Cineplot Music

“I believe in Popular Film Music..” Shaukat Dehalvi Nashad

Nashad listens intently as the golden-voiced Lata Mangeshkar sings one of his compositions

Although no one says it to my face, I know that there is a section in the film industry who decry my music as “a   re-hash of familiar tunes.”

This amounts to a charge of plagiarism.

I have no defense, no apology, to offer, except to say that, if am a plagiarist, I am one unconsciously.

With only seven main notes, six ragas, thirty-six raginis and seventy-two sub-raginis, every “new” musical composition is bound to sound familiar in places.

Try to hum any popular film composition of today and then cast back your mind. Make a careful search for a parallel and you will easily find one in some celebrated songs of yesterday.

I believe in popular music, music which people will like, humming and singing it in their homes—in moments of joy or sorrow. I try my-best to keep my compositions free from complicated “alaps,” “tans” and those notational cascades which the man-in-the­-street (who has no musical training) cannot easily remember and hum.

Film music, to be good and popular, must always be the result of team-work. The ego of the music-director as well as that of the lyric-writer needs to be suppressed completely, even to the extent of accepting suggestions from everyone in the unit.

In the music of one of my forthcoming films, the appeal of the songs owes much to suggestions made by the producer and mem­bers of his staff. One of the tunes owes its origin to an air I heard the office-boy humming!

The producer was no professional musi­cian, but I discarded two of my best tunes to fit in a completely different third one based on his suggestions.

I am glad that I do not live in an ivory tower and am not deaf to the music of ordinary people, I say to myself : “If this is the kind of music they love, it is absurd to give them a high-brow composition. Both in rhythm and structure,  I stick rigorously to what is popular, even at the sacrifice of my own preferences.

Such film music can be planned scienti­fically and with precision. My first job usually is to sit with the director and determine the musical “situations”. Once these are agreed upon, I start composing the melodies, in harmony with the “mood” of those situa­tions. Then the lyricist writes the words of the approved tune.

After the song has been recorded, our work is ended and it now depends on the director to make or mar it in his picturisa­tion of it. This, indeed, is a hurdle all film music must take.

Everyone has listened to film songs which sound good on the radio, yet have been “murdered” by poor picturisation. Every­one, too, has heard songs which on the air have sounded mediocre and of no particular merit, yet have been things of beauty in the film—thanks to clever directorial work. A really good song, given to a good director to picturise, seldom fails to go over in a big way with the public.

It is thus necessary for a music director to be careful in signing his contracts. It is important to him to make sure that the film for which he is employed to provide music will be directed by a competent man, so that not only are his songs not “murdered” in transcription to the screen but any possible shortcomings in them are glossed over by good picturisation.

Consequently I have always studied the directors of the films for which I am to provide music. One knows that one’s songs are safe with them and gain in appeal from attractive picturisation..

To these men, too, my tunes often sound “vaguely familiar”! But, then, what tune doesn’t ?

With only seven notes, six ragas, thirty-six raginis—but we’ve just gone over that! – Naushad (August, 1955)

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