Didactiteca

Industry

easily enough to do again. In this way, technology has been the ground on which the professional and social structures of daily life were constructed and the primary determinant in a determinist history of this music culture. As an account of the availability of sound-recording technology from 1935 through the early years of the twenty-first century and (secondarily) of cultural responses, this chapter runs the greatest risk of any in this book of becoming a chronology of dates and facts. This arrangement is an es- sential backdrop for the chapters that follow, however, inasmuch as these developments directly affected the lives of Mumbai’s film musicians. This account also gives voice to some of the recording engineers (called recordists) in Mumbai, who operated the recording equipment and in some cases drove the processes of change. A dismaying number of the key play- ers in the Mumbai recording world passed away before I began this re- search. Nevertheless, as the men (exclusively in this period) who main- tained the borders, so to speak, between the possible and the impossible and often sought to extend them, the voices of Mumbai’s recordists add significantly to an oral history of film song.

A history of sound-recording technology in the Mumbai film industry is clearly an oppositional history in reference to those commonly proposed by historians of film music (e.g., Arnold, Bali, Premchand; see chapter 3). For these histories, the major rupture was fundamentally stylistic; it occurred at some point in the late 1940s, when film song was being musically and sty- listically redefined by a small group of playback singers. The collective ap- pearance of this group of immensely influential musicians and their rise to dominance was quite sudden, especially compared to the subsequent dura- tion of their importance. In conservative terms, the collective voice that this group represents—in terms of songs, sounds, and stylistic developments— dominated Hindi film song for roughly twenty years.

As I discuss in the following chapter, this sudden burst of creative energy and stylistic innovation aligns roughly with changes in industrial structure, although I cannot be optimistic about the significance of this correlation. Industrial change and musical innovation in Mumbai, however, took place almost halfway through a long period of technological stability. Morcom, quoting various sources and without specifying the changes she means, stipulates that “around 1950, the quantity and scale of background music in Hindi films significantly increased. . . . This is easily traceable to direct Hollywood influence and also to technological advances around 1950 that made the recording of large ensembles more feasible” (Morcom 2007, 138). I argue later that these changes were more properly attributable to the pres- ence of new figures in the music production system and to changes in re- cording infrastructure, rather than technology.

as did the availability of mixers that could accommodate more than one or two microphones. More important, in the late 1940s and early ’50s Mum- bai began to see the development of specialized music-recording spaces. In the actual recording process, however, the signals from any and all micro- phones continued to be recorded on single-track optical film. The techno- logical limitations of what could be recorded and how those recordings could be used in the film and music industries did not change significantly between the late 1930s and the late 1950s. In the mid-1950s those limits began shifting incrementally as studios became able to accommodate greater numbers of microphones and as magnetic tape (and later multi- track tape) made its appearance. Nevertheless, if we look for technological change that had the potential to significantly alter both the music-recording process in Mumbai and the lives of the city’s film musicians, we must wait almost thirty years—until the mid-1980s.

This period, enormously long in terms of twentieth-century popular cul- ture, was defined by two technological practices that remained constant throughout these years: first, the recording of live performances of entire songs by the full ensemble stipulated for each song (although later exclud- ing playback singers); second, the need to master the final audio version to optical, monaural film. Those fundamental practices began to grudgingly disintegrate after 1985, but a total transformation took another ten years to complete. When hard-disc and computer-based music composing and recording technology finally became a reality in the mid-1990s, the final remnants of the system that began in 1935 vanished—and with them the livelihoods of many studio musicians.

Recording Technology, 1935–1985

In the recording process that was established in 1935, film songs were re- corded first, and scenes were filmed later. Although he was not primarily a film-music recordist, Daman Sood was one of the first graduates in sound engineering from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune to have a major impact on sound recording in Mumbai in the 1970s:

Daman Sood: Recordings were done mono. The mics increased, but that depended on how many channels the mixer had. Everything was mixed to a single track that was recorded directly on optical film. The negative film was sent to the lab for processing and returned for listening. The music director and the producer would listen and say “okay” or “not okay.” Sood is highly respected throughout the music industry for his work in developing the recording facilities at one of Mumbai’s most advanced

sound-recording studios, Western Outdoor Advertising (usually referred to more simply as Western Outdoor). As he notes, one of the drawbacks of recording sound optically on film was that the sound could not be heard until the film was developed and the negative image transformed into a positive print. As Kersi Lord explains, recordists in this period almost al- ways made two or three “insurance” copies:

Kersi Lord: That time, recording was directly on the negative. We’d record one take, and then the engineer would say, “Let’s do one more,” and then they would process the film. Mostly they would find some wow and flutter. So again we’d have to record it.

Optical film also offered a relatively limited recording range. Even when magnetic tape appeared with its improved recording capabilities, the limi- tations of film defined much of the final product:

Anandji Shah: The film could only go to six thousand cycles; it was limited. So you can say we were cheating because we would play the takes back for the producers from the tape itself, which had a higher frequency, and then when it got made for film, it would come down.

What Shah does not mention here is that impressing producers (by any means) was a constant focus of almost everyone’s attention.

Another major drawback of optical film was that editing, the physical process of cutting a strip of film and splicing it to another, usually required some kind of musical pause or change that would mask the edit. Although films after 1935 were assembled from component parts, song recordings were still recordings of live musical performances.

Once an approved recording of the song was acquired, a copy—also on optical film—was printed and given to the film producer, who was the owner of both the recording and the song. The original was retained for safekeeping. The film’s director used the copy as the soundtrack for filming the song scene. Once the song scene was filmed, the film and the original re- cording of the song were used to create the final synchronized release copy.

Although the number of microphones a recordist could deploy in a re- cording session gradually increased during the late 1940s and the ’50s, re- cording technology and processes remained very much the same. In the private sector and especially in the film industry, technological change ac- tually slowed somewhat after 1947. While India remained part of the British Empire, the flow of new film and music technology into the coun- try had been a relatively simple matter of economics in the 1930s and ’40s, interacting with distance and various forms of political and corporate colo- nialism. The policies of the Indian government, however, that limited foreign investment also made access to filmmaking materials and new technologies

difficult for Indian filmmakers, musicians, and recording engineers. Gov- ernmental policy in independent India erected bureaucratic and economic barriers in matters of foreign exchange, import, and export. The “license Raj,” as the system has come to be called in India (e.g., Das 2001; Guha 2007), created a range of impediments in the acquisition of raw film stock, the construction of new theaters, access to broadcast media, and content.

Sometimes the effects of government policy were by-products of common governmental needs to produce income through taxation, protect currency against negative exchange relationships, and define a desirable national identity. In other instances, governmental policy was specifically formu- lated in response to a largely negative view of the film industry as unpro- ductive in a country vitally concerned with increasing basic production of food and raw materials. In addition to the famous disappearance of film song on the government-owned radio network in the early 1950s, for ex- ample, this attitude was clearly shown by the Indian government’s persist- ent refusal to define the film industry as an “industry” (Rajadhyaksha 2004, 124). Such a designation would have provided significant tax and import/ export benefits to filmmakers but was, astonishingly, not awarded until 1998. The barriers set up by this policy were enormous in many cases, and the re- sulting industrial structures were often quite distorted.

Gradually, beginning in the late 1980s, “import restrictions on many items were liberalized, and many regulation and controls were eased” (Manuel 1993, 61) by successive Indian governments. While they were in place, however, they affected many musicians, especially those who played Western instruments, as well as those building recording studios. In one extreme instance, it took personal intervention by his sister and a local mayor somewhere in the American state of Oregon before Kishore Desai could secure his first Gibson mandolin in the 1950s. Drummer Leslie God- inho was one of many musicians who built his own instrument in that pe- riod. [ Video 2.1]

Even in the 1970s, guitarist Ramesh Iyer, who fortunately had a degree in electrical engineering, also had to construct his first instrument:

Ramesh Iyer: My first electric guitar I built. I had studied engineering, but I really wanted to do music. So I got the wood and the materials for the pickups, and for the frets I used bicycle spokes, and I had to study very much to understand the fret positions and how pickups worked and how many turns of copper wire I needed.

Those seeking to purchase electronic keyboards or synthesizer equip- ment also faced many challenges. Moreover, import regulations and ex- change rates created difficulties for engineers and the development of new recording technologies.

Twenty years after Ramesh Iyer built his first electric guitar, the obstacles to importing foreign technology began to disappear, but recording engineer Bishwadeep Chatterjee still had trouble getting equipment when he was hired to set up the new Spectral Harmony recording studio in the mid-1990s:

Bishwadeep Chatterjee: We did have a lot of problems. I wanted to get a one-inch recorder, but somebody had put in a regulation that you couldn’t import one-inch tape because India was manufacturing tape. But we weren’t manufacturing one-inch tape. We had to prove to them that one-inch was a different thing, and 35 mm tape was a different thing. We paid 25 to 30 percent import duties on that stuff. So a lot of foreign exchange restrictions meant that it wasn’t easy to get the work done. It’s still true today, but it’s much better than it used to be.

Advancement in sound technology was not uniform everywhere, even in a single city. In the 1940s some studios were still recording with a single microphone and balancing by physically moving musicians:

Kersi Lord: When I started [1948], there was only one microphone. The singer would be on one side, and we would all be on the other. If you wanted the maracas soft, you just moved the maracas player a little back from the mic.1There was only a fixed volume.

Filmistan, which had been created as Mumbai’s rival to Kolkata’s tech- nologically advanced New Theatres, had two mics in the early 1940s:

Vistasp Balsara: When I started at Filmistan, there were two microphones, one for the singer and one for the musicians.

Some music directors and engineers strategized carefully to get the most sophisticated effects with the basic equipment at hand:

Kersi Lord: When we were recording Pyaasa [1957], I was playing Chinese temple blocks, but I had no mic. They just put me in the middle of all the mics, so the sound was going into this mic and that mic. It made a good effect. So they were always experimenting with the sound and the recording. Thus, by the mid-1950s, many studios were using multiple-microphone recording systems, although they were still recording on single-track opti- cal film. Arnold (1991) also reports the elaborate measures some music di- rectors took to place their musicians so as to achieve the best balance.

Recording Technology and Studios: Film and Nonfilm

Some of the most significant changes in sound recording in the early 1950s had to do with recording spaces. In the 1930s and ’40s, sound recording was not done in acoustically designed recording studios but in the same

barnlike spaces where films themselves were shot (chapter 3). Because these were multipurpose sites, no specialized sound treatment or recording equipment was installed. Instead, the producing studios of the 1940s and early 1950s invested in mobile vans that were large enough to house a re- cording machine, mixer, and other necessary equipment and still accom- modate a recordist and perhaps his assistant. The sound van would be ac- companied by a generator van so that recording was independent of the electrical power supply and could take place just about anywhere. Micro- phones would be placed appropriately and connected to the recording van by long cables:

Kersi Lord: Sometimes we’d just record in a small rehearsal room; there was no recording room or recording booth. We had a mobile recording van with cables going from here to there.

In the 1950s, recording engineers began developing acoustically suitable recording spaces. Many of those who worked in vans helped build or run the first recording studios. Robin Chatterjee was one of the first generation of recording engineers. Growing up in the years before India established FTII, Chatterjee had studied recording in Germany and the United States:

Kersi Lord: Mr. Robin Chatterjee was recording in the van at Rang Mahal Studio at Dadar. In the van would be a small mixer and a speaker and a recording machine. Before the outdoor shoots, one recording van used to go, and one generator van used to go [to the filming location]. First, Mr. Robin Chatterjee was there in those vans. Then later he was at Mehboob Studios. Before examining these important recording facilities, I want to make clear the two different technological streams that make this history so complex. Throughout the history of film music, the need to record on synchroniz- able formats distinguished recording practice in the film-music industry from that in the music industry (i.e., the recording of music for film as op- posed to disc). In the 1930s and ’40s this distinction was embodied in the differences between recording on optical film or on wax or acetate discs. After World War II, it meant the difference between film and magnetic tape, which quickly became the global recording medium. Later it meant variations in tape format and diverse rates of technological development.

As developed in the United States for the music industry, magnetic tape came in quarter-inch to two-inch widths (hereafter the “inch system”). In general, the wider tapes allowed greater densities of magnetic particles and thus better sound quality. Synchronizable magnetic tape (i.e., tape with sprocket holes) was also developed in the 1950s but was made to corre- spond to the size of celluloid film and measured in millimeters: The thirty- five-millimeter width (called “thirty-five em-em” in Mumbai; hereafter

35 mm) was most commonly used. The inch system that was used by the record industry developed more sophisticated technology more quickly than the “em-em” format used for films; what is more, the two were not compatible.

In the history of the Mumbai film-music industry, any reference to mag- netic-tape technology must specify which system is under discussion to avoid confusion. When Arnold (1991), for example, reports that magnetic tape recorders began to appear in India between 1948 and 1950, she refers (whether she knew it or not) to inch-system tape recorders that had no major impact on the film-music industry. The unbridgeable duality of this system leads Arnold into a dilemma when she comments on the recording of film songs for HMV that “until the advent of magnetic tape in the early 1950s, songs had to be recorded twice . . . since there was no means of directly transferring the film soundtrack recording to a gramophone record” (1991, 115). While she is correct in stating that HMV was recording film songs for discs on quarter-inch magnetic tape for at least part of the 1950s, it was almost the end of that decade before the need to record songs twice (once for filmmaking on optical film and once for discs) disappeared. That change ultimately took place when HMV acquired an optical transfer ma- chine that transferred sound directly from celluloid film to an acetate mas- ter disc:

V. K. Dubey: Film songs were recorded in a studio on sound film. After that, HMV had no way of transferring the music from the film, so they [the musicians] used to come to HMV studio and record the song again. That’s how it used to be. In 1958 or so, HMV acquired that transfer machine, and then they could transfer the sound from the film to a lacquer. Dubey was HMV’s national vice president for artists and repertory. The transfer machine that he mentions here bridged the gap between two dif- ferent processes and industries. Because of the close symbiotic relationship between the film and music industries, however, the extent of that separa- tion is not always readily apparent. This remains one of the most challeng- ing conceptual issues in providing a clear account of sound-recording tech- nology in Mumbai; there were actually two different technological systems in place for recording sound: one for the nonsynchronous world of music recording for discs and cassettes and one for the synchronous world of film-music recording. Developments, formats, and studios were aligned with one or the other but rarely both. Bishwadeep Chatterjee reflects on the situation and describes the results of Western Outdoor’s early efforts to de-