Bollywood Music Characteristics

Applicability and Exemplification of Hollywood Stylistics in Bollywood Film Music

Throughout history, ethnomusicologists have regarded film music as a multi-faceted field, and it has been accredited with purposes that range in functionality: from serving as ornamental, background music to operating as a pivotal progressor of the narrative and its drama. The latter of these purposes, however, seem to dominate the intention of Bollywood film music, as the music and dance arrangements reserve approximately a quarter of the film’s runtime for nearly ninety-percent of Bollywood productions (Sarrazin 393). As with all instances of technological advancement, the ways in which these arrangements have been produced, and the tools used to produce them,

For example, “the use of bluesy saxophone music to accompany ‘unvirtuous’ women” is a convention that has been utilized by Hollywood film scorers since the introduction of Jazz music (Morcom 68). Music has this impressive power to reflect the sentiment of the time and the spirits of the industry; it reveals the social strifes that manifest in our world and the political upheavals that dictate how we run our lives, and whom we run it with. With the racist undercurrent of the time, the introduction of Jazz culminated into an auditory retribution of convention and structure; the defining features of this genre became permanently ingrained in the minds of the movie audiences, as the film scorers utilized such perceptions to amplify the ambiance of the scene. An example of such work is in the concert clip in the film The Lost Boys. It illustrates a love at first sight phenomenon, where Mike, a teenager who recently moved to Santa Carla, California, notices the beautiful native Star at a rock concert during the song “I Still Believe” by Tim Capello. Though the rock song was playing throughout the beginning of this scene, the minute Mike laid eyes on Star, the saxophone solo began. The scene now begins to move in slow motion, sensuously slow to demonstrate her confident spirit and unreserved nature. She is the epitome of a “femme fatale” character, with a mysterious and unnerving quality that peaks the interest of the audience. As she dances freely to the saxophone solo and captivates Mike with her uninhibited thirst for life, the saxophone music provides the audience a medium through which they could feel the same emotions that Mike was feeling, that the director was