Celebrating Bollywood Music

Star-crossed lovers; dancing girls; improbable fight scenes; fireworks reflected in thousands of sequins: Bollywood films are crammed with colour, melodrama and spectacle, giving the audience hit after vibrant hit. Then there's the sound. The great majority of the films made in Mumbai, the centre of the Indian film industry, are musicals with elaborate song and dance set pieces. The songs themselves are usually pre-recorded by artist known as playback singers for the actors to lip-synch to later. Whilst there is a distinct Bollywood sound, the music does not exist in isolation - check out the 60s garage band guitars on Asha Bhosle's 'Dum Maro Dum Mit Jaye Gham' or the enthusiastic soul of Kishore Kuma's 'Om Shanti Om.' Bollywood is no longer confined to India, with films being shown worldwide and their soundtracks as likely to ring from a mobile phone in Bradford as a radio in Dehli. In Britain references pop up everywhere: think of Basement Jaxx's 'Romeo' video or indeed a certain building society advert; Shilpa Shetty's continued celebrity; Meera Syal's Andrew Lloyd-Webber-backed musical 'Bombay Dreams' or Cornershop paying tribute to Asha Bhosle. This is our (ornate, marble) gateway to the bright and energetic world of Bollywood. If you still don't know where to begin, start with the five free tracks on our special Bollywood Boxset, made just for eMusic by the Saregama label. Have fun.