Bollywood Box Set

We Say...

Review by Chris Nickson

Hollywood has nothing on Bollywood. Based in Mumbai, India, it’s the world’s most prolific film industry, churning out hundreds of movies every year. The meat and potatoes of each picture are the all-singing, all-dancing musical numbers — the real essence of Bollywood.

The best songs become major pop hits, which translates into big box office; that's been the custom since the advent of the talkies in the 1930s, as have the playback singers — professionals who voice the lyrics (the actors simply lip-sync).

Bollywood music — or, more accurately, filmi music — is a major industry. Its profile has increased in the West as moviegoers have discovered the films, and musicians have appropriated bits of the exoticism to spice up their songs. But classic Bollywood music has always been a crazily mongrel form, living in a weird time warp, plundering any number of global pop styles, often in the space of a single track, while still managing the neat trick of sound ineffably Indian.

The queens of the playback singers are sisters Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar. Stars for decades, they possess infinitely malleable voices. Listen to Bhosle on the ghazal “Aawargi.” It’s from 2005 — but you’d never know it from the ‘70s low-key jazz funk backing for her seductive, kittenish voice (note the filigreed Indian vocal ornamentation). But the true surprise comes when the sarangi slides off on a solo — welcome to Bollywood, where strangeness is natural. Then listen to her again on “Bongo Bongo,” keening like a wired siren over a swinging ‘60s spy thriller twang (from much later). She’s a chameleon.

Mangeshkar (supposedly the world’s most recorded singer) appears on 1981’s “Thoda Resham Lagta Hai,” sounding almost tentative and teenage — she was 52 — accompanied by sweeping, weeping Mumbai strings. There’s a rich beauty in the melody (it’s been copied a number of times), and the delicacy of Mangeshkar’s performance is genuinely moving.

They’re not the only highlights; male performers feature widely, like the great Mohd Rafi and Kishore Kumar, easily matching talents with their female counterparts. But this is also a set of deliciously twisted one-offs such as the big-band vintage rock of “Bol Baby Bol Rock’n’Roll,” the fractured nursery rhymes that power “Hum Bade Hue” or the Indian take on Southern-fried rock that’s “Sha Na Na Na,” opening like a watered-down “Sweet Home Alabama.” Bollywood is the music of surprise, where the unlikely becomes the unbelievable, all wrapped around sweet, addictive melodies.