fans queuing up outside her house on Marine Drive every day. It was because of her popularity and the value she commanded in the industry that Mangeshkar could take on leading filmmakers over the issue of royalty payments. Grounded in classical music (with the exception of Kishore Kumar and Geeta Dutt),playback singers of that time were extremely skilled vocal artists,their admirers not just the common man but virtuosos like Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan who is known to have said of Lata Mangeshkar: kambakht kabhi besuri hoti hi nahi (How the hell is she never off-key?).

When Manna Dey,who passed away last month,came to Mumbai in the late 1940s as an assistant to his uncle and composer KC Dey,it was an industry that had immense respect for a training in classical music,though it prized voices that could connect with Everyman. “Manna Dey had learnt his classical lessons too well. Film music demanded a vocal pliability,which was something that Rafi and Lata had in abundance,” says music historian Raju Bharatan. Dey initially found it hard to compete with Talat Mahmood and Rafi. “Those endless visits to the studio,in the hope of getting work,were followed,on more than one occasion,by crushing disappointment and frustration. I would often wonder why singers like Rafi and Mahmood were promoted while I languished in obscurity,” he wrote in his autobiography Memories Come Alive. But Dey’s voice was flexible and he could modulate in a way no one else could. “He made a breakthrough with Shree 420 and Chori Chori,when Mukesh,the voice of Raj Kapoor,wasn’t available,” says Bharatan. “Mannada had this distinct ability to stretch a note which worked beautifully in songs like Ye raat bheegi bheegi and Aaja sanam madhur chandni mein hum,” says Pyarelal Sharma.

What would the current Hindi film music scene have made of Manna Dey? Ignored him,would,perhaps,be a fair conjecture.

This is a soundscape that does not want perfect voices,leave alone classically trained singers. Music is no longer melody-driven but led by the script and its demands. Composer Sneha Khanwalkar picked two Patna housewives to sing the rakish track Womaniya in Gangs of Wasseypur; Farhan Akhtar,Hrithik Roshan and Abhay Deol pulled off Senorita (Zindagi na Milegi Dobara) with plenty of help from post-production wizards; Ram Sampath got whiskey-voiced Suman Sridhar in the studio for the groovy Muskaane jhoothi hain (Talaash). Amit Trivedi had Shilpa Rao croon the heady Manmarziyaan in Lootera,while Pritam’s Tu mera hero by Mika Singh and Shefali Alvares became a club favourite. “If you are different,you will sell,” says singer Mahalaxmi Iyer. Kailash Kher,whose rustic voice is his trademark,agrees: “None of these are conventional voices,but they work because change is the norm of the day. But can the audience tell one from the other? I doubt it.”

The explosion of voices and sounds has meant that even popular singers like Sonu Nigam,Sunidhi Chauhan,Shaan and KK are not heard often. The concept of one singer for one actor — as Kishore Kumar was for Rajesh Khanna,or later,as Udit Narayan was for Aamir Khan — does not exist anymore. “Earlier,no one said this is Nutan’s song or Madhubala’s song. Everyone said,it’s Lata Mangeshkar’s song. Today,even after 20 songs,you don’t know the singer,” says singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya.

For the music composer,who now has complete control on the making of a song,this has been liberating. “As a composer,I am looking for different voices to experiment with. So I would not want to use a patli aawaaz. I would look for different textures. But that does not mean I will sacrifice sur,” says Ram Sampath. It is also true that the producer/director is wary of music that demands something more from the audience. Shantanu Moitra,who scored for Parineeta,says that the moment he adds an extra murki or harkat,“the director says,yaar zyada classical mat karo. The aim is to make youngsters download it or bond over it on social networking websites,” he says.

The goalposts have shifted because the script has changed. Anandji Shah,of the famed duo Kalyanji-Anandji,suggests that the liberation of women characters in Indian cinema is a factor. Through several decades,Lata Mangeshkar sang for the righteous and “pure” Indian woman on screen,while Asha Bhosle was the voice of the vamp or the cabaret singer. “Puraane zamaane ki heroine dabi huyi thi. You had to have Lata sing those iconic sad songs. The romance of those days required your heroine to be coy. Lata’s voice was perfect for that. If you wanted a flirty or sensuous voice,you called in Asha,” says Shah. As films move to less formulaic tropes,directors look for characters who speak like normal people. “Cinema is evolving and the gayaki needs to reflect that. It needs voices which express those characters. In very few instances will you find a coy,angelic voice,” says filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan,who assisted Anurag Kashyap on Gangs of Wasseypur.

But it is technology which has driven the greatest change,demanding less and less of playback singers,fixing flaws in pitch and sur on the console instead. Nothing illustrates that more than the revolutionary change in recording sessions. Till the 1990s,these were more like live stage performances,preceded by extensive rehearsals. They were communal affairs,with 100-piece orchestras divided into string,wind and rhythm sections,coming together in mammoth studios to record one song. “The target was that one perfect take and the singer had to get it right the first time. There were so many things that could go wrong but the expression had to be perfect,” says Shah. If you didn’t nail it the first time,the process had to be repeated all over again,“which would annoy composers like Naushad,Anil Biswas and OP Nayyar”,he adds. So the singers not only rehearsed to hit the right notes,but they also worked on the correct intonation, on modulating their voices to the style of the actors they were singing for. Directors like Raj Kapoor would be present at the recordings and supervised the proceedings,including the smallest of sitar interludes. “A recording mattered a lot. It raised the value of a singer in the market,” says Pyarelal Sharma.

Recordings today happen in tiny one-room studios,with different sections of the songs being recorded separately and then overlaid on pre-recorded tracks. “There are times when composers are not even present for the recording. They send tracks via email,and the sound engineer records with the singer,” says Bhattacharya. An entire song is never recorded in a day. Two singers singing a song don’t even meet each other. “We miss out on that old interaction. Now,it’s all about managing a take that the composer thinks is alright. Later,everything is punched and brought together after picking lines from various takes. It is a good day if I can manage to sing a mukhda,” says Iyer. While the economics of recording sessions demanded stellar performances from a singer,today her voice is just one more sound to be digitally mastered and processed to produce a song. “I have heard composers say,‘Aap expression deejiye,baaqi hum sambhal lenge’. There can’t be anything more disheartening for a good singer,” says Iyer.

Every recording studio today uses pitch correction and singers bank on that. “Today,many singers ask us,‘You will correct it,right?’ Ya,we will correct it but how about you correcting it? Technology is a creative tool to enhance a performance. It isn’t there to circumvent a bad performance,which,unfortunately,is what it has come down to,” says Shantanu Hudlikar,the chief engineer at Yash Raj Studios,which has the biggest recording facility in the country.

Pyarelal,who recalls sitting down with Mangeshkar and teaching a singer of her stature the nuances,shares an anecdote from a different time. “It was a recording with Kumar Sanu in which he just wasn’t getting the alaap right. After some takes,Sanu came out and told the engineer to correct it. I asked him if he was in a hurry. When he said no,I made him sing again and he thanked me later. What is the purpose of a singer if I’m going to pitch correct him/her?” he says.

For Pant,what rankles is that the current standards seem to discriminate against talent. “How do I make it in an industry where the texture of a voice will find importance over sur? The concept of a besura singer has become okay now,” she says.

If the making of a song actually begins after the singer’s job is over,when the sound engineer takes over,is the playback singer on her way to irrelevance? “It’s not that the singer will ever be defunct,but it’s just that the time of ‘the’ playback singer,with all these guys up there,is over,” says composer Ehsaan Noorani,of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

But that’s not the end to creativity,music professionals say. “There is nothing called a pitch-perfect voice. So let’s stop being obsessed about it. Mohit Chauhan is not the best of the singers but has a great vibe. He is a voice for a character,so let’s go with what he has and not correct him. The machine can’t replicate the soulfulness of a human voice. That is where the playback singer will come in,” says Hudlikar.