INDIAN MUSICAL and VISUAL GRAND SPECTACLE NEVER SEEN BEFORE, or SINCE... 'Tohfa' or 'Storm' 'New Wave' Hindi film of 1982 was of the family drama and romantic 'weather-extreme'! The song 'Gori Tere Ang An…
INDIAN MUSICAL and VISUAL GRAND SPECTACLE NEVER SEEN BEFORE, or SINCE... 'Tohfa' or 'Storm' 'New Wave' Hindi film of 1982 was of the family drama and romantic 'weather-extreme'! The song 'Gori Tere Ang Ang Main'/ 'Your Fair Beauty Makes Me Get Love Pangs'. If we try to define 'New Wave' in Hindi Cinema of the 1980s we may come up with a complex expression of changing politics and reaction to increasing Globalisation in a previously insular and 'closed market' India. On one hand we have Musical Maestro Bappi Lahiri's fascination with Western Pop Music and his measured but radical experiments with Eletronic Sequencers [a computer driver which MIDI musical information is keyed in at slow speed then played back reapeatedly or unhumanly rapidly] and this was complimented with colourful but quite Western Orchestration that demanded some new and highly virtuosic musicianship, particularly from drummers and violinists.
Hindu Scholars criticised New Wave Orchestration as 'Subversive' due to VIOLIN upward scale runs as, "aural symbolism of orgasm"...
ORCHESTRATION
Let us Analyse this 'Indian' Western Pop Song FORM [sections over time]...
INTRO
The INTRO is in FOUR SECTIONS which are a VARIATION and PREVIEW of the CHORUS material.
A huge orchestral TUTTI [all instruments play same rhythm or melody] on tuned and untuned PERCUSSION [instruments you hit] including TABLA [Indian tuned floor hand drums] and small dishes of water tuned to the scale. VIOLINS bow a strong repeated note on the start of each repetition. Other traditional strings like SAROD and SITAR [Indian Lutes] and MANDOLIN [Italian Lute] plus keyboard bass note. This first section of the INTRO plays the scale of the song rather like CHINESE FIVE NOTE/PENTATONIC steps.
The second section keeps now a single note on four beats of the bar with FLUTE scale runs and FEMALE CHOIR singing IMITATION [copying] what the VIOLINS did in the first section with interacton from the FLUTES.
The third section is the speeding up of the PERCUSSION to high speed quaver half notes and hard-bowed 'snaking' upward VIOLIN scale run energetically leaps up two octaves. The DRUMS rest but all other instruments repeat the first section melody on a new rhythm with repeated notes and syncopation but an ocatave higher in pitch to give a sense of having 'moved' up somewhere. The secion CADENCES [musical full stops] down.
The final section of the INTRO starts the TABLA drum beat and a final VARIATION on the first section melody material is sung on the Indian note names by the FEMALE CHOIR: "Sa Sa Sa Sa, Ma Ma Ma Ma, Ga Ga Ga Ga, Re Re Re Re". The VIOLINS interject with ANTIPHONAL [question and answer] CADENCE parts leading to a direct one octave upward energising VIOLIN scale-run to launch female singer to an ALAAP [mood setting vocal vowel] answered by the male ALAAP in ANTIPHONY. The PERCUSSION and ORCHESTRA give three TUTTI strikes with ZITHER scale run down CADENCES before the CHORUS begins.
